"When Maria Lawton was six years old, her family emigrated from the Azorean Island of Sao Miguel part of a stunning archipelago off mainland Portugal to New Bedford, MA, a thriving Portuguese community. Like many new Americans, food and cooking were central to Maria's family; her father's vegetable garden covered their backyard, and if Maria couldn't find her mother cooking on the first floor of their three-family house, she was sure to find her grandmother baking something upstairs.

Longing to recreate these important meals for her own family, Maria resolved to document the cooking that...