Salt of the Earth

I have said that I hate salt. And that is completely true but also completely untrue. Salt is an essential ingredient in almost every recipe. Without salt, flavors wouldn't be what they are.


I think the problem with me and salt is that I really don't like food to taste salty. It's a flavor that is almost entirely unappealing to me (there are exceptions. I love corned beef but I hate ham. That's just the way it is.). I think of salt as an ingredient, not a flavor. When I am really excited for a dessert on a menu and then I see that the only chocolate item on the menu is topped with "fleur de sel," I am instantly thrust into melancholy. Some friends of mine brought home a box of truffles from a restaurant one night, and all but one of them had salt in the filling or on the top. This is sadness to me. Sadness in a box. An assault on chocolate and my sensibilities.


When I cook, I always make sure there is a little salt in what I'm making. Salt is a great ingredient that balances flavors and brings out nuances to make food not taste bland. Bland is almost as sad as salty but I would rather have bland food than over-salted food. There was a time in my life where I watched a LOT of Food Network during my down time and I was disgusted with the amount of salt the cooks would use. Without pinpointing anyone in particular, the "chefs" would say things like "you have to salt every ingredient" or "season as you go along." If an everyday cook were to follow the advice they were watching on those shows, they would end up with 4-5 tsp of salt in every dish, including dishes that included naturally salty foods like capers, anchovies, and chicken broth. Why would you add a "pinch" of salt with every ingredient when you are cooking? Isn't it easier to taste at the end, add salt (if needed), rather than come up with something inedible after all of your work?


Whether you believe in a direct connection between high salt intake and health risks or not, Americans have way too much salt in their diets. Currently the standard recommendation is a TOTAL of a half-teaspoon of salt a day. I think there is more than a half teaspoon of salt on a small order of McDonald's fries, which, I don't like because they are too salty. yuk. Don't get me wrong; fries should have a little salt but I get my salt fix with ketchup. I don't need to put salt ON ketchup, it's loaded with salt. Our drinks are loaded with salt. Gatorade? YUK. As a source to replenish your body of depleted nutrients, yes, as a casual sip to get you through the day? Ick. I think the worst offender of this crime are chain restaurants. The food at chain restaurants is so consistently salty--do people really like their food to burn their tongue with salt? That's my reaction when something is too salty for me. My tongue feels like it's burning: not like a fire burn, like a low, dull, chemical burn. It dulls the taste buds instantly and all other flavors are gone, all the switches are flicked to the "off" position...maybe I just answered my own question of why chain restaurant food is so salty. If you're going to charge $9 for a steak, salt is probably your only hope. 


The moral of this long ramble? Cooks, please. Yes, put salt in your dish but please remember it's easier for a diner to add salt at then end than to choke it down with a gallon of water and pretend it's good. Also, please don't corrupt and/or pollute your only chocolate dessert with a "flavor" of salt. 

A Happy Mother

My mother will not admit to it but she is a picky eater. Her normal response to any food is "it was ok" (again, she would never admit this). When she came to visit last month I wanted to make sure she had ONE meal she liked. My sister suggested I make shrimp scampi; my mother had recently said she wanted it and my sister assured me it was easy to make. I looked at a few different recipes but after that I decided to go it alone. Here are my results


Shrimp Scampi by Jen:
1 lb peeled, deveined shrimp
1/3 cup butter 
3-4 tbsp chopped parsley 
3 cloves garlic
2 tbsp olive oil
zest of 1/2 lemon
juice of 1/2 lemon
1/3 cup white wine
1/3 cup parmesan or romano
pasta of your choice

This is what I did:

1. Cook the pasta.
2. Chop up the garlic and add it to the butter. 
3. Melt the butter very low in a saucepan.
4. Heat up the olive oil in a large skillet.
5. Chop the parsley and lemon zest very, very fine.
6. When the oil in the skillet is hot, add salt and pepper to the shrimp and cook them. They should be flipped after 90 seconds and only take at most three minutes to cook. As soon as they lose their translucence, they are done.
7. Remove the shrimp from the skillet, and add the butter and white wine. Bring to a boil, cook 2 minutes.
8. Reduce heat to low. Add the parsley/lemon zest. Cook for 2-3 minutes.
9. Add the shrimp and the cooked pasta into the skillet. Add the cheese and let everything heat through.

Taste the sauce at this point. It may need a little of the pasta water to get the consistency you want. It may also need salt or pepper. This is where I decided it was too buttery and added the juice of 1/2 a lemon to brighten everything up. I also added a bunch of pepper.

My sister, who is a much better cook than I, said that this was the best scampi she's ever had; the sure sign that this was beginner's luck and I'll never make it this good again.

I went to Sonny's and was not happy. At all, really.

One of my favorite restaurants in Portland is Local 188. I had a fabulous, expensive, extravagant dinner there at Christmastime one year with a friend.  Folks, I am all about spending a lot of money for a great dining experience. I don't think twice about planning to spend $100 on myself for a meal if the food, service, atmosphere, and overall experience are memorable. I don't drink a lot, I don't smoke, I don't have expensive toys, so food is where my money goes.


This is all back story to my lunch today. I have had a few friends who have told me that they went to Sonny's for dinner and it was great--as good as Local 188 or better. When my friend and I saw that it was open for lunch we didn't think twice--we abandoned our initial plans for lobster rolls and headed up Exchange St. to Sonny's.


The restaurant is beautiful. They have taken any fast-food-feel (from the former O'Naturals) out of the place. It's full of exposed brick, nice window seating, comfy looking couches, and vaults; it looks like a really cool place you could go after work for drinks with friends and linger on through dinner. I especially loved the concrete bar which is enormous but does not overfill the main room.


We were the first lunch customers that I can recall. I ordered a cocktail and the waitress/hostess told me that she didn't know if she could make me one because the bartender didn't show up. After a phone call, she showed up with my drink. It tasted like it had absolutely no alcohol in it whatsoever but she charged me $8 for it anyway. They did not have ginger ale or root beer. Pepsi products (which is a minus for me every time; I'm a Coke or ginger ale girl at restaurants mostly). They did have ginger beer.


You can look at their menu through the link above; it's not a huge lunch menu, which is fine. Sometimes too many choices can be overwhelming. I chose the enchilada combo: a cheese enchilada with a red salsa and a bean enchilada with a green salsa. There was almost no cheese in the cheese enchilada at all. It was basically a rolled up tortilla with salsa on it. The bean one had a lot of beans, again, no cheese, and green salsa on top. The salsas were good but nothing stood out about them. There were more black beans on the side, with a tiny spoonful of rice that was yellow but had absolutely no flavor. This plate was covered with cabbage (I assume to make it look like a big plate of food). This entirely vegetarian meal that probably cost the restaurant no more than $3 cost me $9. I was totally underwhelmed. There was nothing wrong with the flavor. It tasted fine. But I didn't feel like I had $9 worth of anything, and honestly, would have been just as satisfied with a Taco Bell soft taco. It was that unimpressive.


My friend had fish tacos; two small tortillas, covered with salsa, lettuce, more cabbage, tomato, and two tiny pieces of fish. Each taco probably had 2oz of fish in it, and that is overestimating I think. Again, $12 for this extremely cheap-to-produce lunch. She said "It was a good salad, but it didn't have much fish." We also ordered an appetizer of yam fries with a poblano-cream sauce. The fries were delicious! They had a crispy breading with a mashed potato inside. The cream was more like a spread; it was too hard to dip the fries into without breaking them. It had a nice flavor. The fries came out with our lunches instead of as an appetizer (further proof to me how easy the lunches were to make and therefore should have been a LOT cheaper).


After a very long wait to have our plates taken off the table (again, there was 1 other party in the whole place and I spotted 6 people between the kitchen and the bar areas), the waitress brought us a dessert menu. $7 for every dessert. At lunch time? My lunch was overpriced at $9, I wasn't about to find out how disappointed I would be in such an expensive dessert.


1 cocktail, 1 appetizer, 2 cheap-to-produce lunches, and a bottle of water should NEVER cost $40; it should cost even less when the drink is weak and the service is bad. I will not try Sonny's again.

What Not to Do

Friends, I started with the best of intentions. I started with the best of ingredients.

It was last summer, that perfect time of summer when strawberries and rhubarb are ripe together. Strawberry rhubarb pie is my favorite and I was determined to make it for the first time, and make it perfectly the first time.

That being said, I started with a store-bought crust. I wanted it perfect, remember, and my crust-making skills need some honing, to say the least. What I didn't want was for the pie to be runny. So I read websites, I took advice, I researched. I pre-cooked some of the fruit, added the sugar recommendation from one site, tapioca recommendation from another.

 I filled the pie with a zealous anticipation. I cooked it, summer fruit smell filling my house (yay for air conditioning on 100 degree summer days!). The result? Well, I failed. Miserably. I can't even say I have a photo to show you because I thought I took one but I can't find it. Now, the flavor was amazing--how could it not be with the freshest and most delicious of beginnings? But the pie was so runny. I ended up using some of it as ice cream topping but dumping most of it down the sink (no straining needed). It was just so runny. Sadface (as my niece would say).

My mistake? I think I didn't have enough fruit. It looked skimpy when i put the top crust on but I hoped for the best and ended up disappointed. At least I had strawberry rhubarb sundaes for a few days. If I ever figure it out, I'll post a recipe.

The Best Meal I've Ever Had

I know what you're thinking. It's a bold statement. Audacious. Judgmental. Final. It's all true. I can easily tell you that I remember the best meal I've ever had. Will it be the favorite of my life? Perhaps. Knowing all this, I feel like I have to share it with you. You can't share the flavors or the experience, but hopefully my sharing it with you  will help it live on in my memory for just that much longer.


For years I had wanted to go to Iceland. There was something, not so much mysterious, but unknown, about a land so close to us. The more I read about the beauty and the culture, the more I wanted to go.  I had heard about the $12 glasses of beer, the $400/day car rentals, the terrible exchange rate. The 2008 collapse of the Icelandic economy, though not so good for its citizens, was the only circumstance under which I could have ever afforded to go. In the summer of 2009, with the help of two of my best friends, I finally got to experience the land of fire and ice. I'd love to go into great detail about all the beauty we saw there but I must focus! This is a food blog, and I'm going to share with you a most wonderful meal we had in a hotel restaurant. I think it was a Hilton; I know that the creativity, the craftsmanship, and the flavors made it the best meal I've ever had. 


Vox, Reykjavik, Iceland, June 2009


Amuse Bouche--smoked haddock, fennel puree, and 2 little drops of black bean sauce ( I forgot to take a picture of it)

The bread was served with a delicious honey lemon butter.

Langoustine with buttered milk, crisps, and Swedish tomatoes in various versions. There was a fresh cherry tomato, a tomato puree under the whole dish. What's a Langoustine? Well, it sort of looks like a giant shrimp but it tastes like a mild lobster. I would love to eat them again. 

Slowly cooked suckling pig served with apples and celery root, wild chervil (wild parsley), and glaze.
There was also a celery gelee/mousse on this plate--I traded with a tablemate for more of the apple puree. If I remember correctly, at least one of these pieces of baby pig was poached in milk. Did I feel guilty about eating a baby pig? I did. I felt so guilty that I had to eat the entire plate so that the baby pig wasn't killed for naught.

Arctic Charr from Kirkjubæjarklaustur fried on a shell of bread and served with cauliflower purée, broccoli, almonds, and herbs.
There was also arctic char slow-cooked. I have to say that this was my least-favorite dish even though it was very good. That dark, dry, fried thing taking up most of the plate? ehh. The sauce underneath was delicious and the fried char was yummy. The slow-cooked char was a little too raw-fish for me.  

Pre-dessert--raspberry mousse with frozen almond sprinkles, nuts, and a fresh raspberry.The frozen sprinkles were bright and crunchy; the mousse was sweet and light and fresh and amazing. 

Red and green, fresh, frosty and crispy with cream cheese and tarragon

Fresh strawberries, green strawberry ice cream, strawberry mousse, and sweetened cream cheese, with dehydrated strawberries, strawberry crisp, and strawberry gelee. The best non-chocolate dessert EVER. Normally I do not like non-desserty things like tarragon in my dessert. I have to say, though, that this is one of the best desserts I've ever had in my life. Honestly? I still think about the green strawberry ice cream on this plate. Every element on this plate (except the cream cheese ice cream) tasted like a different fresh strawberry. Oh, how I miss this plate...

Is it the economy?

I recently got an e-mail from Bugaboo Creek steakhouse, thanking me for my years of patronage and letting me know that they are closing all but 12 of their restaurants. This got me thinking about chain restaurants in general.


What is the draw of a chain restaurant? When I think about Bugaboo Creek, one of the only chain restaurants I can say I have really ever gone to with any regularity (not counting my addiction to fast food), I think about their smashed potatoes. And that is what I always got when I was there: a sweet glazed salmon, maybe a steak, some barely steamed, plain vegetables, and yummy, gluey, salty smashed potatoes. And I think that explains the popularity of chain restaurants to some extent; if you've been to one, you know what to expect when you see it in another town. And I know, taking a risk on a strange restaurant in a foreign town is risky; I've traveled through England. And Ohio.


The plummeting economy, however, cannot be the only reason that chain restaurants have been failing recently. For example, a TGI Friday's has never been able to exist in the Portland, Maine area. I know of two that have failed. And I also look at my current town of Manchester, NH. I can think of 3 or 4 really great restaurants that have opened in the 3 years I have lived here and despite the economy, they are thriving.


To me, it comes down to this. You can't feed a family of 4 in a chain restaurant cheaply. It's not even that cheap a date. So in my mind, if I am a budgeter, I'm going to eat out one fewer times every month, save my money, and go to the restaurant that actually makes their food on site, with local, quality ingredients, in an atmosphere where everyone working there cares about the product. I KNOW the waiters and waitresses at most national chains don't care about the product, and the cooks I am guessing do little more than reheat and make salads. How else can you achieve consistency, which is what you think your customers are banking on?


Anyway, the point of this rambling is this. Bugaboo Creek, you were fun, it's true. But your drinks are overpriced, your food is not fresh, and dinner probably costs me at least $30 if I have a beer and/or dessert. At that price I'm going to just go somewhere that is owned locally buy someone who has personal stock in the freshness of the fish and the quality of the service. You can blame the economy but the bustling local bistro on main street might sing a different tune.

Red Flannel Hash

Kids, before the days of the microwave (and I do remember those days), people had to be a bit creative about how food was reheated. Heck, even in the days of the microwave, if you are a cookie out in the woods working with the loggers, or a camper out in the wilderness for a few days, you certainly aren't going to be able to "nuke" your dinner from the night before, right? This is how hash was invented....take everything you cooked as individual parts the night before, and reheat them into something new and delicious.


Red flannel hash is one of the best examples of efficiency at its best. You need to start with a roast, or a boiled dinner, or any combination of a previous meal that was meat and veggies. I started with boiled corned beef and cabbage dinner.

This boiled dinner was corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, sweet potatoes, rutabega (yellow turnip), carrots, onions...I really did it up. Throw it in a pot with some pepper and boil it until it's done. So easy, so simple. I had so many veggies that I had to boil a pot of veggies alone in the corned beef broth after the first round was all done. And I ended up with a TON of veggies. Just the way I like them. Salty, meaty tasting veggies. This is not appealing to a vegetarian, but, hearty old-fashioned New England cooking rarely is. 

This two giant pot fulls of food would make leftovers for even a family of hungry loggers, and, let's face it, as whole chunks of meat and full-size vegetables, would be very difficult to reheat the next day. So chop it all up. Really chop it into bite-size pieces, then throw it in a cast iron skillet. Now, if I were an old-timey Maine logging camp cookie, I probably would have coated the skillet with bacon fat; however, I am not, so I used olive oil and butter. Here's where the "red flannel" comes in....after everything else is in, add a can of beets, drained.

Now, again, if I were properly equipped, I would use my beet can to cut up the hash even more as it heated through; however, I only used a small can of beets and therefore had to resort to using my biscuit cutter. I think any cookie would approve.

If you wanted to get all fancy-pants on this dish, now would be the time: herbs, garlic, salt to taste (I used corned beef, I needed no salt), more pepper, this would be the time to do it. But let everything sit in this pre-heated skillet for a while; the goal is to get that nice hash-happy caramelized crust on the bottom. Flip it, turn it, cook it until it is nice and soft and golden brown and hashy.

Hearty, flavorful, colorful, satisfying, all the things food should be. Try this with your next meat and potatoes leftovers and you might even forget what a microwave is.