The first time I ever tried blue cheese and chocolate together was at the Oregon Chocolate Festival in Ashland a few years ago. Was I skeptical? You bet! But after the first bite, I declared myself a new woman. Ever since, I’ve been trying to pair cheese and chocolate in ways that would tempt even the most dubious of taste-testers. The following recipe is the latest in the series.
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May 11, 2009
May 2, 2009
Maine Made Cookies by Mail
While doing some delicious research for the new issue of Maine Food and Lifestyle, we were fortunate to find the following mail order cookie companies that we'd like to share with you. Satisfy you sweet tooth and mail order some today!
April 30, 2009
Maine Events Calendar: May 2009
Ah, le printemps! Spring is everywhere we look. There are oceans of violets in bloom, grass to be mowed, gardens to start, and warm days to celebrate. We are so happy to see the world going green!
Although the beginning of May once started with a dance around the Maypole and a May basket left on the doorstep of a loved one, we hope that whatever your springtime traditions are, you honor them this year!
April 23, 2009
Food of Art: Daunis Jewelers
Daunis Jewelers in Portland, Maine is a dazzling place. It is elegant and crafty and just plain beautiful. We traveled there for the new issue of Maine Food & Lifestyle magazine to learn the art of jewelry making, and found the “Food of Art” as well.
Local jewelers Patricia Daunis Dunning and husband Bill Dunning, whose jewelry is inspired by all things in the natural world, showed themselves to be worldly cooks as well, with decidedly local and organic values.
Enjoy their “Everlasting Duck,” a favorite meal at family gatherings and a nod to “green” home dining, as utilizing the entire duck means nothing is wasted. Their recipes are included in this feature article.
From the staff at Maine Food & Lifestyle magazine.
April 2, 2009
Isle au Haut’s Black Dinah Chocolatiers Celebrate Spring
For most of us, the spring holidays aren't complete without a chocolate bunny.
Continue reading “Isle au Haut’s Black Dinah Chocolatiers Celebrate Spring” »
March 13, 2009
Savvy Maine Gift Ideas
Searching for a thoughtful gift for a special hostess? How about a gift that says Maine for that friend or relative who lives far away? Or maybe you'd just like to indulge in a bit of retail therapy for yourself. Whatever the occasion, here are a few simple ideas.
February 18, 2009
Rockland Farmers’ Market Plans 2009 Season
We here in the Mid-coast have something to look forward to. The Rockland Farmers' Market held its annual business meeting recently, and is busy plotting out a new season. Can this mean we are truly moving toward spring? We hope so. It has been a long winter, and we're eager to see signs of life again. It seems ages since we've seen living color green!
Continue reading “Rockland Farmers’ Market Plans 2009 Season” »
February 3, 2009
The Ultimate Truffle
Around the first of the year, my good friend Joanna Linden starts mailing out homemade truffles for the privileged few. It’s become a tradition and is a high point for us lucky friends who are the recipients of some highly original flavor combos. The satiny luxury of truffles brightens up even these darkest winter days.
January 21, 2009
Eric Hopkins Gallery Hosts Pecha-Kucha Night
If you've never heard of the "Pecha-Kucha", you're not alone. But the first one in Midcoast Maine is coming up this Friday, hosted by Eric Hopkins Gallery, 21 Winter Street in Rockland, and it doesn't sound like something you'll want to miss. Fellow participants Farnsworth Art Museum, Midcoast Magnet, and Maine Center for Creativity hope for a great turnout.
Continue reading “Eric Hopkins Gallery Hosts Pecha-Kucha Night” »
September 25, 2008
Black Dinah Chocolatiers Farm Market Collection
On a Friday not too long ago, I found myself in my kitchen sorting through a case of tiny, dew-speckled raspberries, fresh from the well-tended brambles at Carding Brook Farm. My friend Erica, who comes to stay at her family’s summer camp on the island for a few weeks every year, was working with me, apron-clad, and chatting up a storm. As I sorted, Erica pressed the tiny berries through a juicer. Once the whole case was through the machine, we took the discarded pulp and put it through again. And again. And again. In total, we pressed the berries five times. The result was a thick, seedless, silky-smooth puree that I packed up in containers, labeled carefully, and set in my freezer for future use.
I’ve spent the whole summer collecting cases of fresh produce, gallons of maple syrup, and tubs of fresh cheeses from farms on the Blue Hill Peninsula–and a bit beyond–the raw materials and fragrant inspiration for a new collection of fresh truffles.
Continue reading “Black Dinah Chocolatiers Farm Market Collection” »
August 27, 2008
An Unforgettable Past
Maine is full of stories and memoirs from farmers and food producers from Bangor to Kittery, and I’ve got a fun, vivid memory to add to the collection.
I started working on my uncle’s dairy farm when I was 13, and I will never forget the first time I saw butter being made. We always started working and processing at 4:00 am sharp. This particular morning, my uncle Roland (who never said more than two words before 8:00 am), poured a couple of 40-quart cans of cream into what looked like a 50-gallon wood drum. The drum then rotated on a shaft which was attached to the center of the drum, so that when he turned it on, the drum turned end to end. This was our “butter churn!” I don’t remember how long it took that day for the cream to turn to butter, but I do remember when my Uncle Roland opened up that drum, seeing all of the butter balls that were floating in the buttermilk.
August 25, 2008
How Does Your Oven Fire?
It is no coincidence that the words hearth and heart are so similar. The hearth has always been the heart of a home. Not only does the fire heat us and awaken our senses, the smell and taste of wood-fired food is indelible.
Using stones, bricks, and/or mud, the people in what is now known as the Czech Republic were using wood-burning bakeovens about 20,000 years ago. They enclosed fires with any material that had mass and would not burn. The basics of those ovens are still true today though modern materials like insulation and firebrick allow ovens to operate more efficiently.
August 19, 2008
The ABCs of Wood-Fired Bakeovens
There are essentially two different wood-fired masonry ovens that are built these days. One design is for baking bread, and one is for roasting foods and pizza. They look pretty much the same from outside, but the oven cores are built and fired differently.
Bread ovens operate on the principal of using the firebrick mass of the oven to store lots of heat from a large fire built on the hearth in the oven. When the fire burns down, the coals are spread over the hearth and the door closed. The oven “soaks” the heat for an hour or two; the ashes are then removed, and the bread is loaded and bakes from the heat retained in the oven from the fire that is now long gone. In order to be able to store enough heat to bake 6-8 batches ofo bread without having to refire the oven, a bread oven needs a thicker deck, ceiling, and walls. Insulation is critical to a retained heat oven, especially one used on a daily basis; the entire thermal mass, that is, all the firebrick from the hearth to the arch, should be very well insulated. This allows the oven to reach higher oven temperatures faster with a longer cooking time.
July 14, 2008
Pizzas from the Garden
While the brick oven at the bakery is on the job all week, on Sundays we turn it over to our personal use. We always look forward to the first day that most of Sunday lunch – pizzas – come from our garden.
We only use natural starters for our breads, but for pizza dough I do use yeast for the quick rise I get in the oven. I keep the dough very wet and mix it only till it holds together. I vary the flours depending on my toppings, but, in general, I use a basic King Arthur type all-purpose, unbleached white.
Basic Pizza
2 cups lukewarm water
1 package dry yeast
3 ½ cups flour
1 ½ teaspoon salt
Cornmeal or oil for pan
Optional: pizza stone, parchment paper
June 11, 2008
Isle au Haut Food & Life: The Backstory…
I gotta hand it to Merrill and Jim, editors of MF&L. When I handed
them my story about life and gourmet food on Isle au Haut (which appears in this summer’s issue), I wasn’t sure how they’d take the
fact that my story revolves around a cooking contest where the featured
ingredient was Spam.
Those two didn’t miss a beat. In fact, when they came to the island to shoot the photos for the article, they were completely primed to embrace all the quirks and ironies island life has to offer.
Beginning with my car.
Continue reading “Isle au Haut Food & Life: The Backstory…” »
April 20, 2008
One of those yellow ones that begins with a D…
So here’s the deal: I’m not a gardener.
I have other good qualities. I can bake, tell a story, sew, make a wedding cake. I love to hike and swim and run–on trails, in ponds, on dirt roads. I love flowers and food, the fresh kind that come right out of the dirt. I know what to do with these things. I’ve made a living at it for a long time.
It’s not like I don’t like plants. I have house plants. They have names. I haven’t killed one yet. I have been accused, on occasion, of being a treehugger. And, I admit to having actually done it. Hello, I’m from California.
Which I think is part of the problem. Everything grows in California. I never thought about it. You just clear a patch of dirt, plant some seeds, and poof! Salad. There are no gardeners in California, just gardens.
So, imagine my shock when my first garden in Maine didn’t take. Nor did the second one. The third was a riotous patch of weeds. The fourth existed only on paper. Last season’s, grown in a patch of dirt I felt confident could raise the dead, was eaten in a single bingeful night by the island deer.
Along with my humility, my respect for those who can coax a garden here on the island has grown a hundredfold. It is not effortless. In a place that is mostly rock and water, they have made soil from seaweed, crab shells and kitchen waste. Knowing this, in July I look around and think, these gardens are the most beautiful in the world. These gardeners, magicians.
Not that I’m giving up. I’m learning. And my desire to have a garden far outweighs this slight dread of the amount of work that goes into it. And yet, yesterday: a single, smiling daffodil yawning up from the winter duff. Simple, effortless.
Kate Shaffer is a contributing writer to MF&L, Chocolatier, and resident of Isle au Haut.
