Shameless Plug: Mr. Wat Sushi and Noodles

This place just opened up a few weeks ago and we took Thing Two there for dinner last night (Thing One was out and about; his loss).  It's awesome.  Very good food, friendly staff, reasonable prices.  They do seem to have issues with their iPod-based order management and payment system, but one trusts these bugs will be worked out with time.

There was quite a steady custom last night, which I hope bodes well for Mr. Wat's long-term success.  I'm looking forward to going back next Friday with Thing One (Thing Two will be out and about; her loss).

Shameless Plug: Candlepin Bowling

Himself has gone off sailing with a friend in Florida, so the kids and I had a little end-of-February-break excursion today.  Started off at a big antiques show in Brunswick, where Thing One scored a WWII-era crush cap for his collection; grabbed Chinese for lunch; ran a few errands and then wound up at Oakland Park Lanes for some candlepin bowling.

Candlepin bowling is kind of a regional thing, I think.  The pins and balls are smaller than regular bowling, and each turn is three throws so the scoring is different.  

It's a lot more challenging than it sounds, and to be clear, I totally suck at it.  The kids are marginally better than I am.  It does not matter because it's simply a blast.  And at $2.75 a string, it's a heck of an affordable way to pass an hour or so. 

Oakland Park Lanes is exactly the sort of funky, retro, kind of shabby place you would want to go for this sort of entertainment. 

One finds serious league bowlers there, families with itty bitty kids tossing gutterballs, elementary kids having birthday parties in the arcade, and everyone in between.  

Thing Two came out on top today, edging out her brother by two points and blowing me completely out of the water.  

At least her brother has that crush cap as a consolation prize...

Shameless Plug: Cafe Miranda and Recipe: Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Onions, Mushrooms and Pancetta in Balsamic Cream Sauce

There's a little restaurant in Rockland called Cafe Miranda.  Not that we get out that much, mind, but it's one of our fave places - funky and informal but devoted to serious food and featuring a constantly changing, mind-bogglingly huge menu. 

One of the items usually on the list of appetizers is Brussels sprouts roasted in the brick oven and finished with a balsamic cream sauce.  It's delicious.  A Brussels sprout roasted at high temperature is a gem of carmelized sweetness; an entirely different creature from one which has been boiled to death.

I have been trying to recreate Cafe Miranda's dish at home and I think this is pretty close.  (We happen to be fortunate that the children will enthusiastically taste-test just about anything, including charred cruciferous vegetables.)  

This highly unphotogenic side dish really shines as part of an otherwise simple, yet richly flavorful meal - say alongside roast chicken like our favorite from the New York Times and baked sweet potatoes. 

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Onions, Mushrooms and Pancetta in Balsamic Cream Sauce

For four generous servings:

1 1/2 lbs uniformly sized Brussels sprouts, rinsed, trimmed and sliced in half lengthwise
8 oz sliced white mushrooms
1 large yellow onion, cut in 1/4" wedges
Olive oil
Sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
4 oz diced pancetta
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 cup heavy cream
2-3 tablespoons Balsamic vinegar (to taste)

Heat oven to 450.

Place Brussels sprouts, mushrooms and onions on a large rimmed baking sheet; drizzle with olive oil and stir to coat evenly.  Roast, stirring regularly, until sprouts are tender and charred in spots.  Maybe 20 -30 minutes, depending on the size of the sprouts.

While vegetables are roasting, in a small saucepan, combine chicken stock and heavy cream. Bring to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until thickened and reduced by about 1/3. Stir in balsamic vinegar. 

While the sauce is reducing, fry the pancetta until crisp.  Drain on paper towels.

When vegetables are done, season with salt and pepper.  Combine with balsamic cream sauce and pancetta.  Serve at once.

Shameless Plug and a Recipe: Easiest Applesauce

We went apple-picking in the rain last weekend at Hope Orchards, an orchard down the road a piece with just the nicest people and the loveliest trees and a sweet old farmstand dog.  We came away with two huge pumpkins, a gallon of freshly-pressed cider, and about a bushel of McCouns and Empires with a few Cortlands and Macs thrown in for good measure.  Much baking has ensued, but the kids' favorite is applesauce.

Yes, we own one of those apple peeler and corer devices, it's marvelous, thank you - but for applesauce, I  leave the skins on (for that pink tinge); and why bother to core, when one's KitchenAid has a strainer attachment?  How did humanity survive before KitchenAids?

Easiest Applesauce

Quarter (or cut in eighths, depending on size) enough apples to fill your stockpot.  Add an inch or so of water.  Bring to a simmer and cook, covered, stirring and turning the apples until they are uniformly tender.  Allow to cool to handling temperature, then scoop the apples into the hopper of the KitchenAid and run 'em through.

Return the pulp to the pot and simmer uncovered until it reaches your desired consistency.  Taste, then add sugar (how much depends on your volume and the variety of apple you're dealing with; start with 1/2 cup and go up from there) and, if you like, a shot of cinnamon with just a whisper of nutmeg and cloves.

This freezes and cans well.

Shameless Plugs and a Recipe: Grey Sole with Braised Leeks

God and His saints be praised, the CSA and CSF seasons are back in full swing.  Capt. Randy from the Port Clyde Co-op and Farmer Tom from Hope's Edge Farm conspired to bring grey sole fillets, lettuces, leeks, scallions, potatoes, herbs, and spinach to our table this week.

The delicate sole pairs well with sweet, earthy braised leaks; alongside simple roasted potatoes, sauteed spinach, and a green salad.

Grey Sole with Braised Leeks

2 lbs. sole fillets (about 16 small)
5 small leeks, white and light green parts only, cut in half lengthwise, rinsed well and sliced

4 tablespoons butter, divided

1 tablespoon minced garlic
1/4 cup vermouth

2 scallions

2 tablespoons lemon juice
Paprika
Dill weed (fresh if you have it)
Dried bread crumbs
1/4 cup snipped chives
Salt & pepper

In a large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons butter over medium heat.  Saute the leeks and garlic until wilted; stir in vermouth, cover and simmer until very tender.  Stir in scallions and salt & pepper to taste.  Spread evenly in the bottom of a 13x9 baking dish.

Loosely roll sole fillets and arrange on top of the leek mixture.  Sprinkle with lemon juice, brush with remaining 2 tablespoons butter, melted, and dust lightly with bread crumbs, dill, paprika, and additional salt & pepper.

Bake uncovered at 375 for 15-20 minutes, just until fish flakes easily.  Do not overbake.  Garnish with snipped chives; serve immediately.

Serves 6.

Shameless Plug: eHope

This one is a little hard to explain.

We New Englanders tend to play to that stereotype of prickly independence - we neither ask for help nor receive it graciously, and we keep our neighbors at arm's length, preferring as we do to live isolated and alone on craggy rocks surrounded by crashing breakers and blinding fog, subsisting only on that which we have scratched from the earth with our own bare hands, shivering but grimly self-satisfied.  It's a miracle we manage to reproduce.

I exaggerate only slightly for the purpose of illustration. 

Maine's population is both aging and shrinking faster than almost anywhere else in the country.  Those of us who are here and of working age are busy, and frankly, prickly independence or not, we simply don't have time interact with anyone outside our co-workers and immediate families.

So what happens when one of us gets cancer?  Or ALS?  When we need help and we don't have a culture of neighborliness or community to draw upon?  Of course friends and family say "let me know what I can do to help" - but we don't like to admit we need help, remember, so we say we're managing, thank you; we'll let you know if something comes up. 

Along comes Jeffrey Wood, a transplant from the midwest, where they do the neighbor and community thing really well, and he was struck by this mentality of ours in general and, in particular, how isolated people can become at the end of life in such a society.  In response, he founded an organization called eHope which builds and nurtures communities of care for people with serious - usually terminal - illnesses. 

Here's how it works:  close friends and family form a small, intimate circle of care.  The patient or her family post their needs to a private web site - meal preparation, housekeeping, companionship, transportation home repair, pet care, whatever needs to be done - and the members of the circle fill those needs and use that forum to communicate amongst themselves.  Jeffrey's model allows the family and patient precious time free from the logistical burden of coordinating care. 

It's pretty slick. 

I know firsthand, because we established a circle for my mother (she resisted, naturally).  It was one of the most powerful experiences of my life.  Warm fuzzies aside, if I have a shred of sanity left after the last year and a half, it's because of Jeffrey and eHope.

I can't even begin to communicate Jeffrey's mission and vision as effectively as he does; if even half of us cared as deeply for neighbors and community as he does, how much better off would we all be? 

Selah. 

Check out the web site:  www.ehope.nu.  If it strikes a chord, please make a donation. 

Shameless Plug: The Carolina Chocolate Drops

If you haven’t heard of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, please stop reading right now and order this album.

If you have heard of them, you will know why, when I found out they would be performing at The Strand, I went straight to the computer and ordered up four tickets.

(My darling children put up a mighty howl that their presence was mandated at a concert – a concert – on a Friday at 8 p.m. after a long week when they would just as soon be home watching “Airwolf” on demand and arguing about whose turn it is to fill the kindling bucket.  I bribed them with dinner in an actual restaurant, so they came more or less willingly and had good time in spite of themselves.)

To say that the Carolina Chocolate Drops specialize in the black string- and jug-band music of the Carolina Piedmont region would be true, but a dangerous oversimplification of their niche.  Yes, they play fiddles and claw hammer banjos and guitars (and bones and harmonicas and kazoos and jugs) in that distinctive style, but their repertoire ranges from the ultra-traditional to the brilliantly recast modern. 

The band comprises four musicians (whose arrival in town effectively doubled the midcoast’s African-American population), two of whom are fairly new to the group, filling in for one of the three original members who is not on this tour. 

The more startling of these additions was the large and rather placid-looking young man on the left who unenthusiastically tapped a tambourine for the first couple of numbers and then suddenly stood and opened his mouth to reveal, to our noisy delight, an entire percussion section, two brass instruments and a string bass.

(Apparently one can make one’s living as a human beat box.  Who knew.)

The CCD’s last album, Grammy-worthy though it was, doesn’t hold a candle to experiencing this group in person.  (The live version of “Hit’em Up Style” was far more vivid and terrifying than any studio recording could capture.)  Theirs is community music; it’s physical and athletic, and even an audience of straight-laced, mostly retired white people finds it impossible not to whoop and stomp – and sometimes sing – right along with them. 

We need more of that sort of thing here.  I hope they come back soon. 

Shameless Plug: Community Supported Agriculture

I just sent in payment for this year’s CSA share. 

Our place in northwest Pennsylvania had a fairly extensive garden, and we grew vegetables by the bushel.  Every late summer weekend was devoted to canning, pickling, freezing, fermenting and otherwise preserving the bounty. 

It was a lot of work (in addition to both of us working full time and running a business, chasing two little kids, caring for the sheep and chickens and donkeys, plus the church job and free-lance writing I was shoe-horning in on the side) and I didn’t particularly care for it, but that’s what one gets for marrying a Midwestern farm boy.

When we moved to Maine we put in a nice big garden, plonked a bunch of seeds and six dozen tomato plants in the ground, and…

…nothing. 

We grew not much of anything at all. 

Acidic soil, maybe, or how we’re situated between Spruce and Ragged Mountains.  Some combination of factors throws things out of whack.  Tomatoes don’t ripen.  Peppers don’t set fruit.  Potatoes blight.  Eggplants mildew.  We can’t even grow zucchini, for chrissake. 

After a few years of various and sundry crop failures – including the Great Cannibalistic Tomato Hornworm Invasion of 2006 – we quit trying.  (In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that the end of our gardening career coincided with the purchase of a sailboat.  Purely coincidental.  Really.)

Last summer my friend and colleague M and I went in together on a CSA share and it was a fantastic experience.  More than 70 types of produce over the course of the season (not counting all the different varieties of lettuce and kale), in manageable amounts, and exquisitely fresh and delicious.  We barely entered the produce section of the grocery store for twenty wonderful weeks.

So my guilt and feelings of failure at not being able to grow my own vegetables are offset by knowing we’re supporting local agriculture, eating the best organic produce, and not consuming food miles.   For what we get, the cost is more than reasonable. 

Hope’s Edge Farm, run by Tom Griffin.  I will be rhapsodizing about Farmer Tom and his vegetables all summer, so I shall say no more about it at this time except please check it out. 

(He has no idea this blog exists and even if he did, I would refuse any compensation for promoting his farm other than perhaps an extra heirloom tomato or two.  Preferably those ugly splotchy sweet ones.)

Shameless Plug: Matinicus

Matinicus is an island about 22 miles off of Rockland.  It’s remote to the point of frequent inaccessibility and the climate is brutal, unless 60-knot winds and 20-foot seas are your thing.  Only a few dozen residents have the intestinal fortitude to stick it out year-round. 

The place has quite a reputation.  It’s been in the news most recently because of a flare-up of lobster wars.

Eva Murray went out there in 1987 on a one-year teaching contract and has lived there ever since. 

(It is said there are two things which never come back from Matinicus:  a piece of lumber and a woman.)

For a number of years, Ms. Murray’s columns about life on Matinicus (everything except the lobster wars) have appeared in local publications.  She is insightful, sometimes blunt, frequently funny, and always honest. 

A lot of her writing gently prods this dichotomy:  In order to survive in a place as isolated and harsh as Matinicus, the same people who drill holes in each others’ lobster boats also have to pull together and work (sometimes literally shoulder to shoulder) for the good of the community. 

It’s fascinating.

Ms. Murray has (finally) published a collection of her columns (Well Out to Sea:  Year Round on Matinicus Island).  It’s a candid look at what is required, mostly behind the scenes, of everyone who lives out there.  Read it, and be prepared to feel inadequate and just a teensy bit spoiled.

Shameless Plug: Fish tale

Port Clyde Fresh Catch has one of those stories that makes me proud to be a Mainer. 

The “traditional” fishing model has been to go catch as much as you possibly can.  It follows that we now have certain species in steep decline, decimated groundfish habitat, and direct (sometimes ugly) competition between individual fishermen. 

The government, meanwhile, in an attempt to rein in the overfishing, has been piling on restrictions and limitations. 

Oh – also prices are down, and costs are higher than ever. 

(Depressed profits, tighter regulations, and fish populations in varying degrees of collapse:  hat trick!)

Faced with the seemingly inevitable demise of their livelihood, a few families down the peninsula – some of which have been fishing for a couple hundred years – formed a co-op.  All for one and one for all.  This is pretty radical; Mainers as a rule tend toward going it alone. 

The co-op sells directly to the consumer (local restaurants, at farmers’ markets and through CSF shares – like a CSA, except for fisheries).  The catch goes from the boat to the customer, often the very same day, via a co-op-owned processing facility. 

These days the Port Clyde fishermen are catching fewer fish but actually making more money, because they’re matching their take to customer demand and they’ve cut out the distribution middlemen.

The members are also doing some pretty innovative work with marine scientists and conservation organizations to develop gear and methods that go easier on the habitat and the fish themselves – for example, if you want to catch haddock but not cod, you design a very specific sort of net and you use it in a very specific way.  They also give certain species a periodic break. 

We’ve just finished up our second season as Port Clyde Fresh Catch CSF subscribers.  A full share gets us two or three or five pounds of fillets – hake, pollock, monkfish, flounder, cod, haddock, sole; whatever they’ve landed – every week for the duration of the season.

                

Is it the cheapest fish available?  No.  But it’s hands down the best.  And that eating-local-preserving-traditions-supporting-sustainability warm fuzzy feeling is, as they say, priceless.