Immigrant Kitchens: A Congolese Feast

Immigrant Kitchens collaborated with Constance Kabaziga from the Congo, to teach a class how to make a Congolese feast (intro, photos, recipe).

As we drive to markets for ingredients, strings of English, Swahili, Rwandan, French, and Congolese zip like the flight paths of insects inside the car for a moment and then out the window. When a native Rwandan language is spoken, only two can speak and surprisingly, the daughter doesn’t understand her own mother. When Swahili is spoken, two of us have no idea what’s being said. When French is spoken, three can’t speak. The daughter is crucial. She is the only one who can tell me where to drive the car to get what we need.

Immigrant Kitchens: Vietnamese Fried Spring Rolls

Immigrant Kitchens met up with Suu Lee Martin, originally from Ho Chi Minh City, to learn how to make Vietnamese Fried Spring Rolls (intro, photos, recipe).

When you get Vietnamese spring roll lessons from Suu Le Martin, you learn they’re basically ground pork, really thin rice noodles, carrot, salt, sugar, pepper, onion, and egg, wrapped up in special paper and deep fried. But by the time you’re chomping into the crispy, hot, handheld treat, you understand she also did something else: she took sheer human love, wrapped it in courage and glued it all together with a scramble of prayers.

Immigrant Kitchens: Eritrean Ingera with Spicy Chicken

Lindsay Sterling over at Immigrant Kitchens met up with Asmeret Teklu at Asmara where she learned how to make Eritrean Ingera with Spicy Chicken (intro, photos, recipe).

When Asmeret arrived here thirteen years ago, a friend gave her some starter. Ever since then, Asmeret’s been using the reminder of her batter as the starter for the next batch. “But where did your friend get her starter?” I asked. She laughs at my guessing, “There is no beginning.” I think maybe in addition to evolutionism and creationism we should be teaching our children ingera-ism. There simply is no beginning…

Want to make it yourself but not sure where to get the ingredients? Lindsay has offered to mail out portions of “berbere spice, teff flour, teff starter, and ghee” so you can give this recipe a try.

Breakfast, Menu Creation, Vegan Cooking

Today’s Press Herald includes an article about the business of breakfast,

Breakfast’s flexible pricing is another thing that [Bintliff’s owner Joe] Catoggio thinks makes it successful and “recession-proof.” A full meal could cost only $7 or an extravagant lobster eggs Benedict with a mimosa could cost a lot more. The price range attracts everyone from college students to successful business professionals, he said.

insight into how chefs plan and change their menus,

Some menus change daily. Others change every few weeks or months, following the swell of the seasons or the whims of the kitchen.

Two Maine restaurants, the Salt Exchange in Portland and Natalie’s at the Camden Harbour Inn, recently offered a peek into the process of how they change their menus.

a Natural Foodie article on the upcoming visit to Portland by chef Mark Anthony, a proponent of lowering cholesterol through eating a plant-based diet,

He doesn’t hope you’ll buy the latest food prep gadget. He’s not trying to sign you up for a diet plan with meals shipped straight to your door. He won’t entice you with a shiny stack of cookbooks.

Instead, he’ll let you watch him cook, and then he’ll serve you a full-course meal. For free.

Immigrant Kitchens: Congolese Bean and Rice

Lindsay Sterling has published the details of another ethnic cooking adventure on her blog Immigrant Kitchens. This time around she’s learning how to make Congolese Bean and Rice (intro, photos, recipe) from Constance Kabaziga of Kinshasa, Congo.

I met Constance Kabaziga at the checkout at Mittapheap world market. She was buying frozen cassava root and dried beans, and I really wanted to know what she was going to do them. “You look like a good cook,” I ventured. She smiled, laughing, but couldn’t return any English. A bilingual young man walked in. I hid my nerves and asked him to translate: “Would she ever teach me how to cook?” Three days later I was in Constance’s small apartment kitchen, watching her slice red onion and green peppers…

Cliff Island Store and Locavorian Island Eating

The new issue of Working Waterfront includes a profile of Pearls Seaside Market and Cafe which is run by Steve and Johanna Corman on Cliff Island in Casco Bay.

Johanna prefers to work the cafe. While neither she nor Steve had formal restaurant experience, Johanna grew up on Apple Acres Farm in South Hiram, where she ran the gift shop and created gourmet apple products that were eventually picked up by Dean & Deluca. In the morning she bakes goods like cinnamon rolls and egg sandwiches-without a stove. “We don’t have the right ventilation system for an oven, so I do it all on a griddle!” she says. Other highlights on her menu are homemade pizza (the feta and spinach pie was delicious) and the B.L.L.T, a classic bacon, lettuce, lobster and tomato sandwich.

The newspaper also features an examination of the intersection between locavorism and island living by food historian Sandy Oliver.

slanders, and everyone else, used to be so much better at producing food for themselves, especially vegetables, milk and eggs. Pigs, cows and chickens dotted our landscape, as well as the occasional beef critter. In this, we were hardly different from mainlanders. Some of this urge is creeping back, at least here on Islesboro, and a fine looking steer moored to a spike graces the yard of a neighbor about a mile away. We hear about chicks being hatched and, despite last year’s disastrous gardening seasoning, a few new gardens have been created and fenced in.

Girl Gone Raw Interview

Wednesday’s Portland Daily Sun included an interview with artist Elizabeth Fraser about her raw food preparation program Girl Gone Raw.

Q: Portland’s a pretty progressive food town. Where does going raw fit in?
A: “There’s a huge food revolution across the country. People want to eat better and get rid of processed foods in their diets. With the emphasis on obesity in out kids, the time is right and people are ready to change what hasn’t been working for them. Here in Portland, I hope to share this great thing through my classes, community outreach and by talking to people like you!!”