SWF BLOG
Salt Water Farm in the New York Times and Down East Magazine
By Irene Yadao
Salt Water Farm was featured in the New York Times Travel Section on August 2nd.
In an article that toured the most unique, historic and burgeoning aspects of Midcoast Maine in 36 hours, spots like the Rockland Breakwater, the Brunswick mills, and some of our favorite nearby restaurants — including Primo in Rockland, Chase’s Daily in Belfast and Shepherd’s Pie in Rockport — were lauded for the ways in which they give Midcoast Maine a “cool, innovative spirit.”
Writer Brendan Spiegel nicely summarized what we do at Salt Water Farm:
Ms. Ahearn and a roster of guest chefs teach classes on everything from pie making to chicken raising in a hip, natural-wood-filled setting that epitomizes the new midcoast aesthetic.
Click here to read the entire article.
We also got some wonderful local press in Down East Magazine‘s August issue. Here’s a snippet of Will Bleakley’s interview with Annemarie:
“What makes Maine unique is how, even with a limited growing season, people still eat locally 365 days a year — which means pickling, preserving, salting, smoking, and freezing. I never experienced that kind of resourcefulness anywhere else. The more time I spend in Maine, the more I realize that kind of resourcefulness is what’s missing from the knowledge base of people who live elsewhere.”
You can click here to read the full interview, or pick up a copy of Down East Magazine.
For more information on our single-day cooking classes, three-day workshops, guest-chef classes and suppers, visit www.saltwaterfarm.com.
SWF BLOG
Workshops at Salt Water Farm
By Annemarie Ahearn
Hard to believe that we’ve already completed two workshops at Salt Water Farm and the season has just begun. The students came from all across the country (in fact, across the Atlantic too) to spend three days studying traditional skills in the kitchen and in the garden. In the off hours, they experienced all that mid coast Maine has to offer, from hikes up mountains, to beautifully made shaker-style furniture, to culinary delights and micro breweries in nearby coastal towns.
The students learned everything from how to bake a crusty loaf of bread with a homemade starter, to how to make fresh butter from cream, to how to plan a culinary garden. Many of them shucked (and ate) their first oyster.
During the first workshop, we went to the Harbor Master’s House, where Mike and Lynn Hutchings, (who have been in the lobster fishing business for decades) told us all about size requirements, depth of traps, bait, the life cycle of lobsters and much more. Mike and Lynn sell lobster and steamer clams out of their home and I’ve been going there to pick ’em up since I was a kid. They are the feistiest lobsters around.
In our second workshop, we headed down to the shoreline at low tide to collect mussels, periwinkles, welches and the occasional baby crab. The students particularly loved cooking in our wood fired oven and learning about how to make pizza dough that is airy, flavorful and cooked to perfection.
Most importantly, over the course of three days, the students shared stories from home, knowledge from their own culinary endeavors and three meals together around our table. It’s always bitter sweet at the end of the class, when everyone must leave the warmth and good spirit that’s been created in our kitchen.
There are a handful of workshops over the course of the summer and into the fall for those interested in broadening their skill set in the kitchen and garden. For more information on dates and times of upcoming workshops, or to register, visit www.saltwaterfarm.com/schedule.php.
SWF BLOG
The Daily Prep visits Salt Water Farm
A big thank you to Muffy Aldrich for the wonderful and warm post about us on her popular Coastal New England lifestyle blog, The Daily Prep. Below are some photos she and her family took during their visit to the farm. We enjoyed her visit and look forward to having her over for one of our suppers very soon.
To read the full post, click here.
All photos courtesy of The Daily Prep.
SWF BLOG
Escape to North Haven
By Irene Yadao
North Haven is a gem of an island — just an hour ferry ride from nearby Rockland and a stone’s throw from the island of Vinalhaven. It is a place of understated beauty, and it is also the home of Nebo Lodge and Turner Farm, two places doing some really amazing and inspiring work.
Its quiet roads can be toured by bike in one day and the views are breath-taking: rolling hills, lupine-dotted fields of grass, large, looming trees, ocean expanse in the background.
If you haven’t been to North Haven, here’s a glimpse.
The ferry from Rockland to North Haven.
North Haven, Maine: The way life should be.
A field of lupines.
Charming rooms and creative dinners make for a special experience at Nebo Lodge. Photo courtesy of Nebo Lodge.
Turner Farm is a certified organic farm with pasture-raised pigs, chickens, cattle and goats, four greenhouses that produce vegetables year-round, and a creamery. Photo courtesy of Turner Farm.
To learn more about Nebo Lodge or Turner Farm, which offers tours on certain days of the week, visit their websites at www.nebolodge.com and www.turner-farm.com.
For more information on North Haven, visit www.northhavenmaine.org.
SWF BLOG
A Spring Fling with Rhubarb
By Irene Yadao
When I moved to Maine several years ago, rhubarb had been something of an anomaly — I’d only heard about it, but never actually seen or tasted it. I didn’t have any great urge to, either. It was described to me as a fruit that was overly tart, and I’m not particularly fond of tartness.
I grew up in San Diego, where my mother’s repertoire of Filipino dishes highlighted noodles, stews, liver, tripe. Family desserts featured lychee, jackfruit, and coconut. Rhubarb was not in my food lexicon.
But when I worked as a baker in Rockport, I quickly learned that rhubarb strawberry pie was a popular Maine staple. I baked armies of them, especially during the summer, when tourists could not get enough of pie. I spent mornings preparing the rhubarb, slicing the crimson-red stalks into cubes, their celery-like anatomy so unfamiliar to me. Still I resisted them.
I finally relented one day after my co-worker Anne expressed shock at my not having had rhubarb. She baked a delightful treat for the shop which showcased a deep pink rhubarb jam in the center, and she insisted that I try it. It was a Hungarian Rhubarb Shortbread, and it was heavenly. Both the shortbread and the rhubarb jam were a revelation. I was hooked.
Anne passed along the Gale Gand recipe, which you can find here and here. It is an interesting deviation from the typical shortbread in that it includes egg yolks, and its dough is frozen and grated into the baking pan. I attribute both of these to the texture, which is neither cookie nor cake but something in between. It is now my go-to dessert every spring. I started earlier than usual this year when a few weeks ago, the rhubarb stalks from my friend’s garden got large enough to harvest. I couldn’t say no when she offered me an armful.
The ingredients: butter, sugar, flour, eggs.
Counterclockwise from top left: Logs of shortbread dough, Hungarian shortbread pulled from the oven, shortbread topped with confectioner’s sugar, confectioner’s sugar.
All photos by Irene Yadao
Odds & Ends
Odds & Ends: Kitchen Vignettes, Seattle Love, and the Perennial Plate
By Irene Yadao
We were delighted that our new friend, Aube, writer of the award-winning blog Kitchen Vignettes, mentioned us on her website this week. In the same post, she also offers a fabulous nettlekopita recipe that we’re dying to try, especially after the buckets of nettles that Rebecca recently procured. We love Aube’s inventiveness and creativity, both in the kitchen and behind the lens. Thanks for the shout-out, Aube!
Photo of nettlekopita, courtesy of Kitchen Vignettes.
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Exciting news from Seattle: Chef Renee Erickson is adding a new restaurant to her repertoire, which currently includes Seattle staples The Walrus and the Carpenter and Boat Street Cafe and Kitchen. The Whale Wins, which will focus on wood-fired dishes, is set to open this summer in a converted warehouse in the Fremont Collective. We can’t wait to visit next time we’re in the Northwest.
Photo of Renee Erickson, courtesy of Boat Street Cafe.
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If you haven’t yet had the pleasure of following the work that Daniel Klein and Mirra Fine have produced on The Perennial Plate — you’re missing out. It’s an amazing web documentary series about socially conscious, sustainable agriculture and cooking. The subjects (and the people) are diverse and wide-ranging. Each episode is relevant and revealing, and compels viewers to open their eyes to where their food is coming from. But the show isn’t didactic. It’s interesting. And fun. We’re looking forward to seeing what they have in store for their third season.
We urge you to check them out at theperennialplate.com. In the meantime, here is a link to an episode they filmed in Montana, called The Cows and the Horses, and a link to the final episode of their second season, which recaps their journey.
A clip from Perennial Plate, Season Two, Episode 70.
Odds & Ends
Odds & Ends: Ethical Meat-Eating, Fergus Henderson, and the James Beard Awards
By Irene Yadao
If you flipped through last weekend’s New York Times Magazine, you may have read this Ethicist contest-winning piece, written by a dear friend of Rebecca’s, Jay Bost. It’s a great article entitled “Give Thanks for Meat,” and it eloquently states our feelings on the act of consuming meat.
Jay, a vegetarian-turned-meat eater, writes:
For me, eating meat is ethical when one does three things. First, you accept the biological reality that death begets life on this planet and that all life (including us!) is really just solar energy temporarily stored in an impermanent form. Second, you combine this realization with that cherished human trait of compassion and choose ethically raised food, vegetable, grain and/or meat. And third, you give thanks.
Thank you, Jay, for your sentiments.
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Speaking of meat, here’s a great article from London’s Financial Times that profiles nose-to-tail pioneer Fergus Henderson. It’s a quietly beautiful glimpse of the chef and his wife Margo (also a chef) in their West Covent, London home.
Photo of Fergus Henderson from The Financial Times
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The esteemed James Beard Foundation held its annual James Beard Awards ceremony last night. Among the winners was our friend Matt Dillon, owner/chef of Sitka & Spruce in Seattle. Matt won Best Chef award for the Northwest region. Congratulations to Matt, his talented sous chef Emily Crawford and the entire staff of Sitka & Spruce. For a complete list of the winners, click here.
James Beard Award winner Matt Dillon of Seattle restaurant Sitka & Spruce
SWF BLOG
Salt Water Farm on NPR’s ‘The Salt’
By Irene Yadao
NPR science correspondent Joe Palca wrote a great piece on NPR’s food blog (The Salt) about the “wild science” of baking sourdough bread. Joe, who attended Salt Water Farm’s Pop Tech bread baking and cheese-making workshop last October, says he was curious about Farm Manager Ladleah Dunn’s recipe of making sourdough bread with levain, or a bread starter, made with yeast harvested directly from the air in one’s immediate environment.
“I thought sourdough didn’t have any yeast,” he writes. The idea of wild yeast also intrigued his sister, Margaret, who happens to be a baker, and together they run an experiment of sorts with the help of a food scientist and a chemist.
To read Joe’s piece, “The Wild Science of Sourdough Bread-Making,” click here. You can also read our write-up about the 2011 Pop Tech class right here on our blog.
Joe Palca’s sister, Margaret, is a baker based in Brooklyn.
At last year’s Pop Tech class, Joe rolled up his sleeves and dug right in.
Joe listens as Ladleah prepares a demonstration.
SWF BLOG
Maine Magazine Food Issue + James Beard semi-finalists
By Irene Yadao
Our copy of the March issue of Maine Magazine just arrived, and we’re extremely excited because it’s the annual Food Issue. In it, a roster of celebrated Maine chefs — including local chefs Bas Nakjaroen (Long Grain) and Brian Hill (Francine Bistro, Shepherd’s Pie), as well as Portland chefs Masa Miyake (Miyake, Pai Men Miyake), Rob Evans (Hugo’s, Duckfat), and Steve Corry (555) — discuss favorite dishes they take pleasure in cooking for their restaurants.
There’s also a feature on mushroom forager Evan Strusinski and an appearance from our own Annemarie Ahearn, who shares what she enjoys preparing in the spring. Overall, great coverage from the editors and writers of Maine Magazine.
The Food Issue couldn’t have arrived at a better time, too. The James Beard Restaurant and Chef Award semi-finalists were announced on February 21, and Maine was well-represented. Among the semi-finalists: Brian Hill, Melissa Kelly (Primo), the Chase’s Daily team, and four Portland chefs. Congratulations to all.
SWF BLOG
Afar Magazine
Over the summer we had the pleasure of spending time with writer Michael Sanders. Michael attended one of our three-day workshops, where he learned the basics of cooking and gardening — chicken butchery, canning, and bread baking among other things.
He wrote about Salt Water Farm and his workshop experience for Afar magazine. The magazine, the article, and Tara Donne‘s stunning photography are exceptional. Thank you, Michael. And thank you to Tara, who captured the joy of what we do, as well as the special magic of Maine. Check out Michael’s article here.
All photos by Tara Donne