Island Gourmet Girls Maine Fare Weekend

Although this weekend’s weather was less than perfect, out here on Isle au Haut the spirits of the island gourmet girls were not dampened. Opening weekend here at the Inn at Isle au Haut was all about the food with  cooking demos in the Inn’s kitchen, a grill session with the undisputable queen of swordfish Linda Greenlaw and a sweet ending with Kate Shaffer of Black Dinah Chocolatiers.

Guests arrived on a lovely Friday afternoon, got settled, then relaxed on the porch with a plate of smoked salmon dip, a glass of blueberry lemonade and  a perfect Maine evening. Dinner followed with fish chowder, homemade bread, steamed lobster and lemon blueberry shortcake.

Saturday morning showed us a gray face then pouring down rain and thunderstorms, the perfect day for hanging out in a warm cozy kitchen. We made spinach soup, a fresh strawberry galette and the highlight of the morning, rainbow bread. Folks had a blast braiding and swirling three different colored bread doughs into loaves that came out of the oven beautifully puffed and shiny, dotted with white and black sesame seeds. Later in the day we whipped up a batch of Maine shrimp puffs to be dunked in garlic aioli,  greens with fresh asparagus and crispy proscuitto, seared scallops with lemon herb couscous and sautéed  fiddleheads.

Garlic is ......sweet?

It came in the mail today, my carefully selected order of Johnny's seeds. The calendar says we are a couple- three weeks into Spring, with the box in my hands I walk to the window and look out. The color palette is shades of gray and the naked branches of the swamp maples look stark against the milky sky. I take in my garden paved with yards of black cloth. The bean poles appear as sentries guarding the skeletons of last season's tomatoes still trapped in their cages. The old iron bedstead that lives life now as my cucumber trellis lies flat, thrown up out of the ground by the winter's heave. What was last summer's chard has collapsed into a row of rotting brown leaves and there are dimples of water with ice crusted edges. I watch a fat robin perching on the fence while another works an exposed patch of garden and then, I notice them. I walk outside, crouch down and cock my head to the side and they're there. Like us tugging at the neck of a wool sweater, the garlic spears through it's blanket of straw and sheds the winter. In a few months there will be gracefully curled scapes offering themselves for everything from flower arranging to pesto. So it truly is Spring and yes, garlic is sweet.

Diana Santospago is the chef and innkeeper of The Inn at Isle au Haut.