Creamed corn is a New England favorite, and here we’ve served it with both haddock or a vegetarian tofu version. Both are delicious, especially with a little extra step – milking! We spent a few days at the shore last week, a little getaway timed for after the summer onslaught of tourists on the Maine…
Category: Native foods
Autumn arrives, with three beautiful sisters at its side!
And before you know it, fall slips in between the blasting heat and threatening frost. She’s that quick, and always armed with a few tricks up her colorful sleeve. One day shorts and sandals, the next, sweaters and frantic picking of the remaining tomatoes in the garden. Today, we finally have blessed rain to help…
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Lobster for the frugal New Englander!
Corn and lobsters are perennial sidekicks. Indulge, if you like, but don’t break the bank! In New England, fresh Maine lobsters star in the summertime, especially when combined with our local harvest of golden corn, our very own amber waves of grain. While both shine beautifully on their own, they go together well! One rarely…
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Corn meal mush you ask? It sounds funny, but you can spell it ‘polenta’ if you like.
When it all catches up with you, a plate of comfort is just what the doctor ordered! Perhaps Pearl Onions and Mushrooms over Corn Meal Mush? Sometimes we had it for breakfast when I was growing up. Corn meal mush. It is really delightful, especially if drizzled with a bit of real maple syrup or…
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New England’s gems of the ocean are in season!
When they are in season, New England Bay Scallops are quite a treat, but cook them simply for the best flavor. We have a vegan alternative as well. One of the seafood delights in New England is the arrival of the season of our sweet little bay scallops. Nantucket Bay is the best of the…
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Grilled Sesame Summer Squash and Radishes
You wait with anticipation for those first few fruits of the summer squash, and then, before you know it, you have more than you can wrangle. It’s just about time to start giving them away, or smuggling them in an unsuspecting visitor’s car, but for right now, enjoy the harvest, and the sharing. Love the…
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Tagliatelle with Chanterelle Mushrooms, Fresh Peas, and Confit of Garlic
What a perfect time of year for those of us who love to cook, and for those who simply love to eat delicious local food. A rainbow of fruits and vegetables are hitting the farm stands, and life feels just a bit easier. Quick stir-fry perhaps, or veggies tossed on the grill. Berries are coming…
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(Left-over) Potato Chip Crusted (Fresh) Walleye Perch
I recently learned that Vermont has not one but two official state fish. Brook Trout is the state’s cold water fish, and Walleye the official warm water fish. Although I find that all our waters are cold! If it comes out of Lake Champlain, those waters are anything but warm, especially this time of year….
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Fresh Ginger and Marmalade Glazed Cod
A tropical crop in the the north country? Why not? The fresh ginger harvest is starting in the Northeast, and it’s a delightful addition to our meals. For the last five years or so, fresh ginger has appeared at our farm stands in late summer and fall. Until then, I had never seen or tasted…
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Super Corny Polenta with Roasted Heirloom Tomatoes
Some of the best flavors of summer combine for a memorable dish. Tomatoes and the sweetest corn imaginable are everywhere right now. Red tomatoes, green, purple, yellow, orange, striped and tie-dye too. All sizes, shapes, and flavors, and so many recipes to make! It was really hard to make my choice at the farmers market…
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The taste of the Sea, with a little curry to flavor it up!
This curry can be made with whatever seafood you find locally! Here, we’ve used wild caught sustainable New England fish and shellfish from the cold northern waters of the Gulf of Maine. When I make a seafood curry, you know company is coming. Let’s get together! We’ll cook. Recently, we were delighted to have a…
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Baked Sockeye Salmon with French Mustard and Yoghurt
Wild Alaskan Sockeye Salmon is in season right now with its dark red flesh and full flavor. In fact, sockeye salmon is considered to be the most flavorful of wild salmon. In season from mid-June through July, it is a popular summer barbeque fish, and frequent star of wedding feasts. The harvest of these fish…
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Those Funny Little Fiddlehead Ferns Play Nicely with other Spring Treasures
Fiddlehead ferns are a ritual in the northeast, and with a fleeting season, you have to be quick. From my youngest childhood, I remember foraging fiddlehead ferns with my Uncle Leonard. The appear only for a few weeks, and then become the beautiful fronds of the ostrich fern that greens our woodlands. They are delicious,…
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When Life Hands You Dandelions, Make a Salad, but Let the Experts Make the Wine
Pest or gift, they live in our memories in so many ways! Long before the peas grow and blossom and fruit, when tomato plants are just inches high, and well before even the radishes are ready to slice, the weeds begin to grow in the garden and lawn. If the weeds happen to be dandelions,…
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Traditional Boston Baked Beans? May I introduce you to their great-granddaughter?
A New England favorite with lots of twists! In years past, every New England cook had their own recipe for Boston Baked Beans. Inexpensive, filling, and nutritious, peasant food at its best. Baked beans were a Saturday night staple dating back to Colonial times when cooking on the Sabbath was forbidden and the beans could…
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Ramp and Spring Radish-Top Pesto of Possibilities
Spring is here with great flourish, and we’re celebrating every minute. It’s been a cold spring, so we’ve had to wait a little longer than we’d like for our early seasonal delights. Wild ramps and fiddleheads are now here in abundance, spring-dug parsnips of course, and the first of the seed-planted radishes and their beautiful…
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Fiddlehead Ferns a May Day Delight!
You have to prepare them correctly or you’ll never eat them a second time. But it is easy, and one of the treasurers of our Northern woodlands. May Day. A perfect day! 60 degrees, blue sky, a gentle breeze, and everything is greening and blossoming. My peas and lettuce are up, tulips and violets bloom….
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Twice Baked Delicata Squash with Swiss Chard
Whether served as a main course or side dish, these little stuffed squashes are always a hit. One of my favorite winter squashes is the sweet little Delicata. Their compact size, and quick cook, makes them a perfect weeknight dinner side, or even main course if stuffed! They have a sweet orange flesh, store well…
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Three Sisters Succotash
Corn, Beans, and Squash are a timeless combination, and especially delicious in this classic New England dish. We just about live on vegetables this time of year. There are so many wonderful delights just asking to be taken home from the farm stand. Red swaths of tomatoes are everywhere, squashes are turning up in their…
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Polenta with Shrimp and Cherry Tomatoes
Yes, the cherry tomatoes are still coming strong, and this dish is a perfect accompaniment to shrimp atop a lovey batch of polenta, otherwise known almost affectionately as cornmeal mush in New England! First, the cornmeal The cornmeal is definitely half the main act here. Creamy and full of corn flavor, polenta makes a wonderful…
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Ramp, Morel Mushroom, and Potato Chowder
This is the taste of the season, welcome on the chilly nights of spring. But if you have a heat wave, you can also eat this soup chilled. As a New Englander, I love a chowder. But at this time of year, I’m not thinking clams or corn, but the beautiful greens of spring. Greens,…
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Tempting Trio of Spring Treasures
Could there be anything more perfect than finding wild fiddlehead ferns, ramps, and asparagus all in the same day? The blossoms on the trees are just popping out in lacy, pale green wonder. The grass in the fields is beyond green as well, and the odd freshly tilled field scents the air with earth and…
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Yankee Skillet Cornbread
This is a job for your grandmother’s cast-iron frying pan! Talk to a southern cook about cornbread, and a New Englander like me may well end up in a verbal disagreement over two aspects: the addition of flour and the addition of sugar. The southern cook will probably tell you that neither has a place…
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Fall Farm Market Finds
So many wonderful vegetables! I tried three new (to me) winter squashes this season, two modern and one really ancient. You never know what you’ll find at the farmers market these days. Our farmers are stretching the limits of what one would expect to find in a cold northern climate. But we now have reliable…
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Forbidden Rice with Wild Spring Vegetables
Ramps and fiddleheads join with the first asparagus to create a delicious dish using black forbidden rice. Wild ramps and fiddleheads have made their spring debut in Southern Vermont and at least one of them finds its way to our dinner plates most nights. Whether a simple sauté or soup, or a component in a…
