Home-made Apple Cider

Fall, the time of apple picking and apple abundance. Cider is readily available, but it is also easy to make at home with the right equipment (e.g. a Breville juicer).

Onion Chutney

Onion chutney requires only a few ingredients - onions of course (any will do, but red onions give the nicest colour and sweet taste), a vinegar - sherry, red wine, raspberry or balsamic are all ideal, and brown sugar, together with some bay leaves, juniper berries and peppercorns for flavour.

Chop 6 large onions as coursely or finely as you like and heat with a small amount of canola oil in a stainless steel pan until they are soft. Add 1 cup of your chosen vinegar (or a mixture of vinegars) and 1 cup of brown sugar, and drop in a couple of bay leaves and 15-20 crushed black peppercorns and 5 juniper berries. Bring the mixture to the boil and then simmer gently for 1 to 1 1/2 hours until the onions have gone translucent and all the liquid has evaporated.

Pour the hot mixture straight into small (200g) sterilized jars, seal, and store somewhere cool and dark or in the fridge. The chutney should keep for at least 6 months. To ensure the chutney can keep even longer (1 year plus), put the sealed jars in boiling water and simmer for 15 minutes. Line metal jar lids with greaseproof paper to protect them from the vinegar in the chutney.

Tartelettes!

Fall reminds me of onion tarts, accompanied with young white wine. Onion, caramelized in balsamic vinegar, baked with ham, cumin seeds, heavy cream, eggs on a pizza dough like crust. But, I was lazy and hungry, so a quick and dirty version had to do. I cut some layers of phyllo dough into round shapes, and lines small tart forms. One was filled with onion chutney, and topped with a mix of ff sour cream and (full fat) grated gruyere with some nutmeg. A second was lined with halved cherry tomatoes, and sprinkled with shredded mozzarella and basil. A third was filled with a mix of eggbeaters, sour cream and spices, and the 4th was filled with peeled sliced tiny picked apples, mixed with some brown sugar, ground cloves and a bit of maple syrup. Baked for 25 min in a 425F preheated oven.


onion tartelette

Common Ground Fair, Unity, ME

It was the time of the year again to slowly say goodbye to summer, store away the umbrellas from the patio, say hello to Fall bringing red leaves to the maple trees, and see what the summer had created on the farms and in the gardens at the annual Common Ground Fair in Unity, ME. The summer threw in one more warm summer day, and the people, young and old, flocked to Unity on Saturday.



The common ground fair feels like a big farmers market, with additional large tents hosting Maine crafts and demonstrations of how to make baskets for your catch of fish or harvesting, make shiny sleek canoes, how to spin your own wool the old fashioned way, make felts or bake maple syrup beans in hot cast iron pots buried in the ground.



At the Rose gate, visitor were greeted by the strong fragrance of Sweet Annie, a herb growing wild in Maine. Wreaths were bound with flowers, and bushels were taken home. Wool was selected for the winter sweaters and the lamas and alpacas producing the wool were petted and talked to (talk about knowing where your materials come from...!). Cold cider was sampled, and bags of macoun apples were carried home. Til next year!

Roasted Balsamic Beets with Pine Nuts and Goat Cheese

Balsamic roasted beets

6 medium beets (about 2 1/2 pounds)
1/2 cup beef stock
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 star anise
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 400F. Brush the beets clean and cut in large chunks. Place in a baking dish, and whisk the stock, balsamic vinegar and rest of ingredients together, and pour over the beets. Cover with foil, and bake for 1h. Turn off heat, and leave in oven for another 30min.

Makes 5-6 servings.

Roast beet salad with pine nuts and goat cheese

vinaigrette:

2 TB rice vinegar
1/2 ts olive oil
1 ts spicy brown mustard
1 teaspoons honey
1/2 teaspoon grated orange rind
some salt

Whisk the ingredients to a vinaigrette.

Salad:

1 TB toasted pine nuts
1 oz soft goat cheese
1 cup of roasted beets, cooled

Arrange the beets on a plate. Drizzle with vinaigrette, and top with pine nuts and goat cheese.

Food Scene in Portland, ME (NY Times)

THE overnight temperature is dropping toward frost this week and probably won’t rise above it until May. Most of the cruise ships are gone, and with them the fudge buyers, the lobster seekers and the chowderheads who clog the Old Port neighborhood in the summer.
But the quiet and the chill are deceptive. Portland’s many chefs and bakers, its turnip farmers and cookbook sellers and assorted mad food geniuses are gearing up for another lively winter.

“I wouldn’t call it a competition, I’d call it a collective,” Josh Potocki, the chef and owner of 158 Pickett St. Café in South Portland, said of the city’s food scene. “We are all trying to raise the level of food in Portland to insanely high.”

It’s working. With a simmering sense of injustice, I recently ate my way across some of the city’s new and offbeat restaurants. Why doesn’t my neighborhood have an all-day restaurant that makes its own spicy sausage, or one that produces house-made crackers and hot sauce for oysters? When will my market organize a ratatouille contest?

And how is it that students at Southern Maine Community College have unfettered access to long-fermented water-boiled bagels, when I have none?

In the last decade, Portland has undergone a controlled fermentation for culinary ideas — combining young chefs in a hard climate with few rules, no European tradition to answer to, and relatively low economic pressure — and has become one of the best places to eat in the Northeast. The most interesting chefs here cook up and down the spectrum, from Erik Desjarlais’s classically pressed roast ducks at Evangeline, to the renegade baker Stephen Lanzalotta’s gorgeously caramelized sfogliatelle (sold out of the back of Micucci Grocery, an Italian-imports shop), to Mr. Potocki’s simple but brilliant chili-garlic cream cheese and handmade bagels.

Tablecloths, Asian fusion and spherification are out (the locals aren’t interested in, or rich enough to indulge in, frivolous food experiments, the thinking goes). Nose-to-tail, rustic French and Italian, and small plates are in.
“I’ve cooked all over, and I kept coming back to Portland,” said Krista Kern Desjarlais, the chef and principal owner of Bresca, who has worked at Gotham Bar & Grill and Guy Savoy in Paris. Her butter-browned gnocchi with charred cherry tomatoes and her blueberry tart — a creamy filling, usually so dull, transformed by buttermilk — are infuriatingly delicious.

Chefs here feed off one another’s work in a way that’s impossible in larger cities (Portland’s population is about 65,000, and it has a compact urban center), constantly eating in and commenting on one another’s restaurants. “I’ve made enemies, for sure,” said Joe Ricchio, a bartender who makes Vietnamese pho on his days off, has a weakness for flaming scorpion bowls, and writes a blog titled Portland Food Coma.
In 2007, Mr. Ricchio started a festively debauched event now known as Deathmatch, a kind of extended “Iron Chef” dinner, with each invited chef contributing a course. “Each one takes five years off your life,” Mr. Ricchio said.

The first one was a foie gras gorge, and later themes have included venison, Japan and, most recently, death itself, an 18-course fantasia of a last meal. That dinner began predictably, with osetra caviar, but spiraled toward feijoada, a huge croquembouche, and bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches served by young women dressed as Catholic schoolgirls, wielding hot mayonnaise in squeeze bottles.

Most of Portland’s young chefs are men, marked by tough-guy tattoos and a combination of culinary idealism and anarchy. Many have worked in — and walked out of — one another’s kitchens. Some have paired off (the chefs of Evangeline and Bresca are newly married but maintain separate restaurants) or undergone messy splits (like Mr. Potocki and his former partner Allison Reid, who now plies her bread peel a few blocks away at Scratch Baking Company, making deeply browned levain loaves and a competing strain of bagel).
Many have cycled through the twin temples of Sam Hayward’s Fore Street or Hugo’s on Middle Street, where Rob Evans is the chef. These are the kitchens that first defined Portland as a destination for rigorously local and regularly delicious food.

“Faites simple,” Escoffier’s famous motto “make it simple,” is painted on the wall at Evangeline’s dining room. Mr. Desjarlais, the chef and principal owner, says that his major culinary influence is Richard Olney, the American food writer. (Mr. Desjarlais, now 33, had not yet been born in 1974, when Mr. Olney published “Simple French Food,” a rustic and revolutionary answer to Julia Child’s formal recipes.)

Mr. Desjarlais’s kitchen, however, has a more stress-inducing motto posted over the door: “Always Work With a Sense of Urgency.” In his entree of chicken breast neatly rolled in prosciutto, the flavors are almost shockingly spare — chicken, broccoli, carrot, butter, ham — but each plays off the others. And for an ambitious young chef to serve a boneless chicken breast dish in this day of off-cut fetishism — even a clabber-fed, organic one — shows true courage.

Local food lovers say that kind of self-directed cooking is what makes Portland’s food so good.


read more.....

BRESCA 111 Middle Street (Franklin Arterial), (207) 772-1004.
COFFEE BY DESIGN 43 Washington Avenue (Cumberland Avenue), (207) 879-2233.
EVANGELINE 190 State Street (Congress Street), (207) 791-2800.
THE FRONT ROOM 73 Congress Street (Howard Street), (207) 773-3366.
MICUCCI GROCERY CO. 45 India Street (Middle Street), (207) 775-1854. (italian import store)

MIYAKE 129 Spring Street (High Street), (207) 871-9170.
158 PICKETT ST. CAFÉ 158 Pickett Street (Broadway), South Portland, (207) 799-8998.
PACIARINO 468 Fore Street (Cross Street), (207) 774-3500. (also sells home-made organic pasta)
RABELAIS 86 Middle Street (Franklin Arterial), (207) 774-1044.
ROSEMONT MARKET 559 Brighton Avenue (Montrose Street), (207) 774-8129, and 88 Congress Street (Merrill Street), (207) 773-7888.
SCRATCH BAKING CO. 416 Preble Street (Pillsbury Street), South Portland, (207) 799-0668.
VIGNOLA 10 Dana Street (Commercial Street), (207) 772-1330.


Others, not mentioned in the article:
Cinqueterre, 36 Wharf Street Portland, Maine 04101

James Beard Foundation praises Cinque Terre's authentic Italian cuisine: "Many guests find it hard to remember they’re in Portland, Maine, as they tuck into chef Lee Skawinski’s 'casually elegant' Northern Italian specialties at Cinque Terre. Skawinski not only crafts an authentic Italian menu, he aims to create a truly Italian dining experience...To really take you away, the meal can be augmented with wine from the restaurant's award-winning, all-Italian wine list. What makes the whole thing sing, though, is the logic behind the magic. Located on the cobblestoned Wharf Street in the heart of the city’s Old Port, Cinque Terre is smack in the middle of a vibrant seaside community, reminiscent of its namesake region...So remember, despite what your atlas says, Cinque Terre, Maine, makes perfect sense."

Hugos, Chef Rob Evans won James Beard Foundation Best Chef of the Northeast 2009


My favorite:
The 2 Fat Cats Bakery, right next to Micucci.

Bon Appetit: Portland, the Foodiest Small Town of the U.S.

How the Cat makes Quesadillas

1 St. Joseph Lavash, cut into 4 quarters
2-4 TB ff refried beans
fresh ground pepper
1 ts chili oil
1/4 small red onion, diced
1/2 yellow bell pepper, sliced and cut into thin strips
1/2 cherry pepper, finely chopped (no seeds!)
some leftover chicken or steak, cubed
1/2 ts cumin
1/2 ts chili powder
2-3 TB water
2 TB low-fat Mexican cheese mix

On a cutting board, prepare the lavash (cut in half, and then half the halves again). Pair 2 quarters each for a quesadilla. Cover one quarter each with 1-2 TB refried beans, and crush black pepper on the bean spread.

In a skillet, heat the oil and add the onion and cherry chili. Saute until slightly soft. Add all the spices, the bell pepper, chicken or beef (or both), and the water, and saute on low heat until the bell pepper is tender. Turn off the heat.

Heat a cast iron skillet or grill pan to high heat. Distribute the bell pepper steak mix on the bean spread of the two quarters. Sprinkle with the cheese and close with the second lavash quarters. Place on the heated skillet, and, depending on the heat of the stove, turn the lavash to the other side, once it has browned on the bottom side. Turn off the heat, and let the other side get brown and the cheese melt. Serve straight up or with salsa, green onions and sour cream. Says the cat.

Walnut Kalamata Bread

One of my favorite fast home-made breads, and instead of individual servings, this time in family size.

1 cup Insta bake
1/2 cup ground FiberOne cereal
1/2 TB baking powder
1/2 cup sliced marinated kalamata olives
1/4 cup walnuts or pecan, fresh chopped and slightly toasted
3/4-1 cup ff milk
2 TB of kalamata olive water

Mix all the dry ingredients first, and add olives and nuts. Add the wet ingredients, and mix. It will be a dry, clumpy dough, but not too crumble. It should come together as a dough, just not very smooth. Fill in a small bread baking dish, and bake at 400F for 45-60min.

Beef Bourguignon

It is still relatively warm and sunny outside, so not really time yet for hearty stews yet, nevertheless I felt like one. I had a few small steaks in my freezer, and improvised on the remaining ingredients. Melissa D'Arabian again was my inspiration: succulent slow cooked meat, fork tender, smelling delicious. So, here is a french inspired beef stew with some extra kicks.

ca 300 gr of chuck, steak or other type of lean beef, cut into 1 inch chunks
2 carrots, peeled and cut into thick slices
1 small red onion and 1 small white onion, diced
1 TB clarified butter (ghee)
2 medium-sized garlic cloves, chopped
2 springs of fresh rosemary or thyme, chopped
1/2 TB Mrs Dash garlic and herbs
1 cup of good dry red wine, a cabernet sauvignon or Cote du Rhone(my favorite is Menage a Trois)
1 cup of water
1/2 cube of beef bouillion
other vegetables such as dried porcini or fresh button mushrooms
2 TB tomato paste
1 TB flour, dissolved in 1/4 cup of water
1/8 cp red wine
1/2 TB creme fraiche
salt, pepper to your liking

In a dutch oven (or any skillet you can place in the oven with a tight lid), heat the clarified butter and sear the meat chunks. Once browned, add the onions and carrots, and sear, too. After 5 minutes, add the garlic and sear for another 1-2 min. Add the red wine, and scrap the bottom of the pan gently. Add the water, bouillon, and other vegetables. Stir, and take of the heat. Add the tomato paste and the flour. Cover with a lid, and slow roast in the oven for 3h at 325F. Occasionally, stir the stew.

Before serving, add salt and pepper to taste, and more red wine to give it a bit of an edge and the creme fraiche (or sour cream) to add it some elegance. Serve with roasted potatoes and vegetables. Enjoy!


Makes ca. 5-6 small servings or 4 dinner sized servings.

Mesclun Greens with Black Cherry Balsamic Vinaigrette

In Bar Harbor, a new store opened this month: Fiore LLC. I had seen this type of store in Paris a few years back, a store that lets you taste a large variety of extra-virgin olive oil so that you can selected exactly the one flavor you like best (think wine tasting!). I must admit I've been a extra-virgin olive oil collector ever since.

Fiore has a selection of mild, fruity olive oils, from Greece, Italy and Spain, and I especially liked the one with Persian Lime and Chipotle. Accompanying the olive oil, a selection of balsamic vinegars is offered. The blueberry balsamic vinegar must be the crowd favorite, because it doubles as a gift from the vacation in Maine. My favorite is the black cherry balsamic vinegar, and the white peach balsamic vinegar.

So, with my new goods of balsamic vinegar, olive oil and a raw wooden salad bowl from the raw woods store on Main street in Bar Harbor I made this salad today.

Black Cherry Balsamic Vinaigrette:
1 garlic clove, grated
1 TB black cherry balsamic vinegar (or regular balsamic vinegar)
1 ts Dijon mustard
1/4 ts soy sauce (thanks, for the tip, Melissa D'Arabian!)
a few drop of liquid sweetener (such as Fiberfit)
1/2 TB extra virgin olive oil
fresh crush pepper and Mrs. Dash garlic and herb

2 handfuls fresh greens, from the garden, Farmers market or store
some arugula salad
1/3 red bell pepper, diced

Use a wooden salad bowl (or another large, flat bowl) and whisk all the vinaigrette ingredients in the bottom of the bowl. Place the salad on top, and when ready to serve mix the salad and vinaigrette. Serve with a few slices of mozzarella!

Fiore Artisan Olive Oils and Vinegars
8 Rodick Place
Bar Harbor, ME 04609
website (including online ordering)

The summer favorite: ratatouille

A timeless summer favorite when the zucchini, beans, tomatoes, bell peppers and herbs are plentiful in the garden and at the Farmers market. It does not need much more then a TB of good olive oil, and it will steam away to a tender bite in its own juices, caramelizing it to a sweet flavorful dish (or, short cooked, with some original vegetable crunch). A meal in itself, a side, a pasta sauce, great with goat cheese or mozzarella and a glass of cabernet. Summer!

1 zucchini, cut into thick cubes
1/2 red bell pepper, cut into stripes
1/2 green bell pepper, cut into stripes
1/3 red onion, diced
1/2 summer squash, cut into thick cubes
a handful cherry tomatoes, halved
handful yellow beans, ends cut off
1 TB extra-virgin olive oil with persian lime
salt, pepper, 2 springs of fresh rosemary (chopped), fresh basil (chiffonade)
1-2 large garlic cloves, grated
Mrs. Dash garlic and herbs
fresh grated parmesan cheese

Prepare all the vegetables (wash and cut them). In a heavy dutch oven, heat the olive oil and saute the onion until translucent and then add all the vegetables, and close the lid (important! ---- the purpose is to saute the veggies in their own steam and not add additional liquid). After 5 min, stir, and add the salt, pepper and fresh herbs and the garlic. Saute for another 5-10min, depending on how much crunch you like in your veggies. Serve with some fresh grated parmesan cheese!

Who painted the carrots?

The surprise find at the Farmers' Market this week were 'rainbow carrots', or at least this is what I call them because they come in all colors of the rainbow. They taste similar to regular carrots, and,... chopping them up for the salad, I wondered who took the time to color them....

Fettucini with Ratatouille

A great leftover lunch or light dinner --- a big pot of ratatouille with fresh zucchini, beans, red bell pepper, fresh corn, cherry tomatoes and garlic, rosemary and basil, and using leftovers with a serving of lemon pepper FG fettucini, some porcini mushroom, pine nuts and fresh mozzarella. Satisfying, flavorful and healthy.

Ratatouille:
1 zucchini, cut into thick cubes
1 red bell pepper, cut into stripes
1/3 red onion, diced
1 summer squash, cut into thick cubes
a handful cherry tomatoes, halved
shaved kernels of 1 cob of fresh corn
possible additional veggies: eggplant, edamame, french beans, eggplant, .......
1 TB extra-virgin olive oil
salt, pepper, 2 springs of fresh rosemary (chopped), fresh basil (chiffonade)
1-2 large garlic cloves, microplaned
fresh grated parmesan cheese


Prepare all the vegetables (wash and cut them). In a heavy dutch oven, heat the olive oil and saute the onion until translucent and then add all the vegetables, and close the lid (important! ---- the purpose is to saute the veggies in their own steam and not add additional liquid). After 5 min, stir, and add the salt, pepper and fresh herbs and the garlic. Saute for another 5-10min, depending on how much crunch you like in your veggies. Serve with some fresh grated parmesan cheese and pine nuts!

Pasta:
2 oz FiberGourmet lemon pepper fettucini
1 oz dried porcini mushroom, reconstituted in hot low-sodium, ff chicken broth
1 cup of ratatouille
1 ts pine nuts
1 slice of fresh mozzarella, cubed.

Cook the fettucini in hot water for 12 min. Meanwhile, rehydrate the porcini mushroom in hot chicken broth. In a saute pan, heat a cup of ratatouille and add the rehydrated porcini mushroom. Once the fettucini is cooked al dente, drain them and add them to the vegetable mix. Mix and heat for 1 min. Serve with pine nuts and the mozzarella! Enjoy!

1 lunch + 1 veggie + 1 fat serving

Apple Pecan Cranberry Salad at Jordan Pond House

This is the time of the year to go hiking, in the nearby beautiful Acadia National Park with its beautiful hikes and views, and, of course, some well-deserved early dinner somewhere in Bar Harbor or the roadside lobster houses. This is a crunchy fresh salad at the Jordan Pond House, served on the lawn, with a side of good weather (and dressing!).

greens
dried cranberries
pecans
feta
apple
with balsamic vinaigrette

Pasta della Isola d'Elba

I found this recipe on one of my favorite Swiss food blogs, la cucina mia. It sounded like a great light summer pasta dish, and it is: incredible flavorful and great texture. And, how much better can it get than a Isle of Elba inspired summer pasta dish?

2 oz Fiber Gourmet long fettucini
cook according to instructions

1 ts extra-virgin olive oil
1/3 of a small red onion, small dice
1/3 red bell pepper, small dice
about 10 Kalamata olive halves (in brine, not oil)
1 generous TB capers
1 garlic clove, minced
about 10 cherry tomatoes, halved
5 sundried tomatoes, cut into thin stripes with a scissors
4-5 large basil leaves, rolled like a cigar, and cut into fine slices
1 TB pine nuts
salt, pepper

In a saute pan, heat the olive oil and fry the onions and bell pepper. After ca. 5 min, add the olives, capers and garlic clove. Saute and mix well. Add a ladle of starchy pasta water to loosen the sauce. Add cherry tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, basil leaves and pine nuts as well as salt and pepper. Once the pasta is cooked al dente, preserve a laddle of pasta water, drain the pasta, and add the pasta back to the sauce in the pan. Mix all ingredients, and heat again until the pasta water more or less is evaporated. Serve with 2 small slices of fresh mozzarella. Enjoy!

1 dinner entree