Chocolate, wine. Burger, brioche. Julie, Julia.

I’ll admit it: I had some ungracious thoughts for my husband when he asked me (very nicely, I feel compelled to add), to accompany him to Cellardoor Vineyard for a wine pairing with our chocolates this past Sunday.   It was the vineyard’s last scheduled food and wine pairing for the season, and he really wanted me to come.  The problem was, I had a raging head cold and was just beginning to stress about holiday production.  Sunday was to be spent making ganache and mopping my kitchen floor.  And sleeping, of course, and drinking plenty of liquids.

“I would feel a lot better if you came,” Steve said, couching his rationale in the fact that I was really the one that could wax on about the different flavor profiles that come out in our chocolate when paired with the right wine.

“Pfffft,” I replied, and then snorted, and he conceded, but just a little.

“Well, you at least sound like you know what you’re talking about, and I would feel much better if you were there.”

How can a girl say no to that?  I mean, yeah, I had a cold, but then I was also looking at a Sunday working and cleaning.  A few ungracious thoughts, yes, but drawn-out arm-twisting?  Ah..no.

So Sunday morning found us hauling our wares off-island, and driving the 2 hours down the coast to the vineyard’s tasting room in Lincolnville.  By noon, we had just tossed back a few sips each of the wines CC Peet had chosen to go with our truffles, and the Columbus Day revelers were beginning to pour in.

It was a great afternoon, and to make a long story short, there’s not much 3 hours  of focused attention on wine and chocolate can’t cure.  After we packed things up, we did our own wine tasting, and picked up a bottle of the vineyard’s Viognier to take home.

A stroll around Camden ended in a quiet alley enjoying a glass of Malbec at the White Lion Raw Bar & Bistro.  We liked the wine so much, we stayed for dinner, where I innocently ordered a burger.

To call what I ordered a “burger,” barely does it justice.  What arrived was the deep-voiced, red-headed sex kitten of burgers: a patty that would be dainty if it wasn’t so damn thick, cooked to a juicy medium-rare, and settled into a  buxom brioche bun.  It was smothered in a satiny brown sauce loaded with wild mushrooms, and a small pile each of shoestring potatoes and homemade pickle filled out the plate.  This was a burger that was built for a woman, and I ate every bit of it, moaning softly with each bite.

Which might explain the reason why our waiter brought us our check before we had even finished our dinners.  Deciding to just roll with it, we paid up (after noisily licking our plates clean), and walked back out into the night.

A short drive up the coast to Belfast landed us at the Colonial Theatre just in time for the last showing of Julie & Julia–which is what I’m now sure our thoughtful waiter intended.

All in all, it was exactly the kind of day I needed, packed full of things my female soul craves: Chocolate, wine.  Burger, brioche.  Julie, Julia.  And it’s the kind of thing my husband does to make me fall in love with him all over again.

Summer of the blackcurrant

Black and red currants ready to be processed

Every year, an ingredient or experience defines my summer.  Last year was the summer of the blueberry; Maine was practically drowning in the things, which hung in taut, juicy clumps from every tiny branch on every little bush.  This year was the summer of the dark and mysterious blackcurrant.

They are illegal to cultivate in Maine (due to a fungus they are rumored to carry), so I will say only that I read somewhere that they grow wild on the island, and that the folks I procured them from must know all the secret spots.

I traded chocolates for their foraged goods, and then got to work learning about blackcurrants.  The first thing I discovered is that blackcurrant and dark chocolate are a match made in a place that is ripe with sinful pleasure and illicit luxuries.   Tangy and acidic, blackcurrants have just the right zestful pop to really shine through the earthy overtones of our Venezuelan bittersweet. The second thing I learned was that, well, it was the year of the blackcurrant, and my very kind neighbors were bringing me more than I had time to learn what to do with.  Not only that, but I was barely keeping up with all the raspberries, strawberries, blueberries etc that I had to process for our Farm Market Collection.  While the above picture does not do justice to the sheer volume of berries I had to contend with, it is a good example of just how lovely and alluring they are.  I wanted to celebrate them, glorify them, admit them for sainthood.  But, I had no time.  So after Louise and I juiced as many as we could (and I begged her to take as many as she could to make jam), I unceremoniously heaped them into several half gallon mason jars–berries, stems, leaves and all– poured several gallons of Maine potato vodka over them, and  then forced myself to place them in a dark hiding place, out of my sight, so that I could stop obessesing and focus on the daily summer operations of our busy cafe.

But summer in Maine, is, well, summer in Maine, and just as soon as you clear one unexpectedly delightful bounty off your plate and begin to think that at last you can focus on what you’re supposed to be doing, another one pops up.  Sometime in August, chef John Hikade from the Arborvine in Blue Hill, called and asked if I might be interested in coming up with a custom assortment of chocolates for a party he was catering later in the month.  ”Something totally over the top,” I remember him saying.  ”Lets show these folks what we can do in Maine.”  I remember having the phone in my ear, staring blankly at the mountains of paperwork, crates of berries, the disheveled pile of todo lists.  As he talked, these things faded from my sight, replaced with visions of glittering confections.  I grabbed the nearest thing I could write on (a lightly used napkin, I think), sat down and said, “Okay, what did you have in mind?”

Stuffed Turkish fig

Blackcurrant cordial in white chocolate scallop shell

Well, I’m not sure if this is exactly what John had in mind, but this is what sprung from my kitchen a week later.  Doing anything on Isle au Haut on short notice is a bit dicey, so I had to beg and cajole to get the figs I wanted–soft, plump thin-skinned Turkish that my French neighbor hides in her cupboards. ( I knew she’d have them.) I stuffed them with a sensual blend of fresh goat cheese and dark chocolate, covered them in bittersweet and dipped them, at last, in crushed walnuts.   Not being able to stop myself from creating something achingly precious, I then piped on a white chocolate fig leaf (dyed with green food color), and dusted the entire confection lightly with gold.

I of course, immediately recognized an opportunity to use those well-steeped blackcurrants I had almost forgotten about.  I strained the vodka–now a deep ruby-red–and added it to a simple syrup of water and sugar, to make a wild-tasting cordial.  Into some Valrhona milk chocolate truffle shells it went, and then I covered them thoroughly in our Venezuelan 60%.

I made a third confection not pictured.  A dark chocolate truffle infused with our maple and smoked sea salt caramel made from Carding Brook Farm’s spring syrup.

It was hard not to fall in love with the results, so you may see a public offering of these custom confections in the holiday assortment we’re currently developing for December.  Keep an eye out!

Bittersweet

It is a Thursday evening, the tail-end of a warm fall day, and I’m looking down the short barrel of our last weekend at the cafe.  From my second-story perch in the office, I can see the road where the neighbor kids are setting off firecrackers, and the bird researchers have just jogged by winding up an early-evening run.

As I stand on the edge of September, already trying to psyche myself up for the dive into the chilly waters of fall, summer seems a blur.  After reading the article on BDC in Gourmet’s June issue, a kind Portland chef emailed a congratulatory warning: “Get ready for an unbelievable summer.” At the time I thought that a sentence like that, it could mean so many things, and so I only half believed it.  Perhaps he meant to be ambiguous.  I don’t know.  But I think of his note now, and well,  realize it could have only meant one thing.

I regret that by mid-August I’m fairly cranky, and so thankful for Amy and Steve taking over the cafe this season.  It’s only exhaustion that makes me that way, and my failure to fully heed the warnings of more experienced persons regarding a sure up-tick in business.  All in all, I think we managed fairly well to navigate the unpredictable waters of such a strange summer.

I’ll hit the highlights:

June brought the wettest month on record in Maine.  It was downright depressing, and as the rain carried right into July I began praying fervently for summer to just end, just to get it over with.  I mean why did we suffer through winter for this misery?  The answer to that question came in September as I was catching up with the bookkeeping:  June’s crappy weather translated into a month of record-breaking chocolate sales.

At 3:00 am on July 2nd, after a terrifying night of torrential rain and violent thunderstorms that kept most of Maine up until well past midnight, phones began ringing in houses all around the island.  Just north of the Town Hall, and next door to the island’s one-room school, a house was burning.  To make a long, sad story short, the (as of yet to be inhabited, thank god) summer home burned beyond saving that morning.  I won’t belabor all the things that suck about someone’s house burning down.  I’m sure you can imagine these all on your own.  And while I don’t mean to make light of a crappy situation, I will say that some good–big and small– came of the event.   One very small good thing was a new recipe.  Check out the Fire Brigade Biscuit Rolls in the Recipes section.

The beginning of August brought a visit from Martha Stewart Living,  which shot a story on our chocolates that we’ve been told will run in the magazine’s February issue.  That was weird and exciting and managed to turn my stomach in knots for a solid week.  But Craft editor Hannah Milman was gracious and enthusiastic and quirky all at once, which combined to put us at ease for a shoot that I think went pretty well considering our hectic summer schedules and my aforementioned August crankiness.  Jason Fulford, the photographer, was kind and professional and likeably odd in that artsy kind of way.  I was later blown away by his website.  Check it out at: www.jasonfulford.com.

August and September brought crates upon crates of raspberries, strawberries and blueberries for our Farm Market Collection.  Our Head Harbor friends  supplied us with all the fresh currants we could possibly want, which, in turn, appeared in cafe scones and a very special Blackcurrant and Bittersweet Chocolate Cordial for a custom order in mid August.  August also brought the welcome addition of Louise, and her many culinary and aesthetic talents, to the BDC kitchen.

While I welcome a respite from rising at 4:30 every morning and the summer’s 18-hour workdays, it is with a twinge of sadness that I feel the season pass.  Most of the summer people, some who have become, at the very least, enthusiastic supporters of our venture, and in some cases, good friends, are now gone; returned to their permanent homes in Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Washington DC,  Philadelphia, Indiana, Colorado, California, and others.

And winter is coming.  An early frost the other morning was a healthy reminder that wood still needs to be split and the house banked.  And while we prepare ourselves for the cold and the dark and the flurry of business that November and December bring, we still have fall.  And some time to enjoy it.

BDC in June Gourmet Magazine!

Well, it’s a testament to the impact this recent publicity has had on our business that I’m just now getting around to posting this – just as the issue is about to leave the stands.

In any case, we’re thrilled at our recent appearance in Gourmet Magazine, and I hope that if you don’t already have  a copy, that you go out and grab one, flip immediately to page 42 and read about writer Georgina Gustin’s trip to Isle au Haut and the Black Dinah Cafe last summer.  Here’s an excerpt:

On a remote island off the snaggletoothed coast of Maine, the only edible luxury you ould expect to find is lobster.  Last summer, however, I hopped the mail boat to Isle au Haut–a sprawling hump of spuce-covered granite with just 65 year-round residents–and found a crooked sign at the edge of a dirt road leading, improbably, to chocolate truffles containing orange-blossom nectar and ganache infused with Earl Grey tea.

Four things that rocked my world this week

 

Chocolate tasting at the Davis Square Loft Apartments

So, I’ve been a busy girl.  Off-island, on again.  Off-island, on again.  Cooking, teaching, eating, marketing.  Prepping, rushing, delivering.  Not a lot of sleep, or returning of phone calls, but now that I’m home, I can catch up with that stuff.  

Of the past seven days, I thought I’d share with you the highlights:

El El Frijoles–I’m not gushing.  I’m not.  But really, Michele and Michael really know how to rock Sargentville’s culinary scene.  ”Culinary scene?” you ask?  Heck yah!  There’s doughnuts at the Eggemoggin Country Store, and then there’s these guys.  Their Cinco de Mayo fiesta was a testament to how much we’ve missed them all winter.  120 dinners in as many minutes is pretty impressive.  They open for the season on May 20th.  

Good Friends–Okay, so maybe I could walk out on the street in your town and invite the first 5 people I ran into to a free class on chocolate making, complete with wine and tasting, and they would drop everything and come.  But that’s not the point.  Good friends have this nutty tendency abandon their work mid-day for a comrade in need.  From helping a desperate caterer remove the bellies from 4 gallon buckets of raw clams, to suffering through a chocolate making class.  Steve, Alan, Kristen, Denise and Amy not only did the latter, but they offered a great critique, a lot of helpful hints and didn’t even complain that there was not a chair to sit on.  Nor did they complain about choking down their truffles and chardonnay at 10 o’clock in the morning.  

The Stonewall Kitchen Cooking School–I like to tell people that I have the best job in the whole world, but after meeting Patty Roche and all the great ladies at the Stonewall Kitchen Cooking School, I think I may have some competition in that department.  State-of-the-art kitchen, fresh ingredients, great food, fun folks with an excellent attitude–does it get better than that? 

The Davis Square Loft Apartments–Okay, so I know this is kind of random–I mean, hello, it’s an apartment complex.  But it’s an incredibly cool apartment complex.  Our friend Sharon Kitchens had us down to Sommerville to conduct a casual chocolate tasting for her fellow Davis Square neighbors.  Lots of windows, glass garage doors opening in to the living room, great communal atmosphere–with just the right amount of privacy, and a funky, tree-top Ewok Village-esque atmosphere.  Good times.

Cinco de Mayo at El El Frijoles!

If you’re anywhere near Sargentville, Maine today, you should definitely join the fiesta at El El Frijoles.  Michael and Michele and I will be dishing up Michele’s Grilled Chicken with Red Mole, Caesar Salad (to find out more about Caesar Salad, read this) and an experimental Mexican chocolate whoopie pie, a la Black Dinah.  

Just to be clear, “near” is a relative term in Maine.  So if I find out that you could have “gotten here from there”, and we did not see you, you are in mucho trouble.  In my book, there is no excuse to miss out on food this good, that–and this is the important part–YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO MAKE YOURSELF.

But hey, if you really have a good excuse and can’t make it, you shouldn’t have to suffer.  With a spare six hours or so, you can whip together my Mole Poblano and some of these Mexican chocolate whoopie pies.  Or, just crack open a nice cold cerveza, and toast to Puebla.  

 

Culinary Getaway with the Island Gourmet Girls, Inn at Isle au Haut, June 13-15 or June 15-17

The back porch of the Inn at Isle au Haut

Every person that steps on the island–be they hiker, camper, sightseer, worker, repairman, photographer, news reporter, houseguest or whatever–becomes a member of this small community the instant their foot touches the town dock.  When you visit an island as small as ours, you don’t really have the luxury of being a casual observer.  If there is a fire, we may ask you to haul buckets.  If someone goes missing, we may sign you onto a search party.  If there is a parade, we may invite you to construct a float, or bang a drum, or honk a horn. We will encourage you to participate  in our annual talent show, or make a cameo in the island contra dance band, or just come to one of our parties. 

In return, for the time that you are here, we give you our home.  We invite you to take the memory of it with you and make it, in your own way, yours. 

It is in this spirit that my friend Diana came to me a few years ago and asked if I’d be willing to open up my home and business to her inn guests for a day of chocolate making lessons. 

Diana owns and operates the Inn at Isle au Haut, a beautiful retreat on the east side of the island.  Though I could wax poetic for several paragraphs about this place, I’ll encourage you, instead, to check it out yourself by clicking on the link.  I will say, however, that while Diana is a gracious hostess and a talented decorator, it is clear (to me, anyway) that the very soul of her inn manifests itself in her cooking. 

Diana is offering two sets of dates for the unique opportunity to pull on an apron, roll up your sleeves and work side-by-side with three of the island’s many noteworthy cooks. 

The first night, Diana will  treat you to one of her five-course meals at the inn.  On the second day, Diana will instruct guests in the art of making bread and a delicious side dish, which they will then pack up and trek on over to the home of bestselling author Linda Greenlaw, where she will give a lesson in seafood preparation.  Guests will then enjoy the fruits of their labors over dinner with the world-renowned swordboat captain.  And on the third day of their stay, guests will come on over to the Black Dinah Cafe for a hands-on lesson in chocolate making. 

For more information about the Getaway click here.  Or give Diana a call over at the inn: 207.335.5141

Just another quick note about May 9th

The classroom at the Stonewall Kitchen Cooking School

 All day yesterday that I had a niggling feeling that I was going to get myself into trouble, and then it finally occurred to me that my last post may have sounded a bit snarky.  

Snark is the 00’s answer to the sarcasm of the 80’s; tomorrow’s parents will tell their teenage children that ’snark isn’t funny, it’s a sign of insecurity,’ and then their teenagers will go ahead and be snarky anyway.  Hello, they’re teenagers.  They ARE insecure.  

Which is exactly my defense for my own ‘ill-constructed’ comment about the title of  the class I will be teaching on May 9th at the Stonewall Kitchen Cooking School.  If it didn’t come across in my post, I am thrilled to have been asked to teach a class at Stonewall.  A thrill that is well-tempered by just a bit of performance anxiety.  Oh, I’ll get over it.  I always do.  

Okay, enough on that subject. Right now, I want you to take a good long gander at that gorgeous classroom in the  photo above.  York isn’t all that far away, and the class is filling up fast.  We are going to have a great time, and I’d love it if you would join myself and the very nice people at the Cooking School on May 9th.  

And if you can’t make that, or if you really want to do a complete immersion in chocolate (not literally, of course), don’t forget that this coming weekend I will be teaching at the Hartstone Inn in Camden.   

“Everything you wanted to know about chocolate, and more!” at the Stonewall Kitchen Cooking School, May 9th

To keep with my current theme, I’d like to begin by saying that if you have read my blog or know me at all, then you know that I did not come up up with the above title for my class on chocolate.  Be that as it may, it seems that on May 9th, I will be present in the jaw-droppingly gorgeous kitchen of the Stonewall Kitchen Cooking School in York, Maine to try and deliver on this ill-constructed promise.  It should be fairly entertaining.

If I had inserted a picture of the facilities here, then you would know just about as much about this cooking school as I do.  I met the manager, a very nice lady named Patty Roche, at Harvest on the Harbor in Portland in October.  She asked me if I would be interested in teaching a class, I said yes of course, and the rest is history.  

Or will be.  The class is from 1:30-3:30 on May 9th and I imagine I will be covering, well, just about everything, as the above superlative suggests.  Or at least as much as I can get to in 2 hours.  This is a demonstration class, so if you’re squeamish about getting your hands a little sloppy, then this is the one for you.  I will demonstrate several tempering techniques, moulding, dipping and some decorating.  As always, I am happy to try and answer your questions, and am willing to let them steer the direction of the class, if there is interest.  

Check out the cooking school here, and I would love it if you would join me on May 9th.

Artisan Chocolate Making II at the Hartstone Inn, April 25th & 26th

In the heart of Camden, just about a block from the Stop N Go, and a short walk from the glittering waterfront, is the aptly-named Hartstone Inn.  Last December, innkeepers Mary Jo and Michael took a chance and asked me to teach a class on chocolate making as part of the inn’s cooking school.  I jumped at the opportunity.

If you’ve read my blog or know me at all, then you know I don’t usually think things through.  In fact, I can count on one hand the number of decisions I’ve made in my life that  I’ve actually thought long and hard about–and to good result, so one wonders why I don’t do it more often. 

In my defense, December IS a pretty busy time in the chocolate world.  After a season of doubling our retail sales, we were looking at the very real possibility of shooting through the roof for the winter holidays.  Had I, in a tiny moment of insanity back in October, really agreed to pack it all up and leave the island for two days to teach a class down the coast?

Well, I had, and I did, and while it wasn’t a flawless performance, we all had a GREAT time (evidence in the above picture, courtesy of Michael’s blog site).  Michael and the inn’s sous chef, Zeph, are two the nicest, most helpful, gracious and professional people alive, and their welcome and gentle guidance that weekend really made the whole thing a success.  If you’re interested, you can read more about that class on Michael’s blog.

To my delight, Michael and Mary Jo have asked me back for a follow up class next weekend.  I plan to cover various hand-tempering techniques, “shell” and figurine moulding, and the making of chocolate decorations, including the use of colored cocoa butter and transfer sheets.  This is a hands-on course, and though some of the techniques are quite advanced, all that’s required of participants is a willingness to have fun and get your hands a little chocolate-y.  We’ll taste our creations at the end of class and you will be able to take a box of your handmade chocolates home with you.  

The classes are from 1-3, Saturday or Sunday, and you can call the Hartstone Inn at 1.800.788.4823 to save your spot.  While you’re at it, you might as well make reservations for dinner, too.  Michael and Zeph are sure to be cooking up something fabulous.

Tomorrow: Chocolate making demonstration class at the Stonewall Kitchen Cooking School in York, Maine.