{"id":10251,"date":"2014-11-26T10:04:40","date_gmt":"2014-11-26T15:04:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=10251"},"modified":"2014-11-26T10:04:40","modified_gmt":"2014-11-26T15:04:40","slug":"delicious-in-print","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/delicious-in-print\/","title":{"rendered":"Delicious In Print"},"content":{"rendered":"

December 2014 | view this story as a .pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Starving for the perfect holiday gift?<\/h2>\n

By Claire Z. Cramer<\/p>\n

\"DEC14-Delicious\"<\/a>“Our best-selling cookbook during the holidays is Dishing Up Maine<\/em><\/b>,\u201d says Mariah Hughs, co-owner, with husband Nick Sichterman, of Blue Hill Books in Blue Hill for more than 25 years. \u201cIt\u2019s not just a cookbook but a history of the state, food-wise. I\u2019ve loved everything I\u2019ve ever made out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maine cookbooks, for many of us, are more interactive and deeply satisfying than coffee-table books. Not only fun to read, with gorgeous pictures of food and places we know, they draw us in with recipes to try.<\/p>\n

Feast Your Eyes on This Tasty Book<\/p>\n

Dishing Up Maine<\/em> (Storey Publishing, $19.95) is Brooke Dojny\u2019s deft embrace of Maine\u2019s best ingredients and classic recipes, spiced with her own tasty updates, contributed recipes from chefs, and lots of sidebars about people and places. For example, she provides an almost unnecessary recipe for a classic, barely garnished lobster roll, and then follows with her own bright and tantalizing fried scallop roll with \u201cquick homemade tartar sauce.\u201d And she gets around\u2013to the Fort Fairfield potato festival, to Sabbathday Lake to purchase and praise \u201cthe quality and freshness\u201d of Shaker dried herbs, to the A-1 Diner in Gardiner to pick up the recipe for \u201cSpicy Chicken Big Mamou.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dishing<\/em> was first published in 2008, but it\u2019s apparently never going out of style. \u201cI still do appearances and signings,\u201d says Dojny, who lives in Sedgwick. \u201cPeople send them out of state, to friends who have been to Maine.\u201d She\u2019s the author of 10 other cookbooks; Chowderland<\/em> will be published in 2015 by Storey Publishing.<\/p>\n

Depends on Who You Ask<\/p>\n

\u201cThis holiday season\u2019s book is definitely <\/em>the <\/em>Portland, Maine Chef\u2019s Table<\/em><\/b> <\/em>[Morris Books\/Globe Pequot, $24.95, by Margaret Hathaway and her photographer husband Karl Schatz],\u201d says Julia Gersen at Longfellow Books. \u201cIt\u2019s done really well here.\u201d It\u2019s a colorful, thoughtful, photo- and recipe-filled trip through many of the city\u2019s restaurants, from Ribollita to Schulte & Herr to the Green Elephant and Grace. The creative couple of Hathaway and Schatz has been collaborating since The Year of the Goat<\/em>, their 2009 chronicle of their path from life in the Big Apple to their own Ten Apple Farm in Gray, a book they memorably launched with goat cheese canap\u00e9s at Rabelais Books (then in Portland), to which Karl brought a goat in his Subaru wagon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted a mix of recipes,\u201d Schatz says. You may or may not be up for Back Bay Grill\u2019s Truffled Beef Tartare, with raw filet mignon; handmade semolina crackers; and deep-fried, hard-boiled egg yolks. But Hot Suppa\u2019s Fried Green Tomatoes are a snap.<\/p>\n

Julie Gerson says Longfellow also sells \u201ca lot of Standard Baking Co. Pastries <\/em>[<\/b>by the bakery\u2019s own Alison Pray and Tara Smith] and the Harbor Fish Market<\/em><\/b> book\u201d by Nick, Rian, and Kathleen Alfiero. [Both from Down East Books, $29.95.]<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve sold tons and tons of Blue Plate Specials,<\/em><\/b>\u201d says Gerson. \u201cIt\u2019s not really a cookbook, but Kate Christensen\u2019s such a good writer that it\u2019s the perfect crossover food book.\u201d Portland novelist Christensen\u2019s memoir-with-food actually does contain recipes [Anchor Books, $15.95, paper]; it came out in hardcover in 2013, and the paperback \u201cstill turns up now and then on our best-sellers-of-the-week list,\u201d Gersen says.<\/p>\n

Kitchens of the Stars<\/p>\n

\u201cMichael Sanders\u2019s book does really well too.\u201d Gerson points to Fresh From Maine, Recipes and Stories from the State\u2019s Best Chefs<\/em><\/b> <\/em>[Table Arts Media\/Chelsea Green, $32.50] \u201cPeople eat and buy their food in these places, so they want the books. And visitors want keepsakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Local food and wine writer Michael Sanders and photographer Russell French have a hit on top of a hit with the 2012 second edition of 2010\u2019s Fresh From Maine. <\/em>\u201cWe\u2019re actually talking about a third edition at this point,\u201d says Sanders. \u201cIt\u2019s turned out to be something people like to give as a gift.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second edition <\/em>is a hefty hardcover structured like a meandering dream road trip from Kittery to MDI, with many chef interviews by Sanders. He and French do their own design and production work on the Fresh From<\/em> volumes. The chance to snoop in the kitchens at spots like Fore Street, Caiola\u2019s, Brunswick\u2019s El Camino, Fishbones Grill in Lewiston, and Slates in Hallowell is appealing. Most of the recipes are approachable for the home cook: Francine Bistro\u2019s herby, spicy chicken liver salad with bacon and prunes is sensational, and chefs Jonathan and Natalie Spak at the Oxford House Inn in Fryeburg conjure up a creamy, deep-dish, iron-skillet \u201cdowneast frittata.\u201d Sam Hayward contributes a gutsy saut\u00e9 of pork belly, potatoes, and sauerkraut.<\/p>\n

Hot Off The Press\u2013and Zesty<\/p>\n

Kerry Altiero\u2019s brand-new Adventures in Comfort Food<\/em><\/b> (Page Street Publishing, $21.99, paper) sizzles because it\u2019s a lot more fun than most cookbooks. If you\u2019ve ever been to Cafe Miranda in Rockland you know his sense of humor extends to menu items named things like Sorta Kefta, Polish Hippie, and Lamb Shank Redemption. But the reason Miranda\u2019s been there for 30 years is because the food\u2019s delicious. \u201cKerry is rock and roll,\u201d declares Primo restaurant\u2019s superstar-chef Melissa Kelly in the forward to Adventures<\/em>. She hails him as \u201cthe pioneer chef of Maine.\u201d As with the food at the cafe, these recipes have soul: pasta, sausages, heavy cream, heaps of local greens, and strong cheese share the pages with grits and shrimp, pierogies, a few Thai curry creations, and haddock enchiladas. The show-stopping photographs are by Stacey Cramp.<\/p>\n

Dining Out Is In<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you know this book? It\u2019s a big seller,\u201d says Josh Christie at Sherman\u2019s Books on Exchange Street, pointing to Eating In Maine\u2013At Home, On The Town and On The Road<\/em><\/b> by Jillian and Malcolm Bedell [Tilbury House, $22.95].<\/p>\n

Do we ever. The Bedells are local food bloggers who use the online sobriquet \u201cFrom Away,\u201d and their reputation for curiosity and very tasty food photography precedes them. They love to cook as much as they enjoy dining out all over the state, and it\u2019s this enthusiasm that gives the book its personality. Malcolm provides a lively narrative to such mini-chapters as \u201cWeekend Project: Eggs Benedict,\u201d which starts with homemade English muffins. He leads a \u201cRoad Trip: The Curious Case of Authentic Latin American Cooking in Maine\u201d that visits Portland\u2019s Tu Casa and Zapoteca before heading north. Jillian brings the awe (she\u2019s actually from away\u2013Malcolm\u2019s from Tenants Harbor) of first-time discovery of local dishes: \u201cI learned its great and glorious name\u2013haddock chowder!\u201d And places: \u201cWe drove about 50 miles to have lunch in a barn [on] a desolate-feeling peninsula,\u201d which turns out to be El El Frijoles in Sargentville\u2013\u201cthe middle of nowhere and the center of the universe.\u201d Recipes are excellent and make good use of local bounty.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Bedells and Michael Sanders have been big sellers from the summer onward. So were Harbor Fish <\/em>and Standard Baking<\/em>\u2013people like the shops, and they like the cloth-bound spines,\u201d says Sherman\u2019s Josh Christie. \u201cKate McCarty\u2019s book is popular, too.\u201d McCarty teaches food canning classes and blogs as \u201cThe Blueberry Files;\u201d her Portland Food: the Culinary Capital of Maine <\/em><\/b>[History Press, $15.95, paper] is a look at the restaurants, food trucks, farmers, producers, and purveyors that make the city a great place to eat.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you know what the best-selling cookbook is, hands down, in all Sherman\u2019s stores?\u201d asks Christie. He hands over a cheery red hardcover, Maine Ingredients\u2013Fresh & Fabulous Recipes from The Junior League of Portland<\/em><\/b>, 2004 edition [Wimmer Cookbooks, $5.99]. Don\u2019t write it off as just a quaint souvenir for cruise-shippers, either: recipes in the 300-plus pages\u2013that open nice and flat thanks to the spiral binding\u2013are more with-it than you might expect, for things like carrot soup with dill pesto, spinach and cheddar souffl\u00e9, lemon saffron swordfish, and Nubble Light nut bars.<\/p>\n

Christie himself is the author of the Maine Beer Brewing in Vacationland<\/em><\/b> [The History Press, $19.99, paper], which has undeniable holiday gift appeal in this suds-crazy town.<\/p>\n

Treasure Hunting<\/p>\n

Some of the great Maine cookbooks are out of print but hardly out of sight in a city and state with such a good used-book network of stores and used sections within stores. \u201cSaltwater Seasonings<\/em><\/b> is one of the very few that really catches the spirit of Maine,\u201d says Don Lindgren, owner of Rabelais Books in Biddeford, probably the center of the universe for vintage and rare cookbooks. Chef Jonathan Chase of Brooksville and his sister Sarah Leah Chase published Saltwater<\/em> in 1992, but the recipes hold up\u2013a very precise recipe for poached salmon with dill sauce still gets raves. Lindgren has a copy in stock; he also has several editions of John Thorne\u2019s lovably subjective, all-over-the-place Simple Cooking<\/em><\/b>, first published in 1980 and long out of print. \u201cThorne\u2019s books are fabulous\u2013simple, readable, with a sense of food history.\u201d Open it anywhere and find him quoting everyone from Elizabeth David to Gunter Grass. Rabelais also has assorted old copies of the frugal-yankees he calls\u00a0 \u201cthe Marjories\u201d\u2013Standish and Mosser. Mosser was the niece and secretary of Kennebunk historical novelist Kenneth Roberts, who provides the narrative that makes Good Maine Food<\/em> a perpetual classic.<\/p>\n

Lindgren\u2019s persnickety about his Maine cookbooks. When told that Sherman\u2019s bookstores are selling the Junior League compilation like hotcakes, he rolls his eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost Maine cookbooks are created for the tourist industry; they\u2019re just souvenirs. A good cookbook has to have a point of view.\u201d So which ones does<\/em> he like?<\/p>\n

\u201cKathy Gunst is good, and Kate Gooding\u2019s Black Fly Stew<\/em><\/b> game books are the real thing. Sandy Oliver\u2019s the best, she\u2019s a true food historian. I love Nancy Harmon Jenkins\u2019s books, but I wish she\u2019d write about Maine.\u201d (Jenkins is a Camden native; her culinary turf is the Mediterranean.) Lindgren hands over Maine Mapmaker\u2019s Kitchen<\/em><\/b> [written and published by hand-drawn map aficionado Jane Crosen and available in bookstores and from mainemapmaker.com, $27.95, paper]. It includes recipes designed for \u201chome, camp, and afloat\u201d among how-to instruction on growing, harvesting, and preserving.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a good one,\u201d he says. Nothing like a book as a present for the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

December 2014
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