Portland, Maine: Winter Farmers' Market

A view of the market on February 18.

Held at the Irish Heritage Center in the southeast side of the city.

February 25, 2012 Field to Fork Menu and Recipes!

These are the recipes from last night's Italian Field to Fork interactive dinner party. The hostess had hired me as a surprise for her husband's birthday. Family and friends were there. Two small children ran around and played. Everyone really pitched in and had a great time cooking, eating and chatting. The food turned out brilliantly, in no small part because it was such a great crowd.

Orange Salad
Serves 12
Wine: Tenuta Santome Prosecco (Veneto)

Ingredients
10 oranges
Salt and pepper, to taste
A few glugs (Tablespoons) of olive oil
1 large sweet red onion, thinly sliced
A large handful of sliced, pitted Kalamata olives
1 pound of mixed salad greens
olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper

Procedure
Peel the oranges, removing the white pith. Remove the sections and slice them in half. (Supreme them, in other words.) Sprinkle with salt, pepper, olive oil and toss with the red onion and olives. Serve on a bed of dressed mixed greens.


Mussel Salad
Serves 12
Wine: Aia dei Colombi Falanghina (Campania)

Ingredients
4 pounds of mussels (Octopus, squid, shrimp and scallops would also all be good)
One small red onion, finely diced
1/2 cup of olive oil
Juice of 2 or 3 lemons
Salt and pepper
Crushed red pepper to taste
A huge handful of chopped parsley

Procedure
Clean the mussels. Scrub them, remove their beards, and wash them in a few changes of cold water.

Put the mussels in a saucepan with an inch of water. Bring to the boil. Take them off the heat when they have opened. When cool enough to handle, remove the mussels from their shells and set aside.

Toss the mussels with the onion, olive oil, lemon juice, crushed red pepper, salt and pepper and let marinate for 30 minutes to an hour. Toss with the parsley before serving.

Serve with crusty bread.


Asparagus with Fried Eggs
Serves 12
Wine: La Tosa Valnure (Emilia-Romagna)

Ingredients
2 pounds of asparagus (Figure on 4-5 spears per person)
Olive oil
4-5 cloves of garlic, sliced thinly
Salt and pepper
A lemon for squeezing
12 eggs
Parmigiano for grating

Procedure
Heat a large sauté pan on high heat. Add a glug of oil. Snap off the woody ends of the asparagus, and throw the asparagus into the pan. Brown the asparagus for a few minutes. Add the garlic and toss. When the asparagus is nicely browned and tender, turn off the heat. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Set aside. Heat a nonstick sauté pan over medium heat, cover the bottom with olive oil, and add the eggs when the pan is hot. Don’t crowd the eggs, so cook just a few at a time. Cover the pan once the eggs are beginning to cook. Cook to your liking. Serve on top of the spears of asparagus. Crack some black pepper and grate some parmigiano cheese over the top. Finish with a light drizzle of olive oil.


Oriecchiette with Squid and Shrimp in a Tomato Sauce
Serves 12
Wine: La Fraghe Bardolino (Veneto)

Ingredients
4 cups semolina
2 cups AP flour
1 ½ TB salt
2 or so cups warm water
Many glugs of olive oil
5 cloves of garlic, sliced
3 cans of peeled tomatoes, blended
Salt, pepper, and crushed red pepper to taste
3 pounds of squid, cleaned
2 pounds of shrimp cleaned
A big handful of finely chopped parsley

Procedure
In a bowl, mix the two flours together. Add the salt. Add warm water and mix just until you obtain a stiff dough. Knead for 10 to 15 minutes until the dough is very smooth. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for a few hours, at least 2.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and break off a small piece to work with. Keep the rest of the dough covered and wrapped. On a lightly floured surface, roll that piece of dough into a tube about a half inch thick. Cut the dough into discs.

To form the orecchiette, place a butter knife on top of a disc, gently roll and pull the knife across the disc so that the pasta curls up, forming an ear shape. Flip it inside out and set it aside on a floured surface.

Meanwhile, in a sauté pan over medium heat, add two tablespoons of olive oil. When hot, add the sliced garlic and cook until just barely turning brown. Add the tomato puree and simmer. Let simmer for at least 30 minutes. Taste and season.

Cook the orecchiette in salted water until al dente. Drain and reserve some of the cooking water.

Add the shrimp and squid to the tomato sauce and cook for two minutes. Add the orecchiette to the sauce. Loosen with pasta cooking water. Stir and simmer together for one minute. Add parsley and plate.


Honey Ice Cream with Honey-Poached Dried Figs
serves 12

Ingredients
Honey, ½ cup
Eggs yolks, 5
Milk, 1 ½ cups
Heavy Cream, 1 ½ cups
Vanilla, ½ teaspoon

12 dried figs
1 cinnamon stick
Water
More honey

Procedure
In a bowl, mix the honey and eggs yolks. mix well. In a saucepan, heat the milk and heavy cream until steam rises. Turn off the heat and let cool for 10 minutes.

Slowly add 1 cup of the milk and cream mixture to the egg and honey mixture, whisking the whole time. When tempered, pour the entire mixture back into the pan and place over low-medium heat. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon until the custard thickens, until it is able to coat the back of a spoon.

Be careful not to let the mixture boil or the eggs will scramble. Remove from heat. Pour the hot custard through a strainer and into a large, clean bowl set in an ice bath. Allow the custard to cool slightly, and then stir in the vanilla. Chill. Process the custard in an ice cream maker.

While the ice cream is chilling (and before it has been churned), place the figs into a saucepan and cover with water. Add the cinnamon stick. Turn on the heat and bring to the low boil. Stir in the honey, until the solution is just sweet. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes or more until the figs are softened. Remove the lid, remove the figs, discard the cinnamon stick, and continue to cook the liquid until it thickens into a nice sauce. Quarter the figs and remove their stems. Return the figs to the pan. Taste. Add more honey if desired. Add water to loosen if necessary.

Serve the ice cream with the figs and their sauce.

Portland, Maine: More Beer!

As mentioned in an earlier post on Allagash Brewing, Portland, Maine is a beer lover's paradise. The Great Lost Bear, where Amber and I both got ourselves a paddle of beer flights so that we could taste a variety of local brews, is a beer bar powerhouse.

A few standouts: the Sebago Frye's Leap IPA, the Sheepscot Pemaquid Ale, the Peak Organic Winter Session Ale, and the Rising Tide Ursa Minor Weizen Stout.

Right next door is Maine Brewing Supply, Portland's homebrewers emporium.

Bagels and More

Life is about revision, about the recognition that, at times, our view of the world rests on pudding, as Cornel West might say (or did say, at least on one occasion).

One of the joys of cooking and eating is being confronted with this very recognition on a regular basis. There is comfort in the predictable and the regular, no doubt, but new flavors can reorient. While I use it in cooking often, freshly roasted and ground cumin did this for me a few weeks ago, again. My first taste of the Heady Topper from The Alchemist brewery in Vermont recently hit that button as well. For me, bagels have done this time and time again. The bagel has graced these pages before: the great New York - Montreal bagel debate; bagel baking at home; and baking, water and lawsuits. Well, here it is once again.


The above bagel, a half-eaten salt bagel from Scratch Baking Company in South Portland, Maine, is most definitely my current favorite bagel in existence. (Will there be another that supersedes this one day, that turns my foundation to pudding? Surely. But for now, I hope not.) These bagels are beautifully seasoned, have a lovely browned, nicely textured crust and a light, airy crumb. For a few years now, Scratch has been the bakery that I most wish I could return to every slow Sunday morning. When Amber and I decided to spend last weekend in Portland, Scratch was first on the list of many destinations.


So, with night sky and quiet still settled over the city, we awoke at 4:15 am on Saturday morning, took quick showers, brushed the sleep out of our mouths, got dressed, grabbed our bags, and hit the road. The sun began to illuminate the sky as Massachusetts turned into New Hampshire, and the blinking red tail lights of the cars ahead of us, without the darkness, lost their intensity.

The almond bear claw - a seriously delicious almond croissant shaped like a bear's paw - makes its appearance on Saturday's only, and we wanted to get there before they sold out. As it turned out, we arrived before they were even out of the oven, at a crisp 7:15 am, fifteen minutes after the bakery opens for business.

Coffee. Bear claw. bagel.


Portland is home to other great bakeries, including the 158 Pickett Street Cafe, just down the road from Scratch. As a cafe, it's got a very different feel than Scratch, which is a walk in-get your stuff-walk out kind of place. Whereas Scratch is bright and open, 158 is well worn, cramped, and has more of an edge. More tattoos and black t-shirts. I almost expected to see a pirate flag flapping in the wind out front. And, of course, they make great bagels.*


Located across Casco Bay in Portland itself, The Standard Baking Company is also pretty amazing. Our stop here was brief, but what we got was wonderful: a scone and small fougasse.



What wasn't so wonderful were these bagels that I purchased at the Portland winter farmers' market. Sold by an "artisanal" baker, who shall remain nameless, they were underbaked, doughy, poorly seasoned and dense. I tried one, tied up the bag, and left the rest on a sidewalk bench hoping that someone would find and make use of them.


* For more on 158 and Scratch, read this piece that appeared in The Boston Globe in February, 2010.

The Slab

Micucci Grocery, down the street from one of Portland's Coffee By Design cafes and around the corner from Rob Evans' little empire of Duckfat and Hugo's, is a brilliant little shop.

In the front, there's a deli counter, a number of freezers stuffed with pasta, and a few rows of aisles full of bottles of olive oil, jars of anchovies, cans of tomatoes, bags of dried pasta, packages of superfine 00 flour, and other Italian imports. Up a four or five step staircase - with a pretty good selection of wine on either side - you enter a back room with restaurant-sized goods: gigantic spice containers full of lavender, paprika, dried oregano, whole nutmeg, black peppercorns, and much more; humongous cans of olives; huge bars of dark chocolate; bags of heirloom beans and grains; big bags of dried pasta; and lots of other interesting stuff.

Beyond that room is where the magic happens: the bakery.

Micucci, currently run by Rick and Anna Micucci, was started over 60 years ago by Rick's parents, Leo and Iris. In addition to a wholesale operation, housed at another location, and the retail grocery, Micucci added a bakery in 2007.* The bakery is run by Stephen Lanzalotta, who produces some amazing food. While there, we ate the pizza - the Sicilian Slab, as it is called - and the Luna bread, which is the pizza dough untopped and baked.

Both were astonishing.

While thick, the bread is billowy and light, and the crumb melts in the mouth. "To eat the bread is one of those hackneyed religious food experiences. It (sigh, swoon) tastes like a cloud: it's light, ephemeral, pure, and, er, perfectly salted," wrote the editors of the Portland Phoenix back in 2009, when they picked Lanzalotta's as "Best (Seemingly) Useless Bread." They concluded, "Even if we're right in assuming that Lanzalotta's Luna bread is what the clouds taste like in heaven, we're glad to know his loaves would still make for a fine last meal." *

From what I can tell, the key to Lanzalotta's bread really comes down to two things: time and water. His dough is exceptionally well hydrated, I think on the order of something like 100%, which means that the ratio of flour to water is 1:1. This kind of dough is difficult to work with, but it can result in exceptional lightness and chewiness. As the bread bakes, all of that liquid water turns to gas, creating air bubbles and pockets. Lanzalotta lets "the dough rise five times over the course of its three-hour fermentation,"* all the while developing flavor and a structure that will support the airiness of the bread.


I've long been a thin-crust pizza devotee and have generally found thicker crusts gummy and gooey. Pizza is, after all, a flatbread with a few ingredients thrown on top. The test of a good pizza should be, in my mind, largely about the quality of the bread. Because the bread is so good, Lanzalotta's slabs are definitely - as hackneyed as it sounds - a revelation.

Allagash Brewing

Amber and I spent this past weekend in Portland, Maine, a city that we've both really grown to enjoy after visiting a number of times over the past few years. It's a great small city with a lot going on, food and drink definitely at the top of the list.

In an article that appeared in The Boston Globe on January 14, 2012, Steve Greenlee writes enthusiastically about Allagash Brewing, a spectacular brewery located in Portland, Maine and one which we visited and toured.

"Allagash Brewing Co., just two hours up the road, in Portland, Maine, makes some of America’s best Belgian-style ales, and all manner of them. It brews a strong stable of what one might call 'regular’' Belgian beers - a dubbel, a tripel, and of course its witbier - and packages them in 750-milliliter bottles as well as affordable four-packs of 12-ounce bottles (around $10 each). But Allagash’s premier beers - the more interesting ones - can run far more, from $18 to $23 per 750-milliliter...Pricey? For beer, yes. But when you consider that a bottle of good wine costs about the same, one could argue that these beers are worth it (once in a while, as an extravagance)," explains Greenlee.

Located on Industrial Way in the northwestern corner of the city, Allagash is just down the road from the Maine Beer Company, Rising Tide Brewing Company, Casco Bay Brewing Company, and Bull Jagger Brewing Company. Around the corner is the D.L. Geary Brewing Company. It is, needless to say, one of the most concentrated centers for beer in the United States, all in a city of just over 65,000 people. And this half mile arc doesn't even constitute all of Portland's brewing operations. Shipyard, Peak Organic, and Gritty McDuff's are all located closer to the center of town.

Getting there.

The tasting room. We tasted four Allagash brews before heading on the tour: White, Triple, Curieux, and Odyssey.

Allagash corks in the beautiful bar, which is made of reclaimed wood from a barn that was taken down elsewhere in Maine.

White, which makes up 75% of the brewery's sales.

Triple

Curieux. Aged in oak bourbon barrels, which Allagash gets from Jim Beam.

Odyssey. A dark wheat ale, 1/3 of this beer is aged in oak, and 2/3 of it is aged in stainless steel. Amber and I both liked this one best and picked up a bottle to bring home.

On the tour.

A scene of the brewing operation.

A moose

Curieux, aging in barrels.

Barrels of Coolship 12, one of many wild yeast beers aging at the brewery.

In addition to the various cultured yeasts that the brewers at Allagash use, they also experiment with the wild stuff too, a move that definitely pushes this operation into pretty interesting territory. As was explained during the tour and on the brewery's website, "[a] coolship is a large shallow pan used to cool wort overnight using outside air temperature. During the cooling process, naturally occurring yeast from the air inoculates the wort. In the morning, the cooled wort is transferred into barrels where the fermentation process begins. The beer is then aged for an undetermined amount of time, until we deem it 'ready'".

I had had a few Allagash beers before the visit, had been impressed - had the Allagash Black a few weeks back at a bar near home and thought it was brilliant - and was aware of their place in the upper echelon of America's craft beer world, but the tasting and tour definitely brought Allagash into focus for me.

And, I suppose, that is exactly what it - the tasting and tour, combined - was supposed to do. You visit a brewery, you interact with people who work there, you learn the stories behind the beer, and you walk away with a fuller appreciation and a deeper connection.

Well, it worked. Wonderful beer. Wonderful tour. I'm really looking forward to popping open that Odyssey.

Pork Sausages in a Wine and Fig Sauce

Here's a recipe that made it into last night's Field to Fork event. It's a play on a few things: a similar dish that I had a while back at Dali, a Spanish restaurant in Somerville, Massachusetts; various tapas that Amber and I have had in Spain; and a general interest in inserting figs into whatever dish is at hand!

makes a big ol' mess

6 pork sausages
1 small yellow onion, thinly sliced
A big handful of dried figs (10 or 15), sliced in half (Californian Black Mission are a good bet)
1/2 tb crushed red chile
1 tsp sweet pimenton
1/2 cup red wine (a nice Spanish Rioja crianza would do the trick here)
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 stick cinnamon
A pinch of ground cloves

Heat the oil in a skillet and brown the sausages. Remove the sausages when browned. Set aside. Add the onions to the oil and cook at low heat, for 20-30 minutes, to caramelize. After the onions are caramelized, cut the sausages into slices and add them back to the pan. Add the rest of the ingredients and gently simmer for 30 minutes. Add water to the mixture, as it simmers, for a saucier dish.

Linsanity

Chef David Chang the pundit.

"David Chang, of Momofuku, said before last night’s game that it was 'the most important event for Asian-Americans in sports history,'" writes Reeves Weideman for the New Yorker.

The Minnesota Timberwolves are in for a world of hurt tonight.