Native foods – The New Vintage Kitchen

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,…

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,…

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…

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…

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….

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Marinated Grilled Spring Ramps

The Northeast woods offer many treasures in early spring, and ramps are always at the top of my list! These wild members of the onion family, Allium tricoccum, might find their way into a soup. Or, perhaps they’ll dress up a pot of risotto, or liven a stir-fry. Almost every use is enhanced with a quick…

Fiddleheads, Vidalia Onions, and Baby Potatoes

They are only here for a short while, so seek them out now! Our farm stand opened with lots of glorious spring flowers and a nice bounty of fiddlehead ferns! After prepping them, I decided to use the little fiddleheads with baby potatoes and Vidalia onions, which are also in season, although not grown here…

May Day and Fiddlehead Ferns

Welcome May! It poured most of the day, so no May Pole or Morris Dancers this year, although we often celebrate the day even in the rain if its a gentle one! Sometimes we get lucky and May Day is a beautiful sunny day –– not always! May still happens. The rain this week is…

VT. Cranberry Beans with Blistered Tomatoes and Clams

Let’s feast on the end of summer! I spotted an orange tree in Vermont the other day, and that signals some remarkable bargains at the farmers markets! We’ve had a few days of dry, crisp air and I noticed out of the corner of my eye that a few trees have started to color. While I always…

Not quite your mother’s Succotash

It’s so much fun to cook this time of year! The farm stand dictates supper, and it’s always good! It’s not surprising that many traditional New England dishes use corn, beans, potatoes, squash, peppers, and tomatoes. These were all gifts of the New World, foods that the First Americans cultivated and enjoyed for thousands of…

New England jonnycakes: traditional, yet ready for the party!

In New England, these little flatbreads have a long history from the indigenous population to today’s dressed-up tables. In New England, these little cornmeal pancakes are called jonnycakes (no “h”), sometimes jonny cakes, two words; in the south, they may be referred to as journey cakes or hoe cakes. They are also known as ashcake,…

New England Lobster Stew

There are certain sacred dishes in New England, and many of them revolve around Maine lobsters. We try to make several trips to the shore each year, and often vacation in Maine. We find that the holiday is punctuated with various lobsters along the way, always at our favorite stands and restaurants. Planning the meals…

Baked Salmon with Ramps & Lemon

Simple additions let the flavor of the salmon shine through! We eat a lot of salmon dishes in our house, and this is one of the easiest and most flavorful. The full flavor of the salmon shines through, with the wild leeks and lemons adding their own unique accents. Another bonus is that it is…

Marinated Spring Vegetables

You can use either fiddleheads or asparagus, ramps or scallions. These spring treasures will add a pleasant freshness to any meal! When local wild spring vegetables are bountiful, we look for every way possible to use them. Fiddleheads make only the briefest of appearances in our Northern woods, but when they start poking their little…

Spring Foragers Supper

Celebrate early spring with the New England’s signature delicacies of fiddleheads, dandelions, ramps, and mushrooms, in two mid-week meals. The season of foraging has begun. Fiddleheads are everywhere, dandelion greens are decorating the lawn, wild onions are poking their heads up, and any day now, the reclusive morel mushrooms will arrive. In the garden, large…

Pan Fried Trout

Native trout brings flavor to the spring plate Nothing says spring to me more than the beginning of trout fishing season in Vermont, and we’re almost there, April 13 to be exact. Once the ice melts, and everything loosens up, it’s time to get your license, clean the poles, and plot your next expedition, even…

Sautéed Watercress & Asparagus with Miso

Watercress is far more than just a garnish on the side of the plate, it’s a superfood! We crave fresh, new greens in the spring, just-picked treasures that name their own season and make us feel good. Asparagus season is one of our favorites, right along with fiddlehead and ramp seasons. But although it grows…