Category: Cooking

Super Bowl Eats

| Posted in Cooking

The Food & Dining section in today’s Press Herald interviewed chefs Mitchell Gerow from East Ender and Peter Sueltenfuss from District to get their suggestions for your Sunday Super Bowl party.

“The best way to have a fun and enjoyable Super Bowl party is to keep it simple, and you can’t get more simple than the classics – clams casino, chicken wings, a pulled pork sandwich,” said Mitchell Gerow, chef/co-owner at the East Ender.

Pete Sueltenfuss, chef/partner at District, offered a simple but delicious recipe for pork meatballs served with a local cider gravy.

The Natural Foodie article proposes some plant-based eating alternatives to the “[t]raditional Super Bowl food laden with meat and dairy”.

Green Scratch Meal

| Posted in Cooking

Edible Obsessions has written about a recent meal prepared with local ingredients sourced from  Green Sparks Farms through  Cape/ SoPo Winter Share, Cranky Rooster Farm and Scratch Baking.

Like most local eggs, these blow away anything you can buy at the local grocery stores. The yolks are plump, orange and LARGE. If I ever come back as a chicken, I want to live on this farm and eat what they’re eating–which is probably better than many people I know.

Immigrant Kitchen: African Fou Fou

| Posted in Cooking

Immigrant Kitchens author Lindsay Sterling has published a recipe and video instructions for making African Fou Fou as well as the back story behind how she learned to make the dish.

She plugged in a little portable stove and showed me right there how to make fou fou, a dish that’s as popular in parts of Africa as hamburgers and fries are here. She put cassava flour and corn flour into a pot of water, heated and stirred vigorously for some time.

Sterling will be teaching cooking class this Friday in Freeport with Swedish Cured Salmon, Potatoes Au Gratin, and Mustard Vinaigrette on the menu.

Gorgeous Gelato, Angela Landsbury and Going Vegan

| Posted in People, Cooking

Read the Soup to Nuts article in today’s Press Herald and learn about the connection between the TV show Murder, She Wrote and the opening of Gorgeous Gelato here in Portland.

Opening a gelato shop in Maine in December seems a little like opening a hot chocolate stand in Phoenix in July, when the average high is 105 degrees.

You really want to ask: “What were you thinking?”

Donato Giovine and Mariagrazia Zanardi, owners of the new Gorgeous Gelato shop at 434 Fore St., are happy to explain.

Today’s Food & Dining section also includes an article on an online service that helps people convert to a vegan diet.

Sandwich Review of Brea Lu

| Posted in Reviews, Cooking

From Away has published another in their series of sandwich reviews, this time around they visited Brea Lu Cafe for a grilled cheese,

This was, overall, a solid diner-style grilled cheese sandwich, with a few flavorful extras, and somewhat higher-quality ingredients than you would expect from a typical diner. While I can’t see going out of my way to return for takeout, it seems like a perfectly pleasant place to kill an hour for a quick lunch out…particularly if we have other errands that take us to Forrest Avenue.

While they’re on the site, fans of Pai Men’s might want to check out From Away’s post on reverse engineering the famous Pai Men pork buns.

Hayward’s Maine Fresh Seafood Pies & the Local RootZ Project

| Posted in People, Cooking

The Food & Dining section in today’s Press Herald includes an interview with Fore Street’s chef Sam Hayward about his new line of Maine Fresh seafood pies,

“It took months of trials – mostly down here at Fore Street in my spare time, and also in my home – to come up with a format that worked for different seafoods, and we settled on four species that are harvested locally,” Hayward said. “So there are Maine shrimp, Maine scallops, Maine lobster and rock crab.”

and a profile of a Portland couple who have just finished a year of eating locally and blogging about it,

On the first day of the local eating adventure, Fuller and Madison showed this isn’t a deprivation diet. Their meals that day included a kale, onion, Gouda and goat cheese omelet with home fries for breakfast and a dinner of boiled lobster, roasted red beets and parsnips complemented by a wheat berry salad with delicata squash.

Back and Forward

| Posted in General News, Events, Cooking

Edible Obsessions published her 2010 round-up and wish list (as well as a Christmas turducken post)

My own food wishes for 2011? Well, I hope the Missus gets her never ending wish for a less expensive and fulfilling Middle Eastern place(how about Emilitsa-lite?) and I would, in our great expansion of Asian places around town would love to be able to chow down at a Malaysian restaurant, even if it’s a chain. And tonight, in a perfect way to end the year, we’re revisiting the one local restaurant that completely left us speechless, Bresca.

and Portland Magazine has published a 2011 calendar of food events happening throughout the state.

Turkey Buying Guide

| Posted in Cooking

The Blueberry Files has taken some of the guess work out of you Thanksgiving dinner preparations with this handy listing of the turkeys for sale at four Portland area markets complete with price per pound stats and details on how they were raised.

Thanksgiving is fast approaching. And if you’re like me, you’re probably wondering where you can get the best turkey (both in taste and environmental impact), while doing the least damage to your wallet. So, I present to you your four local options for purchasing a turkey next week.

For more help with your Thanksgiving shopping and/or dining out check out the PFM Thanksgiving Resource Guide.

Immigrant Kitchens: Swedish Cured Salmon

| Posted in Cooking

Lindsay Sterling from Immigrant Kitchens learned how to make Swedish Cured Salmon from Eva Morrill. See the photos and read the recipe and back story behind this dish.

“But you can’t get fresh fish anywhere in Portland on Monday,” The Swede said. We were having a scheduling conflict. She had offered to teach me (and you, dear readers) how to make her favorite dish from Sweden, cured salmon with mustard vinaigrette and potatoes au gratin. Think! What strings did I have in the world? “What if,” I proposed, “I show up at your house at 10:00am Monday with the most alive salmon in Portland?” She laughed.