This bright and beautiful refresher has just the right balance of sweet and tart, and it's not too boozy so it is great at a party that has a lot of other liquor in the room.
Cranberries are popular in Plymouth; great quantities are grown in cranberry bogs in neighboring towns and on Cape Cod. This recipe was contributed to The Festive Season, a fundraiser cookbook put out by the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth in 2006. The contributor was Nancy McNeil.
In New England, rutabaga is often called turnip, which is a related but different vegetable. This is the most common preparation, often to accompany a Sunday roast beef or chicken during cold-weather months. In general, turnips are smaller, whiter inside, and often sweeter, while rutabagas are often bigger, yellower inside, and they usually have more of a kind of bitterness that complements a rich dinner.
The classification of turnips and rutabagas is confusing, but you might find it interesting. If so, please see New England Heirloom Turnips & Rutabagas.
I make this at least monthly. It's quick, easy, and delicious. The cornmeal brings an exciting flavor and texture that's a nice change from the usual seasoned flour dredge.
Sage adds a nice flavor that I find a good partner to the cornmeal. I cook the leaves in the hot butter first to flavor it, then I reserve them for a garnish. You can leave them out if you prefer, or if you have no fresh sage leaves in the house.
There's bay scallops and there's Cape Cod or Nantucket bay scallops. You can get great quantities of Chinese farmed bay scallops for an economical price, but their flavor is decidedly ho-hum. The local ones are sweet and wonderful and every bit worth the price, even if you get just a quarter-pound to put over rice or pasta. This recipe works well for that, or as a decadent appetizer.
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.)
