Ployes are a sort of buckwheat pancake from New Brunswick, Quebec, and Aroostook County, Maine. They are traditionally served at any time of day with any sort of topping. I show a couple here with apple butter, which was great with coffee for a light breakfast, but I've read about ployes topped with berries and cream, creamed fish, beef stew, and plain butter.
These were made with a packaged mix from Bouchard Family Farms of Fort Kent, Maine, and they were quite excellent.
Here's another old Plymouth dish made with fresh local sea clams. This was served for many years at the venerable Old Colony Club in Plymouth.
It's not hearty like a clam chowder. This has no potatoes or other vegetables or meat in it, so it's not much for a lunch on its own. It's a delicate soup course served rather like a consomme, to open a larger meal. I serve Clam Muddle in cups rather than in bowls.
There's no turkey in this dish! Cape Cod Turkey is a classic 18th-19th Century New England fish dish made with fresh or salt cod and dressed with white sauce and hard-boiled egg. It's a close relative of the smokey Finnan Haddie.
The version described here is made with salt cod, which would have been common in most of New England more than a short distance from the coast. Salt Cod, even after it's been freshened, has a denser, meatier texture than fresh cod.
A simple, homey favorite that opened our eyes when made with the right potato! We had recently made a long weekend trip to Maine's Aroostook County, where I had bought a 20-pound bag of local potatoes of the Green Mountain variety. I had read that this variety is considered the tastiest and the best baking potato of all the types grown in Maine, and indeed was the potato that "put Maine on the map".
We were so surprised that the next night I baked a couple more, and then the following night I bought and baked an Idaho russet potato alongside another Green Mountain potato for a real comparison.
There was no contest. The Maine potato had a far superior flavor. They both baked up nice and fluffy with nicely crispy skins, but the Idaho potato tasted like nothing.
Now I am glad that I bought 20 pounds!
Here's an old Yankee favorite!
I'm told that it used to be that a fisherman who caught a halibut would sell the fish but keep the cheeks for his own dinner. I don't know if it's still done that way sometimes, but I got these from a fisherman who didn't eat them.
They are tender and delicious, and they can be prepared pretty much any way you would use sea scallops. I like them dredged in cornmeal and fried in butter or baconfat.
Some people add a dipping sauce of some kind, but I like them hot from the skillet with nothing else.
I whipped this up when I was confronted with the leftovers of an excellent-but-too-large haddock. It's a simple dish, homey and satisfying.
I started with the fish flaked into a basic white sauce seasoned with dried dill and chervil, but then I thickened the sauce up with an egg yolk (see Mayonnaise for why that's a good idea) and then proceeded to top it with mashed potatoes and baked it.
(See Notes for a confession.)
This is about the easiest of easy recipes!
Steamers are steamed soft-shell clams, traditionally served with some dipping liquid (to remove any residual sand) and melted butter, and a refreshing summery beer.
This easy crowd-pleaser is known variously across New England as Blueberry Buckle, Blueberry Cobbler, Blueberry Slump, and Blueberry Grunt. The basic idea is simple: a bed of berries topped with sweet biscuit dough and baked until the berries burst into a delicious sauce for the tender biscuits.
This is great hot with ice cream, or cool with whipped cream. Make it with wild Maine blueberries if you can, especially while they are in season in August.
Blueberry slump is very easy to make; this one was made at work in the Actifio Food Truck by my friends Debbie Goswami and Chandrika Venkatraman.
Don't boil the fish!
This is an old Colonial recipe, from the days before hifalutin' words for technique like "poach" and "simmer" had entered the lexicon of everyday cooks.
When you see a mention of boiled fish in an old Yankee letter or book, it refers to salmon, cod, or other large fish poached in water or in a mildly-seasoned court-bouillon. Boiling a delicate piece of fish is a sure way to make a mess of it.
The best tool is a fish poacher: an oblong stainless pot that covers two burners and is long enough to fit about a 2.5 pound fillet. The pot has an insert that you set the fillet on, so you can easily lift it out when it's finished.
Egg Sauce is not the same thing as an egg-yolk-thickened sauce. Egg Sauce is an old Yankee favorite made by adding a couple of chopped hard-cooked eggs to a simple white sauce.
This homey simple sauce can be whipped up in just a few minutes if you have a hard-boiled egg in the fridge. A hard-boiled egg in its shell will keep for a week in the refrigerator, so this recipe works as a go-to recipe on a busy night.
Egg Sauce is traditionally served with "boiled" salmon or a big piece of cod (in which case the preparation is known as Cape Cod Turkey). It is shown here starring in our Yankee Fish Dinner for June.
