Maine Bicentennial, A Cookbook, and Me

Oysters. Another food I've never cooked before, nor eaten. They've been offered, but I associated them with that unfortunate sandy clam dinner of my childhood, and have always politely refused. Amazing, the power of a grain of sand, to turn one away from future gastronomic experience with clams and oysters and mussels. What else do humans avoid, by allowing the memory of an unfortunate experience in their past to control their current choices? And how can we effect change? For me, specific to the sandy clam fiasco, I knew I had committed to experiencing everything this cookbook has to offer. That commitment has not only brought me joy through the stories of the people who love the recipes they submitted, but also joy in cooking and tasting new things, and overcoming something so innocuous as a grain of sand. I was able to buy shucked oysters, frozen, at the local seafood shop, and thawed them carefully in the microwave (mustn't let the defrost feature accidentally cook the ...

 This is one of those elegant recipes you probably find in five-star restaurants. I learned a few things that I will do differently next time. For instance, while we often make yellow curry paste at home for various meals, I had never made green curry paste, so I bought it in a jar. It just wasn't as good as homemade. So I will make my own next time. Also, the coconut milk, not my fav ingredient. I will probably substitute almond milk next time. I did very much like sauteing the asparagus in the curry paste. Great way to prepare asparagus, as long as you don't burn the paste in the process (yup, 'fraid so, raising my hand, I confess, that was me, in the kitchen, burning the paste...). Nobody could confuse my prepared dish with one provided at a five-star restaurant. But who can complain when your mouth is full of to-die-for lobster and chilled asparagus soup? Not me!

As the name of the recipe indicates, this savory soup comes to us from Czechoslovakia. Our local health food store fortunately carries dried porcini mushrooms. This is an essential ingredient for the depth of flavor of this soup, altho the recipe calls for your everyday mushrooms from the grocery store, too.  I came to love mushroom soup in a somewhat unusual way. As a preteen, I was invited to sit for an oil painting at an artist's home, and we would take a break from the painting and she would feed me mushroom soup. I remember thinking it an odd food, mostly because my mom never served it at home. But it became rather a special food for me, to share with this artist. The porcini mushrooms must be hydrated and then they simmer for what seems like forever (2 hours).  It makes the kitchen smell delectable. I brought my work to the kitchen island just so I could enjoy the simmering wonderfulness of mushrooms. It will improve in flavor over time (keeps up to a week in fridge). Bu...

Don't you just love a recipe that sounds familiar, but is in a completely different form? Who doesn't love Chicken Pot Pie? So tasting it as a soup sounded like a great adventure to me! The ingredients are much the same as you would have in a pot pie, minus the crust, of course. I do think it might have been more satisfying on the tongue had it been thicker. I guess, as much as I thought I wanted a soup adventure, what I really wanted was pot pie without the crust... It was too late, by the time I made this discovery, to do much about it. I quickly threw together a roux and added that in, but it was still very thin and soupy. I've made notes to create a bechamel at the start (and adjust the amount of cream the recipe calls for), to get that creamy thickness going on, sort of chowdery rather than soupy, you know?  I also might experiment with how the potato flakes in the recipe could be used as a thickener too. All in all, terrific flavor, slurpy soupy goodness, but not quit...

 Sometimes it is the meal with the fewest ingredients that tastes The Best. A little haddock, a few potatoes and onions, a little butter, half and half (we like fat-free), and salt and pepper to taste. Oh, delish! An extremely satisfying Comfort food with-a-capital-C. The one new twist to the preparation, for me, was that the recipe called for parboiling the fish. Usually, I just put the fish right into the hot milk and let it cook in the milk. It was just as easy, I found, to remove the potatoes from the boiling water, and just drop the fish in. It doesn't take but a minute or two for the fish to turn opaque and flaky. Then you put all the ingredients that were separated together in a happy chowder (yes, I watched Bob Ross on TV years ago, and if he can call painted trees happy, I can call chowder happy!). There were leftovers, and I look forward to the blending of flavors in the fridge overnight and an even better chowder tomorrow.

Oh my my! Vegetarians of Maine (and everywhere else), you need this recipe in your life! And, non-vegetarians, too! The person who submitted this recipe calls it "the perfect comfort food." Ironically, at the same time that I was making this chowder in the kitchen, my husband dished himself up some pork with mashed potatoes and asparagus (and yes, he is a meat-and-potatoes kinda guy). He returned to the kitchen for seconds, and said, "this is the perfect comfort food," referring to the meal he was eating. I agreed that it looked delicious. But me, I am perfectly happy with a non-meat meal any day of the week, and this one is going to be right at the top of my list, when I want veggie comfort food. It is what I might call an "empty-the-fridge-and-pantry" meal. Really, it's just what you have on hand. Potatoes, carrots, onion, cabbage, celery, a nice white sauce (I used whole milk, but you could go with skim or even almond milk), and toss in some shredde...

In the heat of July, a cold vegetable soup is just the thing! I was quite proud of myself for picking it, because it did not require heating up the kitchen with a hot oven. Alas, I was unable to do the Jello recipe planned after the soup (pantry missing an essential ingredient), so ended up heating up the kitchen by baking recipe #2 of the day, which you can read about in the blog: Maple Cottage Pudding.  This soup apparently stands the test of a restaurant favorite, as the person submitting it says she and her husband used to own a natural foods market and cafe, and she created the recipe with natural foods in mind.  I shreded carrots, potatoes, and onions, chopped candied ginger (okay, so I popped a few in my mouth for sweet, strong ginger delightfulness!). Put in some spices, allowed to simmer in vegetable broth till veggies were soft, then let cool. I don't own an immersion blender (yet) so I poured it all into my big blender, and made a nice thick soup.  Now, my tast...

I learned that Cullen is a town on the northeast coast of Scotland, from which this recipe hails. Although for this cookbook, a the recipe comes from a woman who runs a catering company in southern Maine and was asked to make the chowder for an event. Since I have ties to Scotland on both sides of the family, I figured it is about time I learned how to use finnan haddie in a recipe! I walked into a local seafood shop to get some lobster for another recipe in this cookbook, and figured I should ask about smoked haddock, since I knew I'd need some sooner or later to do this recipe. So I said, "Do you have smoked haddock?" And she looked at me, somewhat puzzled, then said, "You mean finnan haddie?" and she pointed me to a freezer section. So apparently, when in Scotland, speak as the Scots do! I thoroughly enjoyed cooking this chowder. It was especially a pleasure to walk out to the herb garden, pick the thyme and parsley, and bring it in and prepare it. You have t...

This strikes me as a good soup for winter, and here I am cooking this soup on one of the hottest days of July! Soup is good any time of year, though, and I just love pepper, so I couldn't resist trying a soup which calls for whole black peppercorns just floating around adding a little spice! I've never fried hamburg in butter. I mean, if you buy 85% you get plenty of fat melting in which to cook the meat, right? But then I figured it out, you don't have the butter in the pan just for the hamburg. It is more for the onions, which follow directly after cooking the meat a bit. The recipe does not indicate how much water, so I just poured it in till it looked like soup rather than hamburg and veggies. It says to simmer an hour with just the meat, onions, barley, tomatoes and peppers. Then an additional hour with the carrots, potatoes, and celery. Good heavens, two hours? I didn't have the time, so an hour does it, with everything poured in to simmer all to once. I filled my...

I looked at this recipe, and I thought, this is a stew? It just looked kind of bland to me. Plus, I remember thinking to myself, I can just open a can to get stewed tomatoes. What am I going to learn as a cook if I make this?  But I was drawn to the story behind the recipe, as I am with many of the recipes in this cookbook. The contributor speaks of his grandmother and how she shared her love of cooking with him. There is a beautiful photograph of his grandmother next to the recipe. I thought, if this man learned this recipe from his grandmother when he was just a child, and it is still a "family favorite," then it must be worth cooking. Plus, I was looking for something quick to make for my supper, and this looked quick. My husband had cooked up some pasta, so I figured perhaps I could combine the stew and the pasta and it might taste good together. Oh, what a pleasant surprise to my taste buds! It always amazes me how taste buds remember when our brains don't have a clu...

I made the chive oil that is to be drizzled into the Potato and Leek Soup (had to go buy a food processor to do it properly). The soup tastes great on its own (I like it cold, my husband prefers it hot). But the chive oil adds a nice flavor treat. The chive oil is at its best for a week or so. The soup is at its best for several days in the fridge, and then can be frozen. I did not use the heavy cream called for in the soup recipe, preferring the light cream we keep on hand for our coffee. So I'm hoping that the soup will thaw properly for future enjoyment. Cream soups sometimes will not behave well after freezing. We'll see. At any rate, I liked this chive oil well enough that I gave it separate billing from the soup. It could be used to enhance other recipes, including spreading on a piece of crusty bread.

Vichyssoise. It sure sounds fancy, for something so simple! Wait, it's not too simple. There is a fair amount of slicing up of leeks and potatoes and herbs. and the leeks and herbs have to spend some time in the olive oil, then toss in the potatoes and pour in the stock (I used vegetable stock). Bring to boil and then simmer. Mmm-hmmm. Smells good! But not quite done. I poured half the soup into my blender, and pushed puree, and it worked (Spoiler alert if you have not yet read the Garlic Scape Pesto adventure...pesto does not pulverize in a blender). Turns out, blenders are much happier blending liquids than solids. Then I poured the pureed soup into a Tupperware container and poured the rest of the soup into my blender, and pushed puree, and once again, a lovely puree appeared like magic!  I added some light cream (calls for heavy, but we never have that on hand) and ooh, baby, does it ever taste good! We have some hot weather in the forecast and a nice cold soup will be just wha...

My husband is usually the expert when it comes to cooking fish. So I was a little nervous putting this together. How would it turn out? I knew that you have to be gentle when cooking fish in a stew such as this. So as to make sure the chunks of fish don't disintegrate, so you actually get mouthfuls of wonderful fish. I got home from the store and found that my husband had already planned a meal for himself, something I'm not fond of (tuna sushi) so I said I already had a plan for my meal and began to lay out the ingredients for cooking. He watched with interest. Now, I'm not much of a sausage person, and my husband loves sausage. This recipe calls for a little smoked sausage. Not too much, just enough to flavor the dish. When I finished cooking the soup (which seems to me to be more thick and stew-like, not soup at all), I ladled it into a bowl and began to eat. Perfect! Just the right mix of seafood and sausage and veggies and sauce. I casually said to my husband, "Yo...

This recipe sounded rather a lot like my Chicken Barley Chili, except for no barley, salsa, or water. As this soup was coming together, I couldn't resist, so in went a cupful of salsa. Which just added to the flavor impact. Wow, from the first spoonful to the last, this soup was like a fiesta in my mouth! It was so easy to put together, I can see why it is planned for a family gathering. Not a lot of prep and everyone has a nice selection of toppings for their soup. I am definitely adding this recipe to the "what to cook for a crowd" list, as we all yearn for this COVID-19 season of separation to come to an end, so that family and friends can once again gather safely.  Speaking of COVID-19, my husband and I try to limit our interaction with the public, including grocery store trips. We have a well-stocked pantry and use that as often as possible, to eliminate unnecessary grocery trips. So, in place of the roasted chicken, I substituted canned chicken breast meat. I reason...