This is a delicious version of the more famous Boston Baked Beans. They go well with pork dishes and turkey or chicken, as the maple is a lighter flavor than the molasses of their Beantown brethren.
I bet they'd be great with fishcakes and a corn muffin for a Yankee breakfast, too!
I made them with Soldier Beans, which are traditional in Maine and much of New Hampshire and Vermont.
It's maple sugaring season! This quintessential New England flavor is enjoyed all year, but it must be made in the fading days of winter when the sap is rising in the trees but they can still freeze at night.
We spent two Saturdays exploring the sugarhouses of southern Maine learning the intricacies of maple syrup making. We visited Hilltop Boilers in Newfield, Cooper's Royal Heritage Farm in Windham, and Goranson Farm in Dresden. It was a lot of fun, and very interesting. Here's what we learned.
Maple syrup comes from the sap of sugar maples, black maples, and red maples. At this time of year you can see plastic or metal buckets equipped with roofs hanging from maple trees all over New England. A gallon of syrup requires on average about 40 gallons of sap, and each tap produces 10 to 20 gallons of sap, so the buckets must be emptied frequently over the course of the season, which lasts about 6 weeks.
For Valentine's Day I wanted to make a special dinner, but it was a work day so it couldn't take all day to prepare.
I knew Lorna wanted lobster and champagne, so using that as a cornerstone, here's what we came up with:
The Winnemere is my favorite washed-rind cheese and one of my top five cheeses in all the world. It is an earthy, rich, cow's-milk cheese banded in spruce bark. It has awesome complexity that rewards savoring and reflection. You can buy it during the winter months at some Whole Foods Markets. It worked well with Veuve Clicquot. She was able to linger with the cheese while I prepared the lobster.
Mead is making it big in New England. There's good reason for it to do well, as another artisanal product in a region that hes been very good for foodie artisans. Even Yankee Magazine has noticed.
Mead is not just for Vikings anymore. It is one of the most ancient fermented beverages, known from many cultures around the world. It is brewed from honey, but the honey-sweetness varies greatly from very sweet to very dry depending on how you ferment it.
Honeymaker Lavender Mead paired very nicely with a savory fresh ricotta tart made by Annette for our mead tasting dinner. It would make a lovely Valentine's Day dinner. They make a variety of fine meads; I selected the lavender because I thought it especially suited Valentine's Day and because Annette loves the scent of lavender.
I love visiting windy, rocky Pemaquid Point in the winter. The rocks there are dramatic, long banded fingers of stone with crashing surf on all sides. It doesn't look like anyplace else in Downeast Maine. The lighthouse is photogenic, there are picnic tables and rest rooms, and it's easy to reach from Damariscotta and Newcastle, and even from Boothbay Harbor.
Our destination after Pemaquid Point was in the farm country just on the other side of Route 1. I had read about Oxbow Beer and even sampled their flagship Farmhouse Pale Ale at Le Garage in Wiscasset. I knew they brew a line of "freestyle" one-off brews and other interesting brews, taking full advantage of the flexibility offered by their small size and dedicated following.
We were not disappointed! We chatted with Celeste and Jake, two young but very helpful and knowledgeable employees (Lorna also got to meet the cute and furry Director of Security, Matilda Barncat).
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Aioli is a traditional Provencal sauce that is often used as a dip or dressing. It is a strong garlic mayonnaise that is easy to make at home from just egg yolks, olive oil, salt, and plenty of garlic. It is a fine accompaniment to many dishes, especially fish and steamed vegetables. In fact, there is a traditional Provencal meal made from those ingredients; it is called simply Le Grand Aioli. It's a beautiful feast, and an easy one.
In the winter, while I embrace the chill and think of cold-weather cooking, Annette's thoughts wing their way to sunny Provence. Our Grand Aioli was her idea, and it brought us a splash of summer sunshine on the first of February!
Annette steamed the vegetable platter, which by tradition should number at least six, plus hard-boiled eggs. We had:
On a snowy day a few weeks ago I got it in my head to make a Russian dinner. As my birthday was rapidly approaching and I would have to come up with a feast anyway, I decided to make it a Russian feast.
I don't know quite what put Russian food in my head that day. I have always enjoyed it, ever since first finding the excellent Please to the Table Russian cookbook, and cold weather makes those heavy dishes more attractive to me. I had most of the ingredients to make some of my favorite dishes, so...
Here's what we did:
The main course was Pork Chops with Apples Braised in Beer. This was naturally accompanied by chilled vodka! None of us are vodka fans, but a Russian dinner demands vodka, so I got a bottle of Berkshire Mountain Distillers Ice Glen Vodka and put it in the freezer. It was delicious! I must learn more about it. At least we did not kill the bottle.
New Year's Eve is traditionally amateur night for drinkers. Christine and I like to find a happy home locally to get together with friends, cook good food, have a few drinks to celebrate the greatness of last year and happily bring in the hopes and dreams of the New Year.
I am making a dish that I cooked at a competition a year and a half ago. Even though it did not score that great with the judges, it is an amazing dish. Lime marinated scallops, wrapped in prosciutto on rosemary skewers.
As a competitor on the BBQ trail, I have had my fair share of highs, lows, and "Should Have Beens". While getting started in BBQ, some of the teams associated with NEBS (New England BBQ Society) will mentor rookies testing the waters. Originally, I was allowed to cook with Andy King and The Bastey Boys. I have become a Bastey Boy. I was fortunate enough to cook with Michelle Taft, Terry Sullivan, and Sully (no Gary Taft this time) of Lunchmeat at the 2011 Roc City Rib Fest in Rochester, NY.
As a mentoring BBQ cook, I cooked only one category. Being the coastal rat that I am, I selected scallops as my entry. Competition is tough in Rochester. Fifty BBQ teams converge on the shores of Lake Ontario for Memorial Day. These are not your run of the mill teams. The competition is some of the toughest around.
A few years ago we celebrated Richmond's 65th Birthday Dinner with a feast that might have been served at Boston's legendary Locke-Ober Restaurant on the day of his birth.
Annette has always been more partial to the restaurant at the glamorous Ritz-Carlton Hotel, so for her birthday Richmond and I created a dinner from The Ritz-Carlton Cookbook.
Here's how we did it:
We opened with a Winnemere cheese from Vermont's Jasper Hill. Winnemere is a Vacherin-style washed-rind cheese wrapped in spruce bark. It is full of rich, earthy flavors and it was at peak ripeness. The cheese course was accompanied by a fine Pauillac Bordeaux from the Talbot cellar. It had been brought back from a trip to France some years earlier.
Next we had a delicious Scallop and Saffron Bisque.
Our friends the Halls came to dinner in early December. I had worked with Jim for years, and he has heard a lot of our adventures, so I made a special Best of New England dinner for them. I ended up including fine food and drink from five New England states, and I only missed Rhode Island because we hadn't been there recently.
Here's what we enjoyed:
We opened in the living room with a Van Vleet Cocktail made with lemon juice, New Hampshire maple syrup and 8 Bells Rum from Portland's New England Distilling. This was a fitting accompaniment to a wonderfully rich and complex, perfectly ripe bark-wrapped Harbison cheese from Vermont's Jasper Hill Farm.
Our usual Saturday adventure was almost entirely displaced today by the very important matter of replacing our backup conveyance. After 13 years of Chevy Malibus, your earnest and hard-working Pilgrims will be exploring New England in a Chevy Impala. Friends and relations of your ever-lovin' Pilgrim know how terribly conservative we are, but time marches on and there was no Malibu to meet our needs. This week's Saturday will be on Sunday, in the Impala!
We had an excellent feast to welcome autumn 2012! This year was a real surprise - our discoveries hit home runs on every front. That is not hyperbole; this was a really great dinner.
Every year I am so glad when the fall comes and I can cook all the great harvest goodies. This year I already knew what I wanted to make ever since the Mass. Brewers Fest in late August. There I got to try the Brut from Enlightenment Ales and I knew what I had to serve with it when the time came.
I have been pairing foods with beers from New England Craft Brewers for some months now, and this planned pairing really excited me. I am glad to say it worked out very well.
Enlightenment Ales makes Biere de Champagne, an exciting new style of beer that has the celebratory effect of champagne, the dry seriousness of fine wine, and the accessibility of craft beer. The Brut is effervescent and dry, but hoppy-herby in a way that wakes up spices and complements mild flavors without overpowering them.
This feast would be a great menu for vegetarians for a Thanksgiving feast.
