SWF BLOG
Middle Eastern Cuisine
There is no question that Middle Eastern cuisine has gotten people’s attention in this country, both in the form of restaurants and cookbooks. I have spent several weeks in the off-season experimenting with recipes from cookbooks such as Jerusalem, The Lebanese Cookbook, A Taste of Persia and Zahav (a wonderful book on Israeli cuisine) and gradually falling in love with the nuanced flavors and textures of these cuisines. While food from this part of the world is extremely diverse, I find that most of the recipes are easily replicated in the US, as so many of the ingredients are available to us. In this class, we will make homemade hummus, tabouli, sea salted flatbread, grilled eggplant and zucchini with labneh and sumac, turmeric Israeli cous-cous with currants, grilled lamb with a homemade za’atar and an apricot and cardamom roll, laden with pistachios and finished with rose water.
SWF BLOG
From Curd To Table at Salt Water Farm
Learning all about the “Luna” cheese through sight, sound, and smell. Thank you Lakins Gorge Cheese for teaching us about the strenuous but very rewarding process of making cheese!
SWF BLOG
A Late Spring Feast at Salt Water Farm
A father daughter duo plate up salads at our first cooking class of the season!
Salt Water Farm’s Annemarie Ahearn welcomes Downeast Magazine into her cooking-school kitchen and treats them to an early summer frittata.
Read the full recipe in Downeast’s June 2015 issue, on newsstands May 26!
SWF BLOG
Cooking Frittatas with Salt Water Farm: DownEast Magazine Video
SWF BLOG
The 2015 Full Moon Suppers Series at Salt Water Farm
Dear Friends of the Farm,
We are delighted to offer a series of six Full Moon Suppers this season, at our farm in Lincolnville, where guest can see our beautiful gardens and look over the Penobscot Bay. Each event features a four to five course meal, beginning with a cocktail on the patio, weather permitting. Menus are written just before the meal, reflecting the season’s offerings. Full Moon Suppers at the farm are $85 per person, exclusive of tax and gratuity. Events on the farm are BYOB, so please bring your beverage of choice. We’re happy to throw it on ice. Read More
SWF BLOG
Hosting a Meal: Salt Water Farm Style
After five years of hosting a supper club for 22 people at Salt Water Farm, we have become professionals at menu writing, grocery shopping, meal planning & execution, plating and even socializing with our guests. Our class “A Summer Meal for Friends” has been the most popular of the season, and our new friend, Lindsay Morris from Edible East End, sent along some photos from our most recent party planning class. If any of you would like to join us for the next “A Summer Meal for Friends” class, we have a few spaces remaining in our August 23rd class and you can sign up on our website at www.saltwaterfarm.com. Read More
SWF BLOG
Summer Happenings
This past weekend was an exciting one at Salt Water Farm. Saturday night promised to be beautiful, with clear skies, a full moon, and wonderful company at our second Full Moon Supper of the season. A morning trip to the Camden Farmer’s Market filled our kitchen table with baskets of strawberries, half a dozen of Common Wealth Farm’s chickens, and armfuls of vibrant summer vegetables. We fired up the grill and spent the day preparing for our guests, a menu including grilled broccoli and chicken, garbanzo bean soup, a speckled lettuce salad, strawberry galettes with elderflower whipped cream, and so much more. Our event started as our guests began to arrive around 6 p.m., and drew to a close on our patio with the full moon in clear view. It was an enjoyable evening to say the least, and I am already looking forward to our next supper in August.
Classes, SWF BLOG
Solstice
With recent weeks gone by in a whirlwind, there’s hardly been a moment to reflect on the latest happenings here at Salt Water Farm. The summer season has brought long, sun-drenched days wiled away in the garden, trips to the farmers market, bustling mornings in our café, and the first of the workshops in our cooking school. Our kitchen has quickly filled with summer’s bounty, brimming with live Maine lobster, Halibut steaks fished right out of Penobscot Bay, oysters, and armfuls of greens n’ things harvested from our own backyard. Participants were taught basic knife skills, shown how to shuck an oyster, learned to make sourdough bread start to finish, picked the first strawberries of the season, and instantly filled our kitchen with delicious scents and the clinks and clamors that promise a wonderful meal.
SWF BLOG
Memorial Day Asado at Salt Water Farm
By Lizzy Ott (Salt Water Farm apprentice)
The layered smell of salty air and aged wood, the gentle sounds of cleansing waves and birds’ soft songs, a reflexive eye blink and a glance towards the window through a misty fog and varying shades of green tree tops. The inevitable just-woke-up-in-a-new-place confusion encroaches. Where am I? Ah, yes, the coast of Maine.
This is how my mornings have started over the past two weeks. I’m the new apprentice at Salt Water Farm, diving into everything from the farm to the restaurant to the cooking school. After four years of student life in New York, this Northern migration has offered a very welcome breath of fresh air.
My first day at Salt Water Farm was the annual Asado. An asado is a traditional South American barbeque. The SWF asado was done true to form, with sustainably slaughtered lamb and rabbit, tasty side dishes made by friends and family in the cooking school kitchen, and a keg from a local brewer. We enjoyed the feast on a huge picnic table by the sea. It was the perfect introduction to the Salt Water Farm experience. I felt so thoroughly charmed by the camaraderie, the exceptional food and drink, and the backdrop of rows of vegetables. I immediately sensed the special quality to this place and the people who inhabit it.
SWF BLOG
A Visit to Dooryard Farm
May 20, 2014
I am lucky to live across the street from one of the only farms in Camden, Maine: Dooryard Farm. For you locals, it’s the beautiful green rolling fields on your left when you’re headed out of town towards the Snow Bowl. Cooper Funk and Marina Sideris are the proud owners, along with there darling son Julian and their black & white boarder collie. Previously, they managed a farm in Northern California called Dinner Bell Farm, where they focused on growing vegetable and raising chickens. At Dooryard Farm, they are growing beautiful salad greens, tomatoes, peppers and raising chickens as well as their first few pigs. They invited some friends over to meet the piglets and feast on their very own grilled chickens, pickled ramps, green tomato jam and a rhubarb crisp: a perfect spring meal. As I looked around at all of the young parents, mumbling toddlers and homegrown food, I was reminded of why I live here in the Camden Hills. A community of ambitious young farmers, artists, writers, craftspeople and entrepreneurs like myself grows in each passing year that I live in midcoast Maine. Together, we live fuller, richer lives and eat absurdly well.