Many people in my midcoast town don ’t realize that many of their forebearers were of Finnish decent. There is a road in town called Finntown Road, so it seems pretty clear to me! Then consider the legacy of Wyeth paintings with interesting Finnish models, which are known and treasured worldwide!
It was pointed out to me by an elderly but still vibrant Finnish gentleman that, if you know what you’re looking for, you can see many old and sometimes repurposed saunas on farmsteads up and down Finntown Road. Thinking back, some of my first Waldoboro memories are of being offered Pulla, a Finnish egg and cardamon rich braided Christmas bread by my restaurant baker, who was born here.
In the past several years I have gotten to be friends with a wonderful Finnish couple, Leo and Erja. Leo was born in NYC and Erja was born in Finland. But they live and love life as if in the old country. Traditional cooking, building, decor language and lifestyle all inherent in the way they live life. Daily winter sauna, dips in an icy hole in the lake afterwards, fish for breakfast and love of a hearty lifestyle,camping and wood heat. Their home is bright, clean and simple. Also build by Leo, as is their camp and sauna, road….you name it!
Hearty Finnish Breakfast Fare
If you’re fortunate enough to have Finnish friends, you’ll experience real hospitality. And good, clean fun! To take a Finnish style sauna, you begin in the morning, after a hearty breakfast of soft cooked duck eggs, sautéed greens and smoked salmon…. and build a wood fire, which must be looked after all day. When you’ve brought plenty off water to the sauna and all your bathing/scrubbing accouterments, you strip down and relax. When the heat and scrubbing become too much,the icy lake beckons. Erja once achieved her 15 minutes of fame in Yankee magazine, photographed smiling while sitting on the side of a hole in the ice, legs dangling into the frigid water. There’s nothing like it for a good night’s sleep.
Researching the Finnish food faves, I realized that their native Bilberry is very similar to Maine’s wild blueberry and is used interchangeably. Blue through and through unlike our Blueberry, the Bilberry has double the antioxidants. It’s wonderful for eyesight, they say. Also similar to Maine’s woods culture is their Reindeer stew, called Karelian Stew, similar to Leo’s favorite venison stew which Erja makes so well and is popular in Maine with anyone who hunts. Leo is well into his 90’s and presents as a 70 year old man.
Happy, healthy, traditional. It’s a great way to go!
The flavor profile in these is reminiscent of some of my favorite foods from China, although I am told by a close friend who lived for a time in China, Dr. Jane Liedtke, the Egg Roll is as American as it gets. More traditionally, Peking duck is wrapped in a “bing”, or wrapper with Hoisin sauce, scallion, etc. for a delicious part of the duck dinner. These egg rolls stand in for us home cooks in America.
Supposedly, making the wrappers is as easy as making pasta. Also, you can purchase perfectly good ones to produce these. The filling is open to inspiration, I like a bit of star anise in mine.
FILLING INGREDIENTS | Makes a dozen
Shredded cabbage and carrot, to equal 2 cups
Mung bean sprouts, minced celery and green onion to equal 2 cups
2 cups cooked, shredded duck meat, chopped fine
1 large beaten egg, cooked and chopped
Season with a bit of garlic, star anise, salt , pepper, soy sauce, toasted sesame oil & Asian chili sauce to taste.
Dust with cornstarch, 1 tb or a bit more if it seems wet . Mix all together and let rest.
BUILD THE ROLLS
Make a slurry of cornstarch and water for sealing the sides of rolls
Each egg roll gets 3 tb of meat, egg and vegetable mixture.
Roll tightly, sealing the sides with the cornstarch mixture. Set aside.
PREPARE TO FRY EGG ROLLS
You will need a heavy fry pan, with high sides …or a wok. You will also need some sesame or avocado oil, your egg roll wrappers and plenty of paper towels.
We’re shallow frying these, so we don’t need really deep oil, just about 3 inches in the pan.
Preheat oil and add a few rolls at a time, do not crowd. Flip once to get a golden brown all over.
Drain and sprinkle with flaky salt.
We enjoy these right out of the oil with a Hoisin or Duck Sauce and very hot mustard!
China is a place I’d always wanted to go. I am glad I visited, but would I want to return? Likely not, due in part to the level of pulmonary distress I experienced by the end of a month of travel there. And this was almost ten years ago. In places the coal soot covered everything and the day never really dawned. Not the best atmosphere to practice deep breathing and Qi Gong, which was part of my reason for being there.
I feel that I had the rare opportunity to view perhaps the last of the real remaining China, which required an entire two days train ride into the interior. Let me tell you, you don’t know “nasty” until you finally have to pee on a Chinese train, 17 hours in….
Traveling in the Chinese countryside was a gift and a conundrum at every turn. For instance, finally making it to the Great Wall at Badaling in the Yanqing District….and finding a brand new Starbucks right there. Then the further humiliation of making a beeline to it for a double Cappuccino because we were oh so tired of green tea. Finding out your Chinese Chi Gong master was a former Communist general and liked plum wine just a little too much! Or driving to see a Beijing Hutong district just as it was being torn down to make way for progress. The classic Peking duck dinner that followed, however, did not disappoint. Served on the traditional lazy Susan round table, it was everything I’d hoped it would be, with a million condiments and super crispy duck skin.
Sunday morning Dim Sum? Amazing. Chrysanthemums blooming in your teapot, of course! Seeing an enormous snake sunning on a rock way up in the mountains? I’ll never forget it’s majesty understanding what a rarity this was. Being in a truly remote place to forest bathe and meditate, by a waterfall? Picture perfect, unforgettable. How can I forget our stay at a Communist “Luxury” Hotel with a very funny buffet. The food in its chafing dishes had labels like, FRIES THE BEAN GREEN right next to the CHICKEN STOMACHS and STINKY TOFU.
Then there was the pearl market, where I got conned into believing river pearls were deep sea pearls (Oh, you have such good taste Mrs. Cabot!) and the apothecaries that were truly varied and impressive. Ditto the spice markets. We took tea and had lessons in tea ceremony with Monks. Viewed ancient prayer trees covered in red ribbons and tree peonies the likes which I’d never imagined. We climbed a million steps to temples in the sky. And unforgettably were allowed access to a very rare, ancient monastery where I sat in meditation. No Westerner had ever been there. I made an offering, asked for illumination and heard all the sorrows of the world. This was an experience so moving, so real and so unexpected that I sat cross-legged in that cave in silence and cried for a long, long time. I emerged a wiser and more compassionate person. China was good to me.
I travelled in Chile in the winter, which is like Springtime there at the bottom of the world. Imagine fields full of lupine at Christmas!
Well, another harbinger of very early spring is the Black Hake that is well known and loved there. My experience of this delicious flaky white fish was at a street vendor.
I’d like to share a recipe similar to the one I tried and loved:
Pan Seared Black Hake with Pebre Sauce / Yield: 2 hearty servings
1 lb. hake filet
Salt & pepper to taste, avocado oil to fry in
Season with salt and fresh pepper, set aside.
Beforehand, prepare the pebre sauce (a chilean salsa), using a blender:
3 roma tomato
a bunch of stemmed, chopped cilantro
6 green onions
4 cloves garlic
1/4 cup red wine vinegar, equal part olive oil
salt, pepper and hot red pepper flakes
Using a food processor, pulse all ingredients and season to taste.
Set aside in the refrigerator, covered, until use.
Meanwhile, get a heavy iron skillet hot and heat the oil.
Gently, add the seasoned fish to the hot oil and fry it uncovered, turning once.
Top with the freshly made pebre sauce and serve with fried potatoes and a green salad.
I had a rare opportunity to travel with a group of plant enthusiasts, botanists and herbalists about ten years ago. The destination was the Chilean Patagonia and our group was an active one. We trekked and foraged in the wilderness, sat in divine hot springs, forged fiords, fished and caught enormous brown trout, learning how to cook them in a pit fire the ground…and hugged ancient Alerces.
Alerces, or Fitzroya cupressoides, are a member of the Cypress family, and are phenomenally long lived and splendorous conifer trees, native to Chile. They grow in the cool rainforests, just west of the Andes mountains. On this tour, we expected to experience the oldest trees on the planet, one over 2600 years old. We were not disappointed.
We visited scientific research stations and compared types of tropical flowers seen on hikes. I was surprised by some of the advanced and modern facilities we came upon in the relative wilderness.
After a particularly grueling spell of “roughing it” about mid-adventure, we closed in on our accommodations for the next few days, an Eco Village that we knew nothing about. The tiny houses we stayed in and, in fact, the entire village was self sustaining and off the grid. The first thing this weary traveller noticed was that the coffee there was phenomenal. It was beyond the real deal, rare in the countryside of Chile, as was all the food we were served, complete with high end and delightful garnishes.
I’d noticed a fine looking potager style garden on our way into the great room where we dined.Clearly all the vegetables we were served came right from this source. Furthermore, I came to learn that the owner of this place and hundreds of thousands of acres in conservation surrounding us were owned by a man named Douglas Tompkins, owner of Patagonia and Esprit clothing brands. AND one of his best friends was ( my hero) Alice Waters. It was she who was responsible for the direction required to create and maintain the garden and train staff on her cooking techniques.
This was a place of hope, respite and renewal. And completely unexpected in the wilds of Chile.
INGREDIENTS
2 lbs broccoli rabe, washed and tough stems removed, cut into 2 inch pieces
2 cups red cherry tomato, halved
1 pkg. sweet Italian sausage, sliced medium thick
1 lb cavatelli pasta
1 cup of extra virgin olive oil
12 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
Salt, pepper ground, to taste
1/2 cup good shaved or grated Parmesan
INSTRUCTIONS
Toss the tomatoes with oil and a bit of salt. On a sheet pan, in a hot oven, blister the tomatoes. Reserve the tomatoes, retaining as much pan juice as possible.
In a saute pan, cook the sausage over medium heat until well browned. Remove from pan, but save the pan drippings.
In a large covered saucepan of boiling salted water, blanch the rabe and garlic. Lift it from the water with a strainer and drain, but save that water for the pasta.
Combine tomato, garlic, rabe and sausage with salt and pepper and a little more of the olive oil, keep warm but not hot (to retain colors)
Bring the pot of vegetable water, covered, back to a boil. Add a teaspoon more salt and the pasta.
Cook pasta until al dente, drain (I always save a 1/4 cup for the sauce and the remainder for soup stock.)
While the pasta is cooking, use your 1/4 cup of pasta water to deglaze the sausage pan and add that flavor layer and any tomato drippings to your cooked ingredients.
Finally add the hot, drained pasta and the rest of the cooked, seasoned ingredients to a large bowl. Toss well and top with the Parmesan cheese.
This dish is good warm but don’t over do it. The beauty is the bright green rabe and bright tomato, equally good at room temperature or the following day.
When we hunker down to watch the big game, the snacks and commercials are as important as the players. At least for me, with my marginal understanding of the game.
Honestly, for me, it’s about being with friends, sharing some laughs and excitement and getting great snack food. One of the classics…always will be…a great onion dip.
There’s nothing hard or time consuming about this recipe and it’s a bit healthier because it uses high protein FAGE Greek yogurt rather than sour cream. Another flavor layer is that I like to caramelize and cool the onions before adding the other ingredients.
Make sure you select some chi chi artisanal potato chips, the hefty kind, to pair with this dip. It deserves the best! Double this recipe for a socially distanced crowd.
ONION DIP
2 cups FAGE sour cream
1 medium white onion, minced and carmelized in butter or olive oil, then cooled
1 large garlic clove, minced
2 tb. green chives, minced
1 tsp. each salt, pepper, garlic powder.
Combine all, then let rest, covered, in the refrigerator overnight.
Enjoy the finest in dippin’ and the good feels of high protein!
I remember being enamored, at the age of 20, of the epic road trip…from the very top of Maine to the southernmost point of Key West. This is what I had in the crosshairs.
When you’re 20, you can find a carful of crazy friends eager to do the same. They were game, and so we decided to go. It was on!
Our adventure chariot It was one of those American land yachts, circa 1975, that seat five very comfortably. Six if need be. We took off from Central Maine, and wound our way down Atlantic Rt. 1, all the way to the Florida Keys, stopping to marvel at the warm weather in Georgia, then pressing on to Key Largo where a crash pad and a meal awaited.
Waking up to palm trees, Cuban coffee and warm Jasmine scented breezes possibly changed my life.
The warm, shallow aqua blue shoals, mangrove wilds and fish life charmed and amazed me. I was basically a suburban kid from New Jersey, newly established in Maine (the Appalachian Trail being the initial draw to Maine) and although I had tasted the Caribbean, this place was exotic. Sadly, when you’re young and footloose, there never seems to be any money to enjoy the finer things. Honestly, looking good in a bikini probably outweighed any drawbacks, we had the kind of fun that money can’t buy.
After a few days, onward we went to the promised land…Key West. Duval Street and its debauchery and tea parties, that’s where I learned to drink, a White Russian, a drink I could order with confidence. Kinda girly, but I am not even sure I was “of age” at that point, still much to learn.
But the shrimp, those perfect pink shrimp native to the Keys are what hooked me. Those and the Cafe Con Leche, making mornings right, the raucous bars, high rollers with cash to burn, the beautiful waters that washed it all away the following day. I decide to stay. Doug, Lorna and I were able to get an apartment, right on the edge of a huge open field bordering the Navy Base. We had a huge tree in that field that saw many gatherings. We were situated on the edge of the Cuban section. I made daily forays there for “bolos”, black eyed pea fritters, shaped into little balls. Those slightly greasy white bags held 20 minutes of bliss. I’ve never been able to replicate them, although I’ve tried. Unforgettable. Ditto the conch fritters and Key Lime pie.
Mind you, this was way before I became a chef. I guess I’ve always had a fascination with food and culture. This place was rich indeed.
I returned every winter for the longest time, enjoying the counterculture, the music, dancing and fantastic waters of the Florida Keys.
I agreed to meet some of the ol’ crowd 40 years after. The difference between 20 and 60 is, well, astounding. But we lodged, dined, drank and danced very well even after all those years!
Here’s a recipe for Cuban Style Bollos. I’m not sure if it was the initial novelty of “that first time” that made them so memorable, but DANG…I still think they’re delicious!
BOLLOS CUBANO,
or black eyed pea fritters, makes 40 fritters
2 cups of black eyed peas
4 large garlic cloves
1/2 tsp hot sauce
1 tsp salt
Oil for frying
Soak the beans overnight, covered weight water.
Drain, reserve the water
Puree the beans until they are as fine as corn meal (food processor is fine).
Add, the seasonings and 1/2 cup of reserved liquid. Stir well.
Preheat oil to 350 degrees in a high edged pan.
Drop in teaspoon full for the bean mixture, a few at a time. Don’t crowd for best results.
Deep fry the bollos for 2 minutes, then drain when golden brown.
Eat right away, I dust mine with a finishing salt. Enjoy!
Cultures all over the world seem to favor some combination of pork and beans to bring luck and prosperity in the New Year. I usually make “Hopping’ John” from the American South, with ham or pork scraps and black eyed peas.
In this Pandemic year, rather than a grocery run, I created a winner out of pantry items, garden remnants and some frozen pork loin chops. So this isn’t exactly a recipe, but rather an example of how to think on your feet. Necessity can truly be the “Mother of Invention.” So I’ll dedicate this non-recipe to one of my favorite modern composers, Frank Zappa,, clearly demonstrating how to think outside of the shake and bake box.
FRANK’S PORK AND BEANS FOR THE NEW YEAR, serves four
INGREDIENTS
4 pork loin chops, fat on
Spicy smoked paprika and flour dredge, salt and pepper
1 beaten egg, small crumble of dry sage
2 cans cannellini beans, save the liquid
1 medium chopped onion
1/2 cup chicken stock
butter and avocado oil
A bunch of trimmed, rinsed and chiffonade cut collard greens, I foraged mine, thrice frozen, from my garden….and they were delicious.
Pound out the pork chops but not too thin, coat with beaten egg, then dredge in flour mixture. Heat up a cast iron pan of size, add avocado oil, then when oil is hot, sauté chops over medium heat, turning once. Cooking slowly keeps pork tender. Remove from pan, set aside.
Add 3 tb butter to the saute pan, when hot, add the chopped onion and coat the onion season with salt and saute until translucent. Add the beans and their liquid, incorporating all the bottom bits from the pan. Add 1/2 cup chicken stock and stir. Place the chops back in with the beans, turn down to a low simmer and cook covered for 30 minutes.
While the pork and bean flavors are “marrying,” steam up those greens in a small amount of salted water with a tight lid, drain and save the “pot liquor” for a soup. Toss the bright green greens with virgin olive oil and a finishing salt….or you can add them into your one pot meal for a more long cooked, traditional appearance.
Either way you get a beautiful and economical dish…which automatically makes you feel lucky!
Remove mask to eat for best results.
Hoping for safety, health, humor and sanity as we navigate into 2021.
Many of us have had an unspeakably tragic year. The loss of friends or family, or a frightening brush with the Covid virus. Others of us have simply had to bear being homebound, or suffered domestic violence and still others suffered financial pain. Even the loss of a dream or career. It’s been a tough year, but not without it’s blessings.
To me, it’s been scary, because we’re just not sure if business will ever return to it’s former model, and cash flow is not what it was. This is inconvenient and uncomfortable because we have no choice but to take a hard look at ourselves and our addictions as well as to seek out new models, new solutions. Looking into the mirror isn’t easy.
Sitting at home in relative luxury, we rankle because we can’t dine out, go out for drinks, see our friends, go to the movies. I like to think of the world’s women, many who have the daily tasks of fetching water and firewood as well as childcare and the inevitable job of preparing food to nourish their families. We take for granted our potable water, fuel delivery, restaurant and grocery delivery and internet connections.
I realize that many of my problems, often born of excess, begin and end with me. It’s my job to turn around mental adversity and realize gratitude, choose happiness. My personal alchemy. Everyone has this super power. To stop daily, give thanks and to connect with the true source. This is where the recharge is born. Once we’re feeling our interconnectedness, perspective shifts. You can choose happiness, contentment, gratitude and have the energy to give back, whatever that means to you.
Granted, I don’t have a family to provide for, a dysfunctional home or kids learning at home, definitely stressors. One gift of this slowed down time, other than self-reflection, and the time to consider the future, has been the opportunity to help my community battle food insecurity, one meal at a time. It’s good to know that you’re not alone, even if you’re bearing the weight of any number of things.
Now is a time to take stock, say a prayer, help a neighbor …or ask for help, listen for guidance, take a breath, read a book, get outside, maybe learn something new…even about yourself and the world we live in.
Happy New Year and Bright Blessings for 2021…we’re ready for you!
The flavor profile in these is reminiscent of some of my favorite foods from China, although I am told by a close friend who lived for a time in China, Dr. Jane Liedtke, the Egg Roll is as American as it gets. More traditionally, Peking duck is wrapped in a “bing”, or wrapper with Hoisin sauce, scallion, etc. for a delicious part of the duck dinner. These egg rolls stand in for us home cooks in America.
China is a place I’d always wanted to go. I am glad I visited, but would I want to return? Likely not, due in part to the level of pulmonary distress I experienced by the end of a month of travel there. And this was almost ten years ago. In places the coal soot covered everything and the day never really dawned. Not the best atmosphere to practice deep breathing and Qi Gong, which was part of my reason for being there.
When we hunker down to watch the big game, the snacks and commercials are as important as the players. At least for me, with my marginal understanding of the game. 
After a few days, onward we went to the promised land…Key West. Duval Street and its debauchery and tea parties, that’s where I learned to drink, a White Russian, a drink I could order with confidence. Kinda girly, but I am not even sure I was “of age” at that point, still much to learn.
