Hungry EyE 58 p o r t l a n d monthly magazine tranSForMEd tranSplant isconsin native Annema- rie Ahearn never planned to be a Mainer. She puts it right out there on the introduction page of Full Moon Suppers: “When I was eighteen years old, my parents decided to buy their own land on the Maine coast. My father was fulfilling a lifelong dream. I was, in a word, disappointed.” But after college “did not feed my soul in the way that I was hoping,” she moved to the family farm in Lincolnville. “My plan was to open a cooking school for home cooks and teach people how to grow a kitchen garden.” In 2009, she did, nam- ing her school Salt Water Farm after an essay in E. B. White’s One Man’s Meat. She now offers classes and workshops from May to October. “Shaking cream into butter, pulling a carrot from the earth, making a loaf of bread, cutting apart a whole chicken–it’s the most basic skills that students find to be transformative,” Ahearn says. “I find people trust recipes and the food media more than they trust their own nat- ural ability in the kitchen. The only way to improve as a cook is to make mistakes and learn from them. The mark of a good cook is the ability to make a meal without a recipe and with limited resources.” True enough, but I want to learn some new tricks from her. And I do. Each chapter in Full Moon Suppers creates a complete menu appropri- ate to the calendar month, noting the Native American name for that month’s full moon. We start in the September (Harvest Moon) chapter at a recipe for “Queen of Smyrna Squash Soup,” because local farm- ers are still offering many winter squash va- rieties, and because it’s such a beautiful rec- ipe title. No Queens of Smyrna to be found in Portland’s farmers’ market, though, so I choose a small green hubbard and a honey- nut squash. This is a vegetarian soup–you make your own vegetable stock with on- ions, carrots, celery, fresh herbs, and fresh fennel. Lucky for us, fennel is now an eas- ily found local crop. The squash is split (or peeled and cubed), rubbed with olive oil, and roasted with sprigs of thyme and whole garlic cloves. You whirl the tender flesh in a blender with the stock, adding dabs of honey and a pinch of red pepper flakes to taste, which gives this soup its spicy, haunt- ing flavor. rom November’s menu (Beaver Moon) we tackle “Oven Tart with Sweet Onions, Pecorino, Ancho- vies, Caper, and Lemon,” since local onions are so fresh just now. Ahearn’s tart is made with a simple yeast bread crust rather than pastry. It’s a varia- tion of the traditional French pissaladiere tart made with caramelized onions, grated hard cheese, and anchovies. She spins it by adding thyme, a few red pepper flakes, capers, and paper-thin slices of lemon. The onions are sauteed in butter rather than olive oil. This combination sings in unanticipat- ed, complex ways. I’ve already made it three times and committed it to memory, the bet- ter to whip it up in a pinch, Ahearn-style, without a recipe. An Erin FrenchTrick: Serve dinner on pretty,mismatched old china from antique shops or grandma’s cupboard.Spend a little time with the Lost Kitchen cookbook and you’ll never covet a matched set of dishes again. Full Moon Suppers, Roost Books,Boulder,$35 The Lost Kitchen, Clarkson Potter,Pen- guin/Random House, New York,$32.50 The Four Seasons of Pasta, Avery, Penguin/Random House, New York,$35 Get Cooking!