SWF BLOG
Crab Fest 2012
By Annemarie Ahearn
Last week, I was wandering through the fish market and there, beside the lobster tank, clawing their way to the top of the pile, were a dozen native crabs.
Native Maine crabs. Photo by Irene Yadao.
Rarely does one see these little beauties at the fish market, as they are often considered bi-catch amongst lobstermen and typically thrown back to sea. I remembered a friend and local lobsterman bringing them by the farm a couple years back and our guest chefs visiting from New York were delighted to add native crab to the menu. The guests were equally impressed and tore into them with fervor. I was even more surprised to find that they were just over a dollar a pound!
I immediately called my dear friend and fellow chef, Abigale, who can build excitement up around any ingredient. She declared May 10th Crab Fest 2012.
We took the opportunity to invite fellow farmer Sam and his girlfriend, Aube, to the event. We had been following Aube’s beautiful Kitchen Vignettes blog and had a major foodie crush on her.
Maple syrup pie. Photo courtesy of Kitchen Vignettes.
She brought an incredible maple syrup pie, a family recipe, and we made a wonderful cinnamon ice cream in our new ice cream maker. Abigale concocted dipping sauces for the little crustaceans made of ginger, chili and cilantro, while Michael, the cocktail specialist, made up melon juice martinis with homemade bitters. It was a lovely evening and will now be an institution at Salt Water Farm. The lesson: When you see anything native at the fish store, give it a try. The more we support native species, the less we depend on imported seafood, which seems silly given the fact that we all live on the ocean.
SWF BLOG
A Super Moon, Homemade Gnocchi and a Love Ballad
By Annemarie Ahearn
Our May Moon Supper last weekend was a truly remarkable evening. First of all, the moon was magnificent. In fact, it was SUPER and appeared 30 percent brighter than most full moons. Secondly, two of our guests — Melissa and Aaron — got engaged down by the water before the meal, and the bride-to-be was beaming as they walked up the hill, a strong indication that she had said yes.
At the end of the meal, the ladies from Salt Water Farm popped a bottle of champagne and debuted their first song, in honor of the new bride and groom, entitled, “All I Want is You,” with musical accompaniment from our resident kitchen and garden coordinator, Rebecca Sornson.
The dishes came out lovely: An Herbed Gnocchi with Fiddleheads and Brown Butter, Hake with beautiful greens from Golden Brook Farm, and an unreal Hazelnut Chocolate Cake with Woolly Apple Mint Ice Cream.
Hazelnut Chocolate Cake
If you weren’t able to attend our May Moon Supper, we’ve scheduled a second supper on Friday, May 18, and we invite you to join us around the table.
Below are some photos of the gnocchi-making. Ladleah guided us through the process, explaining that in order to get a soft and supple (and traditional) gnocchi, you must use a fine sieve for your potatoes and add as little flour as possible.
Dividing the big mass of herbed potato gnocchi into smaller parts
Rolling and cutting the gnocchi before each cut piece gets shaped
All the Salt Water Farm ladies took part in gnocchi making, which is a lengthy process when done alone.
SWF BLOG
Dandelions
By Rebecca Sornson
It’s been just over a month since I arrived at Salt Water Farm. I came on April Fool’s Day, driving up from Connecticut in my little green Oldsmobile Achieva, which I bought for $500 when I returned to the States after farming for a time in the Virgin Islands. My almost-sixteen-year-old sister, Molly, refuses to ride in it, claiming it to be far too hideous. I offered to give it to her for Christmas. She said she’d rather walk.
Several days before I drove to Maine, I flew to Connecticut from Hawaii where I had been taking an ethnobotany class. Ethnobotany is the study of how plants affect people and how people affect plants. Since we all eat plants, wear plants, build stuff from plants, and make medicine out of plants, ethnobotany is relevant and wildly interesting if you ask a plant geek like me.
In Hawaii, many of the important plants used for food, fiber, medicine, and fuel were brought by Polynesian explorers. These plants included banana, coconut, yam, and cassava. They were called canoe plants because they were brought on the beautiful double hulled canoes that the Polynesians sailed to Hawaii. These Polynesian explorers were not unique in toting along their survival plants. For most of human history, whenever we have traveled somewhere new, we have brought along the seeds of plants which will hopefully help us survive in our new environment. Africans, in the process of being captured and forced into ships bound for the Americas, would braid seeds into their hair and thus these braids became called corn rows.
I brought a bag full of seeds in my Oldsmobile but mostly just because I couldn’t resist the charm of the Comstock Ferre Seed Company in Wethersfield, CT. I knew that I didn’t need to bring seeds to Maine to survive. My survival plants were already there, brought along by my European ancestors in the 1600s and 1700s. Sure enough, when I arrived, the first plant that I met was a pretty spring ephemeral called coltsfoot. A classic lung medicine, the coltsfoot leaf was etched on the door of European apothecaries to let people know that there was medicine inside.
Many people mistake coltsfoot for it’s more familiar cousin, taraxacum officinale or my friend, dandelion. In mid-coast Maine, dandelions shoot up their flowery yellow heads in mid-April. Like coltsfoot, dandelion was brought to America by Europeans for its vast culinary and medicinal uses. Dandelions quite liked their new environment and shot across America like wildfire. Apparently, Native Americans knew when European colonists were getting close because dandelions would begin growing in their fields and along the edges of their forests.
Dandelion root
Dandelions are tastiest in the early spring when their toothy leaves are still tender. Here at Salt Water Farm, we’ve been eating dandelions like crazy. First before they flowered, we ate dandelion greens in pesto. Then, we started eating dandelion salads. Their bitter leaves are rendered quite delicious with the addition of a honeyed vinaigrette. We’ve eaten them lightly sauteed with bacon. Also tasty. We’ve fried them, turning the blossoms into delicate fritters. (Check out Tuesday’s recipe post). We’ve put dandelion greens on pizza, and yesterday, I put three gallons of dandelion wine into a carboy to ferment for a few months. Apparently, in the depths of winter, when it’s ready to drink, it will taste like liquid sunshine. I haven’t spent a winter in Maine yet, but I grew up in Michigan so if the winters are anything alike, I think a glass of liquid sunshine in February will be mighty wonderful.
Medicinally, dandelions target the liver and the kidneys. Due to their bitter qualities, they help the liver kick into gear, clearing the body from any winter stagnation. The roots are sometimes ground up and used as a coffee substitute. I dried some last week after weeding the garden. Ladleah wanted to eat them like dandelion chips.
Today, it’s rainy and gray as I look out the window at the ocean. The dandelions are all closed up, protecting their golden blossoms from the rain. Even though I can’t see their smiling faces, I’m glad that they are there, easing my transition into a new life at Salt Water Farm. Hooray for the adventurous human spirit and the plants that help us along the way.
Dandelion Green Pesto
4 cups dandelion greens
2 lemons, juiced
1 cup almonds
1/2 cup olive oil
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup grated, hard cheese such as pecorino romano
Place almonds, lemon juice, olive oil, optional cheese, and salt in a food processor and process until blended. Then add greens through the top while the food processor is still running and process until the greens are completely incorporated. Enjoy with crusty bread.
SWF BLOG
Maine Maple Sunday and Pouding Chomeur
By Ladleah Dunn
For the past few months, depending on where you live, sugar bushes everywhere are laced with networks of tubing, pots, pans, buckets, and other catchment devices for the collection of maple sap. Be the sugar bush a couple of trees in your yard or a full on grove of maple trees, listen closely and you can hear the drip, drip of sap flowing.
There has been great debate and controversy surrounding this years tapping season. Too warm. The trees never needed to store up the usual amounts of sugar to get them through the winter- resulting in watery sap. Let’s be clear- maple tree sap is just a few degrees away from water as it is. A typical ratio for reducing sap to the wonderful brown syrup we pour (if you are me- on everything) is 40 gallons of sap to 1 gallon of syrup. I’ve been hearing figures as high as 80:1 this year from Vermont to New York. Devastating for those maple syrup producers. Here in mid-coast Maine we lucked out. My husband and I have been tapping a few trees for our own pleasure and fun and it was a good year. Beginners luck I suppose but we managed to eek out the season with 1 gallon and 1 pint of lovely brown maple syrup having boiled down 38 gallons of sap. The last 4 gallons of fresh sap went into a rich Maple Nut Brown Ale, but that is another story…
Our local, friendly Agway has everything one could want to tap a tree (all varieties of maples are fair game or even birch! Check out Euell Gibbons).
When the nights are still dipping below freezing and the days just poking above freezing go looking for a tree larger than 9 inches in diameter. Drill a 1/2 inch hole about 1 1/2 inches deep, tunk your tap in and start collecting. We used food safe tubing bought at Agway and drilled holes into the lid of a new five gallon bucket. Great for keeping bits of bark and creepy crawlies out. Clean milk jugs or the old fashioned tinned buckets all work well. We found that we needed to check the buckets twice a day to keep up with the flow. We would immediately come home and pour the sap into a big pot over a propane burner. The method we worked out was to fill the pot in the morning and light the fire letting it reduce all day. By bed time (9-ish: we wake up early!) we would have finished syrup. This allowed us to get work done during the day without paying much attention to the boil, but as the liquid became more concentrated (dinner time) we were around to monitor its cooking and adjust the heat if it was looking close to being done. The best part of making syrup is seeing and tasting as the day goes on the progression from a very watery liquid to nearly pure sugar. We do NOT recommend cooking the syrup off inside as you are basically driving off through boiling nearly 98% water. Makes for a drippy house. To tell if the syrup is done a candy thermometer comes in handy, looking for a reading of around 210F. If you don’t have one of these a chilled saucer works well, simply dribble some syrup on and let cool. It really is up to you how thick you’d like it, but over cooking results in hard candy so keep an eye on it and test often until you have reached done-ness. It’s an awful job having to taste spoonful after spoonful of warm syrup.
It’s hard deciding how to enjoy your fresh syrup. I settled on a recipe beloved by my grandmother, known to us as Beechburg Pudding, to others as Pouding Chomeur. A humble food, born from a time when syrup was a rural (poor) persons sweetener, not the expensive gourmet treat it is today. This simple but incredibly rich and delicious dessert warms the soul on a cool, rainy March day such as this. For this recipe look for the darkest syrup you can find. Get out and go visit and support those folks in the sugar shacks today. Thank them for all the hard work it takes to make the humble maple syrup.
adapted from Gourmet Magazine
- 1 1/4 cups pure maple syrup (amber or Grade B)
- 3/4 cup heavy cream
- 2 teaspoons cider vinegar
- Pinch of salt
- 3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 cup cake flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
Put oven rack in upper third of oven and preheat oven to 350°F.
Stir together maple syrup, heavy cream, cider vinegar, and pinch of salt in a small saucepan and bring to a boil, then remove from heat.
Beat together butter and sugar in a bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy, about 1 minute. Add egg and vanilla, then beat until just combined (batter will be very thick).
Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together into egg mixture and stir with a rubber spatula until just combined.
Pour 1/3 cup syrup mixture into baking dish. Divide batter in bowl into 6 mounds with rubber spatula and spoon each mound onto syrup mixture in baking dish, spacing mounds evenly. Pour remaining syrup mixture over and around mounds.
Bake until topping is golden and firm to the touch, 35-40 minutes. Serve warm, with crème fraîche.
SWF BLOG
Salt Water Farm on NPR’s ‘The Salt’
By Irene Yadao
NPR science correspondent Joe Palca wrote a great piece on NPR’s food blog (The Salt) about the “wild science” of baking sourdough bread. Joe, who attended Salt Water Farm’s Pop Tech bread baking and cheese-making workshop last October, says he was curious about Farm Manager Ladleah Dunn’s recipe of making sourdough bread with levain, or a bread starter, made with yeast harvested directly from the air in one’s immediate environment.
“I thought sourdough didn’t have any yeast,” he writes. The idea of wild yeast also intrigued his sister, Margaret, who happens to be a baker, and together they run an experiment of sorts with the help of a food scientist and a chemist.
To read Joe’s piece, “The Wild Science of Sourdough Bread-Making,” click here. You can also read our write-up about the 2011 Pop Tech class right here on our blog.
Joe Palca’s sister, Margaret, is a baker based in Brooklyn.
At last year’s Pop Tech class, Joe rolled up his sleeves and dug right in.
SWF BLOG
Maine Magazine Food Issue + James Beard semi-finalists
By Irene Yadao
Our copy of the March issue of Maine Magazine just arrived, and we’re extremely excited because it’s the annual Food Issue. In it, a roster of celebrated Maine chefs — including local chefs Bas Nakjaroen (Long Grain) and Brian Hill (Francine Bistro, Shepherd’s Pie), as well as Portland chefs Masa Miyake (Miyake, Pai Men Miyake), Rob Evans (Hugo’s, Duckfat), and Steve Corry (555) — discuss favorite dishes they take pleasure in cooking for their restaurants.
There’s also a feature on mushroom forager Evan Strusinski and an appearance from our own Annemarie Ahearn, who shares what she enjoys preparing in the spring. Overall, great coverage from the editors and writers of Maine Magazine.
The Food Issue couldn’t have arrived at a better time, too. The James Beard Restaurant and Chef Award semi-finalists were announced on February 21, and Maine was well-represented. Among the semi-finalists: Brian Hill, Melissa Kelly (Primo), the Chase’s Daily team, and four Portland chefs. Congratulations to all.
SWF BLOG
Winter
By Ladleah Dunn
Winter has meant many things to me over the years. As a child growing up on an island off the coast of Maine it meant anxiously hoping and waiting for enough snow or enough cold to go sledding or to go skating on the dark, black ice of the quarry. As a young adult in college it meant bitter cold, early mornings putting on every piece of insulating clothing I owned to get to the lobster boat I worked on to help pay for school. The opportunity to spend a winter teaching sailing in the “back-country” of the Florida Keys sent me packing to spend the dark months skidding over sand bars, bouncing over waves, and coated by salt spray. Along the way I met my husband and we crafted a life of teaching and sailing that found us island hopping, fishing, and working on boats under the bright tropical sun for quite a few years. Our hearts were elsewhere though. Come the new year, we would dream of crackling fires, hearty stews and cheeks pink from the chill. It’s hard to believe that one can grow weary of the sun and the heat, but I am an island girl of the granite and spruce variety and making your living under the sun everyday is no easier than waking at 3am to catch a lobster boat in December. Both are challenging in their own ways. These days, having settled back in Maine not too far from the ocean I can look out over the ice and frozen ground to the high-tunnel greenhouse my husband and I built together in November just before winter shut in.
For many, the coming of winter means an end to gardening. Many breath a sigh of relief as the season of weeding, watering, and constant vigilance over the garden comes to a close. This year I have found myself weeding in December. Planting in January! Harvesting fresh greens in February! The planting I did in August and September has fed us with fresh greens all winter with no added heat or light, and now that the sun is coming around to over 10 hours a day the spinach and lettuces I planted on the new year are emerging from the dark brown soil in the high tunnel. Is it necessary to build a huge greenhouse? Certainly not- but I do make a living doing this stuff. There are many terrific resources out there for you to extend your growing season simply and inexpensively. Elliot Coleman has some fantastic books out there and he, together with Johnny’s Selected Seeds have come up with some great do it yourself methods to have parsley, carrots, lettuces, spinach, kales, collards (shall I go on?) in the depth of winter. Go on. See for yourself that winter can be both about skating out over the dark mysterious ice and about green, living things.
Click on this to see a great video for a do it yourself approach:
SWF BLOG
Recalling Old Skills
By Annemarie Ahearn
In the winter months in Maine, there is time for activities that never seem to make their way into my schedule April through November. One of those activities is reading. There is nothing more satisfying for a chef than reading a cookbook leisurely, paging through recipes for pleasure and inspiration with slippers on and a cup of tea in hand. There is also a world of food literature that I have only begun to explore, such as Elizabeth David’s “An Omelet and a Glass of Wine,” Richard Olney’s “Simple French Cooking” and Coleman Andrew’s “Catalan Cuisine.” I have also indulged in a book recommended to me by an equally indulgent friend, titled “White Truffles in Winter” by N.M. Kelby. It is the story of Auguste Escoffier’s tenure in whites, the influence of his work, and his love affair with the temptress Sarah Berhardt.
In an effort to step outside of what some may call an obsession with food, I have picked up a book entitled “Two Old Women.” It tells a simple and powerful tale of an Inuit Tribe in the interior of Alaska, who must trek across the cold desolate land, carrying hot embers to stay warm and setting animal traps in a desperate search for nourishment. When the tribe nears starvation and can not afford to help the elderly along in their journey through the tundra, they make a painful decision to leave two women in their seventies behind. The two women must fend for themselves, recalling skills from their youths to stay alive. They make a rabbit carcass stretch for days, eating the innards, then the head, the meat and making broths with all of the bones. They weave snowshoes for their journey ahead and must pull the weight of their belonging with ropes harnessed to their waists. Many mornings, their aching bodies and bruised souls would rather stay motionless in their sleeping hole in the snow, a certain death. But a force greater than pain and defeat stirs them, pushing them onward.
Survival is something I’ve never met face to face with. I see shades of it in quieter parts of Maine, people living off the land, warming their homes with wood fires and preparing themselves for a sort of winter hibernation. “Recalling old skills” is a practice that I’ve taken an interest in, not out of necessity, but because there is something intrinsically rewarding about knowing how to provide, on the most basic level, for yourself. Even something as simple as planting a seed, watching it grow, harvesting, it and then consuming it, brings a reward that is almost indescribable.
SWF BLOG
Cooperation
By Ladleah Dunn, Salt Water Farm’s Sous Chef and Farm Manager
In the last few years I have been overcome by the desire to pursue a deeper and integrated approach to whatever I put my hands to. Back a few years ago when I was apprenticing on a sheep and goat farm, this was not always the case. In the beginning, milking the girls in the wee hours of dawn, I would occasionally find myself in a place where the only thing that kept me in “control” was the fact I had thumbs. Over time I began to see it as a beautiful dance of the ewe’s repeating generations of habit and tradition; queuing up in the early dawn, waiting in line, up to the platform to eat grain. Me, tending the other end to glean the milk tasting of clover and blueberry leaves. Those early morning hours alone with the animals left a lot of time to meditate on this idea of control. Cheek against warm flank “control” began to feel like a ridiculous concept.
I have a starter, or the starter has me. With nearly the same regularity of farm animals, I divide it, feed it, and bake with it. It requires exercise, renewal, care. Much like working with sheep or goats, you can’t always predict how they are going to behave. It’s the process of feeding, rising, and falling of millions of little organisms. Working together to make a flavorful dough. Having your own leaven, or starter, can be a rewarding and expressive way of baking. It requires more of you, the baker. Adaptation, intention, commitment. Releasing your need to control the end results. This isn’t a standardized product that can be purchased, but all the effort it requires can manifest in beautiful ways. None more beautiful than a warm, buttery croissant. I made my first croissants with my leaven this week. The entire process took nearly three days from start to finish. Feeding the leaven and waiting until the moment it passed its “float test”, where the yeasts are active and strong enough to rise the dough. The mixing of the dough, rising it, proofing it. Shaping. Waiting. The most thrilling part was the weighing of butter and pounding into a large rectangle, approximately 2/3rds the size of the dough rectangle. The process of the three turns the dough takes as I rolled and folded the butter into the dough. Resting, and relaxing (both the dough and I). Then final shaping, glazing with egg wash and baking. The smell while baking was almost too much! For those of us who are fans of butter, the entire house still smells of warm toasty butter hours later.
SWF BLOG
A Beautiful End
By Annemarie Ahearn
I killed a rooster at Rokes Farm. It was two o’clock, the sun was beginning to set and Adrian (the farm’s caretaker) had prepared everything just so. A pot of water at 150 degrees, workman’s gloves, an ax, a butchering table, a killing cone and stakes in the ground to hang it, 3 PBR’s and the Grateful Dead playing to sooth our fast beating hearts.
The birds were big and beautiful, bard rocks, born in June. One had yellow feet, the other white. Strong legs, but not too much fight. Adrian had read several books preparing for the event and he was already regretful. My sister has a steady hand at this kind of thing and was dressed appropriately in Carhartt overalls, a woolen vest and an expertly sharpened knife, hanging from her neck.
Adrian carried the first Rooster out of the barn, stroking its neck tenderly. This was his first time killing intentionally. He gently hung it by the feet and my sister, with a few careful cuts, slit its throat. The bird had no reaction at first and then, as birds do, fluttered violently in the throws of death. I had seen this before. I carefully examined the cut, as I would perform the next. It bled out onto the November snow. We plunged it into the water, then into an ice bath and began to pluck. The wheelbarrow amassed a mountain of beautiful black and white feathers. I eviscerated the bird, which was only a slight variation of what one would do with a purchased whole bird. It was warm inside, which was new to me. We sawed off the neck and hung it by its thick and scaly legs.
Adrian brought out the second bird and again, he said his goodbyes. I made three or four intentional cuts and the bird had no immediate reaction. Its body then fought death with a fluttering of the wings and it too bled out. I felt relieved that the days killing was over. I had been dreading this moment for quite some time. For years, I’ve eaten meat, but never have I ended a life in order to do so. The fear of making a mistake with the knife or inflicting unnecessary pain was frightening to me and even worse was the thought of people watching. As my sister said, “It’s all in the company that you keep.” Adrian was also afraid of the task at hand. Catharine, for whatever reason, was a seasoned pro. As the sun set over the Camden hills, I felt confident that I could do it again, under less comforting circumstances. After all, the experience was in a word, beautiful.
We hung the birds for the night and the following day, I bathed both carcasses in $40 of Burgundy wine and plenty of aromatics. Then, I prepared a traditional Coq au Vin and Adrian, Ladleah (our sous-chef) and my parents joined me for supper. We thanked the birds for their life, Adrian for his work and together ate an authentically French preparation of rooster in red wine with button mushrooms and toasts. Aridan doesn’t usually eat meat, but he has twice in the past twelve years, both times, in my care, at my table. I have not met a man like Adrian. It was a privilege to have killed our first rooster together.
Coq Au Vin
Adapted from The Country Cooking of France, Anne Willan
Serves 4
3 cups Burgundy red wine
1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
3 cloves garlic (1 whole, 2 chopped)
2 ribs celery, thinly sliced
1 medium carrot, thinly sliced
1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced
1 5–6-lb Rooster, cut into 10 pieces, ideally 6 months old
2 tablsepoons olive oil
8 sprigs flat-leaf parsley plus 1 tablespoon
chopped leaves
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs thyme
1⁄2 lb. slab bacon, cut into 2″-long slivers
3 tablespoon flour
2 cups Chicken Stock
2 shallots, chopped
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 tablespoons butter
18 pearl onions, peeled
1⁄2 lb. button mushrooms, quartered
Bring wine, peppercorns, whole garlic, celery, carrots, and yellow onions to a boil in a pot; reduce heat; simmer for 5 minutes. Let cool, pour over rooster. Cover and marinate overnight.
Heat oven to 325°. Tie parsley sprigs, bay leaves, and thyme together; set aside. Remove rooster from marinade; pat dry. Strain marinade; reserve liquid and solids separately. Heat 1 tbsp. oil in a wide pot over medium heat. Add bacon; cook until crisp, 6–8 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer bacon to a bowl; increase heat to medium-high. Working in 2 batches, brown rooster, 6–8 minutes; transfer to a plate. Add reserved solids; cook until soft, 10–12 minutes. Sprinkle in flour; cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Whisk in reserved liquid; boil. Simmer for 1 minute. Stir in remaining garlic, stock, shallots, and salt and pepper to taste; nestle chicken and herb bundle in vegetables. Bake, covered, until tender, about 1 1⁄4 hours. Transfer chicken to a plate; cover with foil. Strain sauce; keep warm.
While rooster is cooking, heat 1 tablespoon butter and remaining oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add pearl onions; cook until golden, 4–5 minutes. Reduce heat to medium-low; cook, covered, until tender, 8–10 minutes. Combine onions with bacon. Heat remaining butter over medium-high heat; cook mushrooms until tender, 4–5 minutes. Arrange chicken on platter; top with sauce, bacon, onions, mushrooms, and remaining parsley.