{"id":15041,"date":"2018-06-13T19:58:24","date_gmt":"2018-06-13T23:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=15041"},"modified":"2019-04-04T13:13:49","modified_gmt":"2019-04-04T17:13:49","slug":"summer-loves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/summer-loves\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer Loves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Summerguide 2018 | <a href=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/pdf\/SG18%20Summer%20Loves.pdf\">view this story as a .pdf<\/a><\/p>\n<div data-configid=\"37604829\/68909071\" style=\"width:100%; height:600px;\" class=\"issuuembed\"><\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.js\" async=\"true\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\">Back-to-basic classic flavors create a memorable experience.<\/h3>\n<p class=\"p3\">By Kate Christensen<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-15044 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/SG18-Summer-Loves-1-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"SG18-Summer-Loves\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/SG18-Summer-Loves-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/SG18-Summer-Loves-1-200x133.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/SG18-Summer-Loves-1.jpg 350w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>I moved to Portland from New York City almost seven years ago, in part because I fell in love with the food up here, the quality of the restaurants, the emphasis on fresh and local ingredients, and the joy and pride radiating from the purveyors at the farmers\u2019 market.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">Hankering for a traditional, down-home meal made with local ingredients, I decided to make an old-fashioned bean supper from scratch. (Cue groans from those still suffering from Post-Traumatic Bean Supper Disorder after being dragged to the church weekend after weekend.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><strong>Tried and True<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">Bean suppers date back to when hard-working Mainers, hungry from a long week of physical labor, came together for a big meal of beans, brown bread, and sides on Saturday nights. The meal was served in lumber camps, churches, and family homes alike. The beans were sometimes slow-cooked overnight in a cast-iron pot buried in a covered \u201cbean hole\u201d outside, but more often they were baked all day in low-temperature ovens. Because Maine used to be one of the top three states in dried-bean production, Mainers used cheap, abundant local beans such as Marfax beans or yellow eyes, which hold their shape and stay firm. They might also use Jacob\u2019s cattle beans or soldier beans, which melt with the onion into the molasses-salt pork-mustard bath they\u2019re baked in.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">\u201cYou have to use Marfax,\u201d James Beard Award semi-finalist Erin French tells me. Her Lost Kitchen restaurant in Freedom is famed across New England, so I take her cooking advice seriously. \u201cWe had baked beans on winter Saturdays when I was growing up. I don\u2019t mess with the traditional recipes. My grandmother and then my mother made baked beans the traditional way, with salt pork, ketchup, molasses, onion, and dry mustard. And Marfax beans. They\u2019re the creamy little brown ones that keep their shape. They stand up.\u201d Though you\u2019re bound to find a chic revision of baked beans with the hashtag #heirloom on Instagram, Grandma knows best. \u201cWe use yellow-eye beans in ours,\u201d counters Kathy Sherman, owner of Sherman\u2019s Farm Stand, which is technically across the state line in New Hampshire, but only a stone\u2019s throw from Fryeburg, Maine\u2013in my mind, anyway. \u201cThey don\u2019t turn to mush.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">Back in the old days, while the beans slow-cooked, a loaf or two of brown bread steamed in coffee cans set into a kettle. This tangy, chewy bread was made with equal parts cornmeal, white, and rye flours, with or without raisins, plus dark molasses, milk or buttermilk, salt, and baking soda. The combination of flours came about from typical Maine pragmatic thrift, since white flour was expensive. The bread was steamed because it was often made outside, on a campfire.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">Of course, Mainers ate this way primarily because it was easy, cheap, and hearty. Bean suppers nourish and satisfy, they stick to the ribs. But a heap of rich, porky baked beans and a slab of fresh brown bread with thick-spread butter also makes a delicious meal. It is to inland Maine what the clambake is to Down Easters: the quintessential communal suppah, perfect for a crowd, beloved by everyone, made out of food grown close to home, augmented with those perennially cheap staples, cornmeal and salt pork and molasses.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><strong>Two Sides to Every Recipe<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">Traditionally bean hole suppers included a variety of side dishes, depending on the season and on what was bursting out of the garden or put up in plentiful jars on the pantry shelves: stewed greens; carrot and cabbage coleslaw; green-tomato piccalilli relish; and succotash, made with fresh sweet corn cut off the cob plus whatever fresh-shucked beans were plentiful. \u201cAnd red snapper hot dogs,\u201d says French. \u201cIs that a side? Sometimes we cut them straight into the beans. And we always had either Waldorf salad or coleslaw.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">\u201cBraised dandelion greens with bacon and just a teeny dollop of maple syrup and another of apple-cider vinegar,\u201d says Ladleah Dunn, whose recently opened Lincolnville General Store in Midcoast Maine offers an array of local delicacies. \u201cAnd piccalilli with the baked beans.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">\u201cPickles on baked beans?\u201d To French, this sounds suspect. \u201cNever. It\u2019s too much sweet on sweet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">You say Marfax, I say yellow eye\u2013Mainers are nothing if not opinionated about food. To which I say, amen, and pass the piccalilli, so I ask Dunn for her recipe. She gives me a fast version she dubbed Quickallili: Seed and mince, pulsing in the Cuisinart, a heap (two pounds) of green tomatoes and a handful of shallots. In a pot, throw together a solution of half rice vinegar and half Mirin sweetened sushi vinegar, about a cup of each, with pepper, salt, brown sugar, mustard seeds, a couple of bay leaves, a few cloves, and hot red pepper flakes, and boil it for a couple of minutes. Mix with the tomatoes, cover, and let it sit overnight in the fridge, or up to a week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">Craving something light, but creamy and starchy as well, I decide to try my hand at succotash. When I was growing up, succotash always came frozen or from cans, and I hated it: mushy lima beans, tasteless corn kernels, held together in a gelatinous broth. But one night, when I was out for dinner at Scales, Sam Hayward and Dana Street\u2019s joint seafood restaurant on a wharf off Commercial Street in Portland, I ordered the succotash as a side to a bucket of steamers. When it arrived, I took one bite and swooned. It was a revelation. This succotash was bright, fresh, rich, and glossy. It melted on my tongue.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">\u201cIt\u2019s always seasonal here,\u201d Chef Travis Olson tells me. \u201cIn the spring, we use the earliest shelling beans. They have to be fresh\u2013that\u2019s what makes it special. We\u2019re waiting for the first fava beans now. They\u2019re meaty, sweet, and savory, less starchy than limas. And we use fresh-shucked sweet corn, and this time of year, some spring onions or garlic scapes. And butter, and a combination of rich chicken stock and a broth made from the corncobs. We add minced salty, smoky country ham in kernel-sized bits. And some mild heat\u2013chili flakes or pureed smoked jalapenos. Maybe a roux. Not a gravy\u2013just to make it cohesive, so the liquid clings to the vegetables.\u201d \u201cHow much butter?\u201d I ask, my mouth watering so much I can hardly talk. \u201cPlenty,\u201d he laughs. Okay, so maybe this one isn\u2019t filed under \u201clighter cooking,\u201d but who can argue with that?<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><strong>Let\u2019s Eat<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">With my menu complete, all that\u2019s left are the ingredients. Even though it\u2019s early spring, and very little is growing here yet, I manage to stick close to home for some of my groceries. I find yellow-eye beans from Green Thumb Farms at Sherman\u2019s. For the brown bread, instead of rye flour, I use Bouchard Family Farms Acadian buckwheat flour from Fort Kent. At Hannaford, I buy a big bunch of locally grown fresh dandelion greens and Maine-raised bacon and ham. But, I confess, no red snapper hot dogs, which feels like a capital crime. And I score a couple of bottles of Moxie, the traditional Maine soda flavored with gentian root. To me it tastes like a slightly bitter version of root beer, its medicinal cousin.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">On Friday, I tackle Dunn\u2019s Quickallili and set the yellow-eye beans to soak overnight. On Saturday morning, I start the baked beans, using the <em>New York Times <\/em>classic recipe. I make my own version of brown bread, using Maine buckwheat flour in place of rye, a cup of raisins, and almond milk with vinegar instead of buttermilk, since that\u2019s what I had on hand. Travis\u2019s succotash is my next project. Since there are no shelling beans available yet, I use baby lima beans (sorry, Travis). And, strictly for research purposes, I use plenty of butter, simmering the shallots, minced ham, and lima beans in the two rich broths until the liquid has mostly cooked off. Next, I add the corn and spring onions and let it all cook until it has coalesced into a sweet, melting stew. Finally, I make Ladleah\u2019s savory, surprisingly luscious dandelion greens.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">This elaborate menu\u2013beans, bread, \u2018tash, greens, and relish\u2013is all just for my husband and me, not a church full of neighbors, or a big farm family, or a lumber camp crew gathered around a long table. But it feels festive, and eating the delicious results of the generous advice I\u2019ve gleaned from Maine chefs, I feel both connected to tradition and happily well fed. And the leftovers, reheated, will last for days.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">To go along with the meal, I\u2019ve invented a crisp, herbaceous cocktail to celebrate my new home\u2019s culinary roots. I call it the Moxie Foxtail: Into a shaker with ice, pour a jigger of bourbon and another of Aperol, then another of fresh lemon or lime juice. Shake briefly and pour with the ice into a highball glass. Top with Moxie, mix with a stirrer, and toast the incomparable flavors of a Maine bean supper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Summerguide 2018<br \/>\nBack-to-basic classic flavors create a memorable experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[226],"class_list":["post-15041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-summerguide-2018"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15041"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16122,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15041\/revisions\/16122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}