The First Annual Parker River Foraged Foods Dinner, or Melissa Gets Wild

You have to feel sorry for my friends sometimes. Why? Because I impose my wacky ideas on them, as much as I try to restrain myself.

My friend Alec Maxon is a wonderful chef and resourceful to the max. He's good at cooking EVERYTHING. His specialty, though, is bringing local foods into the mix, and I don't mean he trots down the street to Tendercrop Farm to buy their chicken.

I mean he digs clams, forages mushrooms, gathers wild ramps...that kind of thing. So when he asked me last summer for help marketing himself, of course I had a brilliant idea, of course!

APOCALYPSE ALEC!

That should be his name, and he should have a website, and this should be his pitch: "When the end of the world comes (not IF but WHEN)--will you be able to feed yourself? Will you be able to feed your family?"

And then he would have private foraging and cooking lessons for people who have bug-out-bags and gold buried in their back yard.

Well, I thought it was a brilliant idea but it turns out that Alec actually doesn't think civilization as we know it is going to come to an end. Still, if it does he would be a superb guy to hang around and not just because he's converted his truck to run on fryalator oil.

What he really wanted help with was getting the word out that he caters small parties. You will want him for that purpose, I promise. He's in Newburyport (or Newbury?)--anyway, north of Rowley on the Parker River, and THAT, my friends, is where he held his First Annual Wild and Foraged Foods Dinner.

(But wait! before I launch into this fabulous meal, here is Alec's contact info. Email him at amaxon100@gmail.com! He will cook tasty food for you and your friends and deliver it right to your door!)

OK, onwards--here's the menu:

welcome friends for foraged and wild foods feasting

Libations:

Elderberry kir royale

Oregon white truffle vodka martini

Iced oregon black truffle vodka

Cold:

Razor clam ceviche

Oysters on the half shell with red grapefruit mignonette, breakfast sausage bites

Edemame and white mountain matsutake mushroom salad

Hot:

oysters Rockafeller

Milkweed and chevre eggrolls

Venison stew

Wild mushroom soup

Hake chowder

Venison satay

giant bean and fish fillet cassoulet, rampy crumbs

Sweet:

Elderflower pot de crème, elderberry and strawberry

Brown butter and white truffle macaroons

Mmmm. Let us begin.

Here's the Parker River and the view from Alec's little house.

Alec takes his skiff from here to dig clams on the mudflats. With these:

First things first, people--how about a drink?

This white truffle infused vodka was an experiment for Alec--I thought it tasted pretty good when it was ice cold (sort of piney and woodsy) but as it got warmer, it was a little strong. I moved on to an Elderberry Kir Royale, made with homemade elderberry "cassis" syrup. Which was so good I had two. (Curious about Kir Royales? Look here.)

Here's a little party prep--Alec putting the Venison Stew into a pan for the steam table:

Alec's friend Duncan (also an amazing chef) preparing Razor Clam Ceviche:

Party time!

Venison Satay:

Not really satay, more like grilled shish-ke-babs but the venison was SO tender. A little sea salt sprinkled on top...mm.

Oysters on the half shell...there were some fried breakfast sausage bits that went with these. I never saw the mignonette but I was doing a lot of talking and could have missed it.

Milkweed and Chevre Egg Roll--these were yummy little fried packages...Alec said that he would make a tomato dipping sauce to go with these next time.

Hake chowder...

This dish wasn't on the menu but must be mentioned: a fois gras bread pudding with cherries. Good lord in heaven was this thing amazing. Duncan made it, and I don't think it falls into the foraged category unless he raises geese. But I don't think he does.

Edamame and Matsutake Mushroom Salad...

Brown Butter and White Truffle Macaroons...I missed these too!

Elderflower pot de creme, with elderberry syrup and strawberry syrup. These were quite incredible. You might see a theme that my favorites involve heavy cream, and I would like to blame that on my Aunt Lottie who gave me a bowl of Frosted Flakes with heavy cream instead of milk when I was a wee little tyke.

So much food! And I didn't even get a chance to try some of it--missed the razor clams, oysters rockafeller and the cassoulet.

The company was likewise splendid and I heard as much Spanish and Italian as I did English. Restaurant owners, former restuarant owners, gourmet food purveyors, writers, people who are or have been in the food biz--friends, foodies all.

Already I'm thinking about what I could contribute to the next one--we live right by a field filled with "onion grass" that would make great compound butter. And of course we're right next to Dogtown, which is famous for its blueberries. And if I could just catch these squirrels that are in my bird feeders all the time they'd make a FINE stew because those little bastards are FAT.

Thanks for inviting me, Alec! As for the rest of you, email this man and improve your life!

P.S. Survivalists, you too--just don't call him Apocalypse Alec.

Travelogue: North Conway and The White Mountains

Sometimes it's good to get the hell out of Dallas.

Don and I took advantage of Parent's Night at O'Malley's camp to book a room in North Conway and plan a little two-day getaway for ourselves.

Much could be said about the two excellent restaurants we ate at--we had great sliders, brown ale, and sweet potato fries at the Yankee Smokehouse in Ossipee. Impressive management here--the place is spotless, the food is muscular, and the clientele will make sure you don't get mugged.



Horsefeathers, in North Conway, was likewise a welcome respite, with a fantastic open-faced reuben, and a brownie worth every cent of its $8.55 price tag.

But what I really want to talk about is our attempt on Mt. Kearsarge North.



Readers, I have a confession to make.

In my secret heart of hearts, I'm not a famous chef, I'm not a famous writer, I'm not even walking the red carpet to collect my Oscar.

I'm Euell Gibbons.



It started early in my life, when I read stories like "Witch of Blackbird Pond" and "My Side of the Mountain"--about characters who knew how to heal and even survive with herbs,roots,and food culled from the wild. Someday I'll tell you about how I made parsley tea for a horrified co-worker (to ease her menstrual cramps. She didn't drink it.)

I have always nurtured a fantasy that should worse come to worst, I'd be able to be a valuable community member because of my amazing capacity to harvest food from the wild. And to that end, I've always had a nagging feeling that I really needed to get my act together and figure out what was really edible out there.

Why do I digress?

Because when we ditched our attempt to reach the summit of Mt. Kearsarge, I consoled myself with my happiest find of the day:



Perfectly ripe lowbush blueberries. Tons of them. (well, not tons. A handful.)

I was so happy because we had been climbing for (literally) hours. Climbing and climbing, just like going up stairs, except the stairs were roots and rocks slick with brown moss and water from the previous nights thunderstorm. Questions that were running through my mind after 1.75 hours were:

Why (oh why), with a closet full of performance clothing, did I chose to wear a cotton t-shirt and denim shorts?

Why on earth did we think that one bottle of Poland Springs would be enough for both of us on a 6.2 mile hike?

So when a gaggle of college girls met us (going down) and told us that they had been coming down for half and hour, and that we were slightly more than half way to the summit (we later determined that we were pretty close (like half an hour) to the top)--these girls who eyed us dubiously as we were panting and dripping sweat--we took a time out and reviewed our options.

I guess one thing about being middle-aged is that you don't really need to prove things to yourself so much. Don and I easily agreed that it was a brutally humid day, the visibility sucked



and we wanted to have the strength to actually get back to the car without dying of dehydration. And at hand, while we were deciding to not cowboy our way up to the top, were the lovely blueberries--a consolation prize--for me, anyway.

And on the way down, I was ever so much more cheerful, even though it took a lifetime. So cheerful, that I noticed every single mushroom on the path, and also some promising looking fruit that I think comes from the shad tree:



It tasted like fruit leather.













At which point I said to Don, "I bet you'd like me to stop taking pictures of mushrooms, wouldn't you?"

Yes, he said, because it was starting to thunder and we seemed to be endlessly going down the mountain.

Were there ever two people more happy to see a car? No. Well, maybe--perhaps people who were crazy enough to try the same trip in the snow.

But I'd like to think that with a camp stove, if we had gotten stuck, I could have cooked us up some mean mushroom omelettes.

If you're ever in Portland...

...please have at least one meal in The Front Room. Don and I ate there for a second time this past Saturday after going to the a matinee performance at Good Theater (more on them in a moment). We dashed across the street around 5:15 and within half an hour there was a line out the door. Why is this place so busy? Amazing, creative food is the answer. We had Celery Root Soup (a bisque, really), Fried Anchovies and Grilled Sardines with Mushroom Tapenade Crostini (these were from the specials menu which took our waitress almost five minutes to recite). We followed up with Braised Beef Shortrib and even though we were both full I had to honor the fact that they actually had a pastry chef who had created something I'd never heard of, a Chocolate Chamomille Tart. So we ordered it. It was amazing. I am in the process of harassing their pastry chef for the recipe.

Here's a picture of Chef Harding, who was not cooking that night (it's an open-air kitchen so you can see EVERYTHING) unless he has shaved his head because some tall, bald guy was cooking when we were there.



The real reason we were there was to see Ruthless! the musical, put on by Good Theater.My dear friend Steve Underwood is the co-founder of this company, and his tall and lanky performance in drag was the highlight of this very funny show for me. Good Theater consistently puts on shows that either makes their audience laugh or just makes them feel good--they are well worth the trip (two hours each way for us) if you want an excuse to get to Portland for the day or the weekend. And don't forget to eat at the Front Room, which is right across the street!

Apple Galette and Bar Harbor

We had the most spectacular holiday weekend on Mount Desert Island--here I am with O'Malley on top of Champlain after climbing the Precipice Trail, the park's most challenging climb. If you can imagine basically climbing up and skirting a cliff face (to the height of about 1200 feet) using iron ladders and rungs you've got the idea. Oddly, I really loved this climb. I felt strong and confident, as long as I kept looking up and only took brief glances at the sheer drops below. There's a life lesson here somewhere.

Of course I must report on fabulous meals, and by far our best meal, breakfast, lunch or dinner, was had at 2 Cats Cafe in Bar Harbor, where Don and I had breakfast on our last morning. I had a smoked salmon,cream cheese and caper omelet (served with spicy homefries, a beautiful biscuit and strawberry butter), and Don had an omelet with apple, cheddar and walnuts.



This is their logo, taken from their website (their homepage, obviously). Eating there brought me back to my Maine hippie days, when I too wore tie-dye and birkenstocks and had a fabulous herb garden and doctored all my family with homeopathic remedies. Also when Liam, our waiter, brought our food he referred to me as "my lady", which earned him a 30% tip.

Best entertainment--ImprovAcadia, where we laughed so hard we were practically weeping. If you're a fan of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?", you will be right at home in this audience. Their final skit was a dream sequence based on O'Malley's recounting of his day and somehow they got "neural transmitters", "background check", "sharp pointy things" (from the local weapons shop) and "Warrior Cats" (among other events) to cohere into a storyline that actually had a beginning and an end. It made O'Malley's weekend and possibly his year.

But even better than all that was reconnecting with some old friends. Lilea, Corinne, Spenser, Alexandra, Andy, Lyle--you made us feel like we were back home again. Especially you, Lilea. Big hugs from Rockport!



I can see I won't have time to tell you about the fabulous apple galette I made for book group last week, but that post will be coming soon. My hairdresser will be cranky if I make him wait and you don't want to make somebody cranky when they've got sharp scissors that they're about to apply to your head.

Triple Chocolate Brownies and my lunch at Aquatini

Whoa, you may be saying. Triple Chocolate Brownies, Chocolate Tart--that's a lot of chocolate.

Well, you're right. This family loves chocolate. But I looked in the freezer a few days ago at my cookies stocks and realized that we had almost NO chocolate cookies. That just won't do, not with the family coming for the fourth.

One of my little tricks at work to use up leftover: ice cream sauce, candy, jam, etc is to fold whatever it is into brownie mix. (I haven't quite worked up the nerve to put in the gumdrops left over from the gingerbread house construction at Christmas...what do gumdrops do when baked?)

So the last time I made brownies, I added some quince paste that's been kicking around with assorted other chopped chocolates. And I tried to get it past E., who has a dislike for fruit/chocolate combos but loves brownies...but she's too discerning and picked up the quince.

When I went to make brownies again, I ALMOST threw in the hamanatashen filling I had leftover (that's prunes and walnuts), but took pity on poor E., because I like her, and instead made Triple Chocolate Brownies.

These are classic brownies, rich and chocolaty. I defy anybody to not like them.

Regular readers will recall my mentions of Yanks, and in particular the pastry chef there, Alec Maxon, from whom I learned a tremendous amount about pastry and cooking in general. We were good friends, and for somebody just starting in the cooking industry, I couldn't have found somebody with more insight, intelligence and humor to be a mentor. He has often crossed my mind, for one reason or another, since the...six years? Seven years? that we worked together.

You sort of keep track of people that you've worked with (sometimes by reading the police notes), and I knew that Alec had taken a job as head chef at a place in Newburyport. Last Friday, O'Malley and I went up there and had lunch, at Aquatini.

I told the waitress that "I was placing myself in the chef's capable hands" (make sure the chef has some talent if you're going to try this at your local bistro), and got a superb scallop dish. I'm going to tell you why this dish was so great, because all meals at a restaurant should be like this.

First of all, it wasn't too big. Three large scallops, accompanied by seafood risotto and tomato-braised green beans. I ate the whole thing--a perfect amount.

Second, it was cooked perfectly. This is often not the case with scallops, and ESPECIALLY with risotto. I'm actually afraid to order risotto in restaurants because I love it so much and am so crushingly disappointed when it comes out badly.

Third, the flavors were balanced. The risotto was creamy and rich, the tomato-braised green beans were acidic, and the scallops were neutral.

Fourth, it was beautiful. The risotto had a little basil oil around it (bright green), and the green beans were in a deep, rich, red tomato base. It popped on the plate.

That's why you should go eat at Aquatini. Go on Wednesday or Thursday night, or for lunch on Friday, or Sunday--they are quieter times, according to Alec. And say that Melissa sent you.

P.S. Alec, if you're reading this, I'm going to use the ramp butter on baked mussels this weekend.