Cider doughnuts so good, they warrant a second posting

So in a fit of online self-congratulation for a near perfect execution of cider doughnuts yesterday morning, I promised our FB peeps that I’d finally break my long blog silence and post the recipe.

Later, as I was enjoying my second cup of coffee, and slowly recovering from the previous nights escapades in wine and ABBA (if that sounds fun, it is: but I caution you on mixing the two), I began to have an inkling of a memory of posting this recipe once before. Almost exactly a year, ago, in fact.

I wish I had remembered that I had already developed a cider doughnut recipe, when, 3 weeks ago, I started developing a cider doughnut recipe. You know what I’m saying? Anyhoo, this latest version is much like last year’s (nothing like re-inventing the wheel), with just a few little changes. The changes, I think, warrant this second posting. The resulting pastry is dark and crunchy on the outside, and soft, buttery and apple-y fragrant on the inside. But if you can’t find boiled cider (read a great article on boiled cider here), and don’t have any apple sauce on hand, the recipe from last year will stand in as an almost-as-delicious substitute.

Apple Cider Doughnuts, redux

1 cup sugar (I use organic evaporated cane juice)

2 eggs

1/2 cup boiled cider

3/4 cup unsweetened apple sauce

1 teaspoon baking soda

3 tablespoons butter, melted

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

3-3/4 to 4 cups flour

Roughly 6 cups vegetable oil for frying (I use safflower oil)

About a cup of superfine sugar

Method:

With an electric beater, the paddle attachment of your stand mixer, or by hand, beat together 1 cup sugar and the eggs until the mixture is light in color.

In a medium size bowl (or a large measuring cup), mix together the boiled cider, apple sauce and the baking soda. Don’t let all that foaming and frothing worry you. That’s just the baking soda reacting to the acid in the apples. Beat this mixture into the sugar and eggs.

Next, stir in the melted butter, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder and vanilla. Finally, add 3-3/4 cups of flour and mix just until the batter is combined. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for several hours or overnight.

When you’re ready to fry the doughnuts, heat the oil in a large cast iron pot to 375 degrees. While the oil is heating, turn your chilled batter out onto a well-floured countertop and pat or roll the batter to about 1/2-inch thickness. Cut as many doughnuts as possible with a 2-inch doughnut cutter. Scrape the scraps together gently, re-roll and cut one more time.

When the oil has reached the correct temperature, fry the doughnuts, a few minutes on each side, until they turn a burnished golden brown. Remove them to a cookie sheet lined thickly with paper towels and allow to drain.

Mix about a cup of superfine sugar and the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon in a paper lunch bag. Before the fried doughnuts are completely cool, toss a few at a time into the bag, and shake to coat.

It’s a Schmoolie!

After the Boston Globe ran a very nice story on BDC last Wednesday (haven’t read it? Click here), I’ve had many requests for the recipe for our Schmoolie that author Amy Sutherland mentioned in her article. And here I thought that everyone would be thrilled with the Banana-Coconut Chocolate Swirl Bread from my upcoming cookbook. Wrongo!

So, here it is: in all it’s delicious, humble, bundled up glory.

Schmoolie

3-1/4 cups flour

2 tsp. instant yeast

1-1/2 tsp. salt

3 tbsp. sugar

4 tbsp. butter, melted

1-1/4 cups milk, warmed slightly

3 roasted red peppers (I use the kind that come in a jar), diced

8 oz. feta cheese, crumbled

1 14-oz can quartered artichoke hearts

1/4 cup pitted kalamata olives, chopped

a handful of parsley, chopped

3 or 4 green onions, sliced

Combine the flour, yeast, salt, butter, sugar and milk in the bowl of a stand mixer and knead with the dough hook for 10 minutes. Add more flour as necessary to create a soft, elastic bread dough. (You can also do this by hand, of course.) When done kneading, form the dough into a ball, and place it in a greased bowl. Cover the bowl with some plastic wrap or a towel and allow the dough to rise for an hour, or until it is doubled in size.

While the dough is rising, combine the roasted red peppers, feta cheese, artichoke hearts, olives, parsley and green onions in a medium size bowl. Set aside.

When the bread dough is ready, heat your oven to 350 degrees. Remove the dough from the bowl and, on a lightly floured board, roll it out into roughly an 11″x18″ rectangle. Cut this rectangle into 8 smaller rectangles by cutting the dough in half, lengthwise; and then quartering each half.

Place about 1/4 cup of filling onto the center of each little rectangle. Use up all the filling.

Next, fold the corners of a rectangle of dough up over the filling; then the sides, and pinch together the edges to adhere. I always imagine that I am making a hobo bundle. Repeat this with each dough rectangle.

Place the bundles on an 11″x18″ cookie sheet, and pop them in the oven for about 20-25 minutes, or until the dough is golden and puffed. Serve them immediately, or, pop one in your pocket and go for a long hike. Schmoolies taste best when eaten under a tree, streamside, in the middle of a mossy island woods.

Cider, pumpkins and the final week of the season

The last of the good stuff: Cafe cider doughnuts

It is not unusual for me to go all summer without eating a single morsel of my own baking.  But the last two weeks of the cafe season comes, and I’m like a bear getting ready for the starvation of hibernation: I totally pig out.

My latest weakness?  The fleeting decadence of New England cider doughnuts.  Theses babies are great consolation for having to keep the cafe open through Columbus Day weekend.  It’s painfully quiet around the island right now.  Our cafe workers have left for the season; Amy is off to New Zealand, and Sarena is has just begun her first year of college in Vermont.  The schooners have sailed into their home ports for the winter, and so have stopped their very welcome shore trips to the cafe.  The violent remnants of southern hurricanes, followed by the sudden drop in temperatures, have chased off day-trippers and would-be campers.  And the Sunday mailboat service has stopped for the season, making Sundays feel like, well, Sundays, minus the newspaper delivery.

All this adds up to a trickle of cafe business, leaving lots of time to plan the winter, catch up on my much ignored bookkeeping, bake-off apples and pumpkins for the seasonal batches of our Northern Apple and New England Pie Pumpkin truffles, and contemplate an entire counter  full of fresh pastries.  There are only so many tasks to keep me away from my own cooking, and since there is just one short week left of temptation, I have gleefully surrendered to the cider doughnuts.  Great with coffee and bill paying.

Cafe Cider Doughnuts

Ingredients for batter:

• 2 eggs
• 1 c. sugar
• 1 t. baking soda dissolved in 1 c. fresh apple cider
• 3 T. melted butter
• 1 T. vanilla extract
• 1 t. baking powder
• 4 c. flour
• 1/4 t. cinnamon
• 1/4 t. nutmeg
• Roughly 6 c. vegetable oil for frying (I use safflower)

Ingredients for glaze:

• 2 c. confectioner’s sugar
• 1/4 c. cider
• 1/2 t. vanilla

Method:

Beat together eggs and sugar until light.  Beat in the cider/soda, butter and vanilla.  Add baking powder, flour and spices all at once.  Place this loose batter in the refrigerator (or freezer if you’re in a hurry), bowl and all, until it firms up a bit.

Meanwhile, heat your oil  in a deep cast iron kettle.  Keep a close eye on the temperature.*  When it reaches 290 degrees, take out your batter and pat it out onto a well-floured board.  cut as many doughnuts as possible with a 2-inch doughnut cutter.  Check the temperature of your oil again, and when it reaches 375 degrees, start frying doughnuts in batches, flipping once.  Remove the doughnuts with tongs from the oil, and drain on paper towels.  The doughnuts should take only a few minutes to cook, but you might have to check one from your first batch to make sure it’s cooked completely through.  Make sure the oil returns to 375 degrees before you plop in the next batch of doughnuts.

Scrape together and re-pat (or roll)  and cut the dough once more.  After than, you may roll any remaining dough into ropes and form doughnuts that way.

While the doughnuts cool, make the glaze by stirring together all ingredients in a medium size bowl until completely smooth.

When doughnuts are cool enough to handle, dip one side into the bowl of glaze, and allow them to crystallize on a cooling rack.  Best served warm, but the other day, my neighbors gave me 3 lobsters from their day’s haul for the day-olds.   Hope you’re so lucky!

*Note: In deep frying, the right temperature makes the difference between the sickening and the sublime.  Do take the temperature of your oil.  For super accurate results (and more fun in the kitchen), I use an $80 refractometer (purchased from Chef Rubber), which gives me an instant surface temperature read on everything from oil to ganache to caramel.  Arguably, the best thing about this handy little tool, is the fact that you need never stir around a clunky candy thermometer again.  Oh no wait: the BEST thing about this tool is taking the surface temperature of everything in sight.  I’ve always said, there’s a little OCD in all of us.

Chiliquiles from Michele Levesque of El El Frijoles

El El Frijoles. Photo by Michael Rossney.

On the edge of a forest in Sargentville, Maine, right off Route 15, and about a 1/4 mile from the Eggemoggin Country Store, is a tiny Mexican restaurant called El El Frijoles. This place is the very best kind of California-style cantina–squashed into a classic Maine farmhouse barn, it creates a ironic kind of harmony perfectly suited to its quixotic owner/operators, Michael Rossney and Michele Levesque.

Michele is the magician in front of the stove at El El Frijoles, and whether she’s in the restaurant or next door in her home, Michele always seems to be cooking up something fabulous–and more than willing to share a plate with a friend.  Her recipe for Chiliquiles is a simple, hearty breakfast which, she claims, is perfect for those mornings when getting out of bed seems totally beyond one’s capacity.  Sounds like a great breakfast in bed to me!

Ingredients:

• 1 T. olive oil
• 4 (6-inch) corn tortillas torn into strips, or 24 tortilla chips (Michele says she prefers to use chips for “added crunch.”
• 5 eggs, lightly beaten with a T. of milk
• 3/4 c. favorite salsa  (If Michele doesn’t have any of her homemade salsas in the fridge, she always has a can of Herdez on hand.)
• 1/2 c. shredded Cheddar or Monterey jack cheese

Method:

Heat the oil in a medium skillet over medium heat and fry the tortilla strips until lightly browned and crisp.

Add the eggs to the skillet, and cook, stirring, until eggs are scrambled and fluffy.  Stir in the salsa and the cheese.

Season with salt and pepper, and garnish with a wedge of avocado and a dollop of sour cream.

If you like your eggs spicy, Michele recommends Cholula hot sauce.

Serve the dish with some refried beans and a good, strong cup of coffee!

Baked Pancake with Berry Sauce and Melted Ice Cream from the Inn at Isle au Haut

On the east side of the island, there is a lovely inn run by my friend and culinary comrade, Diana Santospago. While Diana is much more than just her inn, the Inn at Isle au Haut is a perfect manifestation of Diana’s many talents.  Because there are no other restaurants on Isle au Haut, the inn offers three delicious, fresh, and beautifully presented meals every day, accompanied by some of the best shorefront scenery in the world.  So good, in fact, that the Inn at Isle au Haut was just listed by Yankee Magazine as one of Maine’s top ten “Dinners with a View.”

Here is Diana’s choice for Mother’s Day breakfast:

“Baked Pancake with Berry Sauce and Melted Ice Cream is my choice for a breakfast recipe for your blog for a couple reasons. First, it’s practically foolproof for kids(with Dad’s help of course)to make for Mom for that special breakfast in bed, and it’s totally yummy.

First make the sauce.

Berry Sauce

• 1-1/2 cups of fresh or frozen raspberries, blackberries, strawberries or blueberries or a combination of any or all. (If using fresh berries, mash half of them.)
• 1/3 cup sugar or honey
• zest of 1/2 a lemon

Combine the berries, sugar/honey and zest, tossing gently. Let sit at room temperature until the berries release their juice and the sugar is dissolved.

Meanwhile, scoop out about 1 cup of good quality vanilla ice cream and set aside to melt.

Baked Pancake

• 2 eggs
• 1 C. milk
• 3/4 C. all purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt pinch of cinnamon
• 1 T. unsalted butter

Here’s where Dad comes in!

Preheat a cast iron skillet in a 425-degree oven. Beat the eggs. Add the milk, flour salt, and cinnamon and mix well. Add the butter to the skillet. When melted, pour in the egg mixture. Bake for 15 minutes then lower the heat to 325 degrees and bake until puffed and golden-about 6-8 minutes. Slide onto a serving platter, slice into wedges, spoon on the berry sauce and drizzle with the melted ice cream.”

Blackberry Cream Cheese Scones

A long time ago, during my past life in a land called Santa Cruz, California there used to be a fabulous pastry shop called Rebecca’s Mighty Muffins on Front St.  Rebecca and her crew baked up some of the tastiest organic, homey, completely over-the-top muffins known to the human race.  Personal favorites included her California Glory and Zucchini Millet–but by far, my favorite pastry to accompany a double latte and the Sunday SF Chronicle, was her Blackberry Cream Cheese Scone.

This delectable crisp-on-the-outside, tender-and-crumbly on the inside piece of pastry perfection has haunted me since I first bit into one at the tender age of 19.  At the age of 28, on the day before I moved from Santa Cruz for good, I screwed up my courage, marched into Rebecca’s, and using all my powers of persuasion, tried to convince the cute counter boy to get me the recipe.  I was politely, but resolutely, denied.

Ten years later I am still trying to re-create that scone.  The following recipe, though not as delectable as Rebecca’s, is still pretty darn good–at least good enough to grace the pastry case at my own bakery here on the island; and, I’m proud to say, have attracted their own passionate followers.

Black Dinah Cafe Blackberry Cream Cheese Scones

Ingredients:

• 1/2-3/4 c. buttermilk
• 2 large egg yolks
• 3 c. flour
• 4 t. baking powder
• 1/2 t. baking soda
• 1/2 t. salt
• 8 T. cold, unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 4 oz. frozen cream cheese
• 1 c. frozen blackberries

Method:

Heat your oven to 400°.

Whisk together buttermilk and egg and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  On the large holes of a hand grater, grate cold butter into dry ingredients, tossing the flakes into the flour mixture with your hands as you go.  Pour in the sugar, and with cold hands, quickly rub the sugar into the flour/butter mixture.  Don’t over do it–leave some nice fat flakes of butter in there.

Next, cut the frozen cream cheese into rough 1/4-inch chunks, and toss them into the dry ingredients.  Same deal with the blackberries.

Pour in the buttermilk/yolk mixture and mix very quickly with a rubber spatula.  Tumble all this stuff onto an unfloured board (or a nice cool granite counter if you have one) and gently and quickly knead together using a bench scraper.

Pat this gorgeous purple-bejeweled dough into a rough disc, about 7 inches in diameter.  With a very sharp knife, cut the disc into 8 triangles and place on two cookie sheets, 4 to a sheet.  Space them out, so they have plenty of room to crisp up, unencumbered by the releasing moisture of its neighbor.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, rotating the cookie sheets once, about halfway through the bake time.

Remove the scones from the oven and immediately transfer to a cooling rack.  Allow to cool until you can’t stand it anymore, and then dive in.

Shrimp-stuffed chiles

I would be hard-pressed to choose one thing that I miss most from my life in California.  There were so many great aspects of just existing in Santa Cruz that to pluck one out and put it on a pedestal might possibly render it lackluster–or, at the very least, a victim of nostalgia.   But lets face it; great friends, great pubs, great food, great wine, great coffee houses, great weather, great hiking, biking and running are really hard to come by all in one place.

Oh, don’t get me wrong.  I don’t pine away for my life there.  I love my life right where I am.  But every once in a while, particularly when March rolls around and the first green shoot of spring is still 2 months away, I miss my home state very much indeed.

Which, come to think of it, is probably why  in the little free time that I have, I’ve been filling the refrigerator with homemade spicy salsas, roasting and freezing the few fresh poblano chiles that I can find in the mainland grocery, and dreaming up recipes that echo the flavors of a past life in warmer climes.  Here’s one of them:

Shrimp-Stuffed Poblanos

Serves 4, 342 calories per serving (but don’t quote me on it)

Ingredients:

4 large poblano chiles

1 sweet potato, peeled and cut in small dice

1/2 cup frozen corn kernels

5 small shallots, peeled and sliced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 T. olive oil

1/2 t. salt

1/2 t. Adobo seasoning (I really don’t know what this is.  Penzey’s Spices sent it to me as a sample and it’s been sitting on my spice shelf for many months.  But it smelled good and I was in a bit of a hurry, so I tossed it in.  I imagine a little cumin, oregano, ground chile might give you a similar result)

1 lb. raw Maine shrimp, peeled

4 oz. feta cheese, crumbled

2 T. pinenuts, toasted

Salsa

Method:

Roast the chiles.  I do this by turning two of my stove burners to the highest flame possible and setting the whole chiles side by side on the burner grate.  As the skin blackens, I turn the chiles with tongs.  Roast the chiles until the skins are completely blackened, then place in a heat-proof bowl, cover the bowl with a plate and allow the chiles to “sweat” until they are cool enough to handle.  When the chiles are cool, scrape off the blackened skin (I use the sharp edge of a pairing knife held at a 45 degree angle), make a small lengthwise slit in the chiles and remove the veins and seeds.  Set the chiles aside.

Heat the oven to 400 degrees.  Toss the sweet potatoes, shallots, garlic and corn with the olive oil, salt and Adobo seasoning.  Tumble this mixture onto a sheet pan and roast until the vegetables are tender.

Put the vegetables into a heat-proof bowl and toss in the shrimp, feta cheese and pinenuts.  With your hands, stuff this mixture into the prepared chiles, place the chiles in a lightly oiled pyrex dish, reduce the oven temp to 350, and heat the chiles until the shrimp is cooked; about 15 minutes.

Serve hot, with salsa and a spoonful of pinto beans if desired.

Happy accident

Yesterday, in an attempt to create an energy bar that I could take along on my daily walk into the national park, I accidentally came up with this.  Not quite what I was going for, but I must admit, today finds me more in love with them than yesterday.  I’ll still be trying to come up with an energy bar that I can choke down, but for now, these babies get me where I want to go.

Flourless Peanut Butter Blondies

Ingredients:

1	cup natural peanut butter
1/4	cup raw honey
1	egg
1	banana, mashed
1	tsp. baking soda
1/2	tsp. salt
1/4	cup black sesame seeds
1/4	cup raw almonds
1/4	cup raw sunflower seeds
1/4	cup golden raisins
1/4	cup unsweetened coconut

Method:

1. Combine peanut butter and honey until smooth.
2. Beat in egg, banana, baking soda and salt.
3. Stir in remaining ingredients and spread into 8 x 8 square baking dish.
4. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes. Allow to cool completely before cutting into 16 portions.

Occupational hazard

It seems that every March, without fail, I wake up in front of a mirror and wonder “Who IS that?”

Okay, so one could argue that with business booming and our little company bursting at the much repaired seams of our home kitchen, I don’t spend nearly enough time in front of a mirror.  And this is not false modesty.  I LIKE to look nice.  But I’ll admit: it’s like a freakin’ vacation if I manage to run a brush through my hair on any given day.

But then March comes around, and with Easter a safe 31 days away, I suddenly have time to brew beer with friends, go to supper on the Sunbeam (the islands’ floating ministry) and take a shower on a regular basis.  The latter inevitably leads to contemplating my appearance in a mirror, and each year it seems I am delivered with a new shock.  This year there are a couple–the most noticeable being a brilliant silver lock of hair cascading from my right temple.

Oh, I’ve been going grey for years; I’d like to think, way before my time.  This public aging process is somewhat tempered by the accidental discovery that while purchasing wine, if my hair is tucked under a cap, I, almost without fail, get carded.  (Once, I found myself in this situation–sans ID–while ordering a meal and a beer at a brew pub in New Hampshire.  After thanking the waitress profusely for carding me, I tugged off my cap and provided proof of age.  She was very embarrassed, but we all had to agree, it was a cool parlor trick.)

A little less noticeable, but no less shocking are the “winter” pounds that tend to gather quietly around me while I spend months not paying attention.

Months?  More like years.  Three years to be exact–and if I count backwards and do a little math, I can trace the extra padding on my hips to the exact date Steve and I drew up papers and incorporated a little company called Black Dinah Chocolatiers.

Gaining a little weight while spending a lifetime in the kitchen is, in my opinion, not only forgivable, but somewhat inevitable.  I consider it an occupational hazard of sorts–the same as scars from slip-ups with sharp knives and hot pans; we don’t try for them, but they give us character and speak to our profession.  And frankly, in this line of work, you could do a lot worse than packing on a few pounds.  Those of you who have ever worked in a professional kitchen know what I mean.

That being said, my appreciable sense of vanity rails against continuing the steady climb in body mass, currently at the rate of 6-1/2 pounds a year.  Particularly when the years go by faster than ever before–20 pounds in three years seems like someone rolled me up into a padded Kate Suit just last night.  Hence, the recent shock in my mirror.

Oh, I know, it’s not so bad.  People still ask me how I stay so slim while making chocolate for a living.  And while I do think there is way too much public emphasis on the appearance and weight of female chefs (that’s another subject, entirely), as I look down the barrel of my middle years (and while the possibility of affordable health care in this country fades quietly away as our political representatives give up more ground each passing day–again, another subject), maintaining excellent health is even more of a priority than ever.  Soooooooo, my belabored point being, I’ve decided to nip the impending pudge of my middle years in the bud.

Oh, don’t worry, this isn’t about to become a weight-loss blog, and if we’re all lucky, this is the last you’ll hear from me about it.  I just offer this post as a little intro to the recipes I’m going to be sharing in the next few weeks–fabulous meals, packed with nutrition, and low in calories and fat.   The first being

Country Captain Tofu

Serves 6, 237 calories per serving

(You can also find a link to this recipe, without all my jabber, here.)

When I first saw the recipe for Country Captain Chicken in this month’s Bon Appetit (the replacement magazine for the now defunct Gourmet), I was whisked back to my Keeper’s House days, where we would make this dish on the onset of every autumn.  BA‘s version suggested toasting and grinding whole spices for the curry, which changes the dish dramatically, and for the better.  I use a mortar and pestle, and like the different sizes of resulting grains, but an electric spice grinder will give you consistently fine results.  The following recipe is my further adapted version of the magazine’s recipe.

Ingredients:

3/4	tsp coriander seeds
1/2	tsp fennel seeds
1/2	tsp cumin seeds
1/4	tsp black peppercorns
1/8	tsp cloves
1/8	tsp cardamom seeds
1/4	stick cinnamon
1/4	tsp turmeric, ground
1/4	tsp cayenne, ground
4	tbsp safflower oil
1	sweet potato, diced
1	lb firm tofu, diced
3	green onions, finely chopped
1	tbsp fresh ginger, grated
2	cloves garlic, minced
1/2	cup white wine
1/2	cup water
1 28 oz.	can whole tomatoes, crushed
1/3	cup golden raisins, chopped
1	tbsp natural peanut butter
1	cup frozen peas
1/3	cup dried unsweetened coconut, toasted

Method:

1. Toast and grind whole spices, then mix with turmeric and cayenne.
2. Heat 2 tbsp of oil in a wide non-stick skillet and fry tofu until browned and slightly crispy on outside. Set aside.
3. Heat remaining 2 tbsp oil in deep dutch oven, add sweet potatoes, white parts of green onions, ginger and garlic and saute briefly. Add wine and water and about half of the spice mixture (save the other half for the next time you make this dish), cover and cook for 10 minutes, or until sweet potatoes are just tender.
4. Add tomatoes (with juice) and peanut butter, and cook until sweet potatoes are very tender.
5. Add tofu and peas and cook until heated through. Serve in bowls, topped with green onions and toasted coconut.

I say scallops, you say scahlups

Bert Bingham called the other day wondering if I was interested in scallops from Art Beal, a fisherman in Stonington.  Here,they sell them by the gallon or the quart, and if you are lucky enough to buy them off the boat and get them into your freezer, then you can have fresh-from-the-sea tasting scallops until next January.

I bought a gallon from Bert and two gallons from Louise and haven’t had this many scallops at my disposal since I worked at the inn.  Then, they were the size of filet mignon, and I’d grill them lightly, serve them with a spicy, slightly thinned Spanish romesco sauce, fresh watercress and call it dinner.  Nothing fancy, but for guests that had never had a scallop this close to the source, it was pretty much life changing.  I count myself in that category.

Confession:  Before I moved to Maine and took a job as a cook at the Keeper’s House, I had never before in all my years working in restaurants or experimenting at home, cooked a lobster, a piece of haddock or halibut, or a single scallop.  My potential Maine employers really should have asked me these things right off, but I’m glad they didn’t.  I’ve lived much of my life trial by fire–and though I don’t recommend it–it’s turned out alright so far.  A thick skin, a well-developed ability to laugh at oneself, and grace under completely humiliating conditions are essential.

I remember the first time I served lobster at the inn; I was filling in for Deena, the regular Sunday cook.  I had practiced killing live lobsters by steam all week at home, and had disassociated myself enough that I could do it while keeping a relatively tight reign on my facial expressions.  You have to remember: I’m a California girl, through and through.  I had become a vegetarian when I was 10, and was a card carrying member of PETA by the time I turned 13.  Sure, that was all a long time ago, and I’ve been totally omnivorous for years now, but killing lobsters was a totally new activity for me, and I wanted to make sure I could do it without flinching.

Turns out my biggest mistake that night wasn’t the fact that I insisted, much to the embarrassment of my native Maine co-workers, on saying a little prayer of thanks to the little lobster souls that went of up in steam; it was the fact that I served them with a delicate champagne buerre blanc (in place of melted butter), and an artistically stuffed tomato (rather than potato salad).

Louise, who was the prep cook and dishwasher that night–and who, clearly, was not won over by the latest non-native installation in her kitchen–rolled her eyes as I whisked butter into my champagne and shallot reduction and said, “Seems like a pain in the ass when melted butter and a wedge of lemon has been good enough for the last 20 years.”

Okay, so Louise and I didn’t always see eye to eye in those days, but I took her well-learned advice to heart that night, and by the time the Keeper’s House closed in October of 2005 we had stripped down “lobster night” to it’s barest New England roots–a dinner of lobsters, corn and mussels layered with rockweed, cooked in a single steel pot over an open fire on the rocks at the base of the lighthouse. And served on paper plates with coleslaw and potato salad–paper cups of congealing butter on the side.  It couldn’t have been more perfect.

My battle with the scallop wasn’t so hard fought, unless you count how much crap my neighbors give me for the way I pronounce it (see title, above).  It’s hard to ruin a good scallop, and even in my inexperienced hands, they gave us some great dinners at the inn.  Lately, I’ve been enjoying them tapa style, with other small dishes, in lieu of dinner.  And every once in a while, I catch myself saying it the Maine way, and am always shocked when no one notices.

Here’s that recipe for the Romesco I mentioned at the top of this post.  It’s my adaptation of Spanish kitchen goddess Penelope Casa’s recipe in The Foods & Wines of Spain. And given that it’s March 1st, and not July, the scallops are seared rather than grilled.  Instead, I’ve pan roasted the tomato and the garlic to get that nice charred flavor.

Maine Scallops with Romesco Sauce

Ingredients:

• 2 dried New Mexican chiles, stems and seeds removed
• 1 c. water
• 1/2 c. red wine vinegar
• 1/4 c. olive oil
• 2 slices French bread
• 1 large tomato
• 2 oz. blanched almonds, lightly toasted
• 6 cloves garlic
• salt
• 1 lb. sea scallops, rinsed and dried, hinge muscle removed
• a large handful of roughly chopped fresh watercress

Method:

Rehydrate the dried chiles by placing in a saucepan with the water and the vinegar, bring to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes.  Drain and allow to cool.

Heat a large skillet over high flame, and toss in your unpeeled cloves of garlic.  Pan roast until the skins are charred and the flesh is soft.  Remove from pan and allow to cool.  Add olive oil to hot skillet and pan fry the bread until golden on both sides.  Remove from pan.  Add whole tomato to hot skillet and pan roast until skin is blackened and blistered, and juice begins to ooze out of the fruit.  Remove from pan and allow to cool.

Peel the garlic, remove the stem end from the tomato and peel that too.  Place all ingredients in a food processor, including any remaining juices and olive oil from the skillet.  Whir until the mixture resembles a slightly chunky paste.  Add a little extra olive oil and salt to taste.  Set aside.

Season the scallops with salt and pepper.  Wipe down the skillet, smear with a thin layer of olive oil and heat over a high flame.  When the pan is very hot, sear the scallops, a few minutes on each side and so they are golden and slightly caramelized.  Deglaze the pan with a generous splash of sherry, madeira or white wine, and continue to cook scallops until they are slightly firm to the touch, but with a fair amount of give in the center.  Remove the scallops to a clean plate heaped with the watercress, add any remaining juices in the skillet to the Romesco–and thin the sauce to your desired consistency.  Serve the warm scallops with the Romesco on the side.