STRAWBERRY STICKIES // elspeth

Those are stickies. My grandmother taught my mom to make them, and my mom taught me and my sister when we were little, and now my mom is teaching Sally. There isn't much to making stickies—they're just leftover pie crust rolled out into tiny circles and filled with homemade jam. Usually we use strawberry jam, because we make so much of it every June, but I've made stickies with blueberry, rhubarb, and even lemon curd. The little pastries are homey and old-fashioned, and they're delicious.

 

You can see the process here pretty clearly: you take a little piece of leftover pie crust dough—it doesn't have to be more than a scrap, really—and roll it out. Then you grab a glass and cut the dough into circles. You spoon a little bit of jam onto one half of each little circle, leaving some space around the sides, then fold the other half over the jam and use a fork to press the edges. You use a knife to cut a few little steam slots on top, just like you would for pie, bake them for maybe 10 or 15 minutes, and you're finished.

When we made these, I was photographing while my mom and Sally were working, and Sally told us several things she wanted to make sure were in the story. First of all, she recommends licking the jam off the spoon. Also, a little jam might squeeze out of your sticky, and she wants you to know that's ok. And my mom wants to add that if you're after something a little less sweet, you can also fill the stickies with grated cheese, although she didn't think of that until she was a grown-up. 

I think that's all there is to know about stickies. Happy almost April, friends.

MUSHROOM VARIETIES // the local food report

I am writing this on Wednesday. It is noontime; we have just finished a lunch of boiled lobster and granny smith apples. Outside the storm is raging. But we haven't lost power yet, the woodstove is keeping the cold out, and in my imagination, I'm spending the afternoon in the warm, foggy greenhouse of the mushroom farm. It's nice there.

The variety you see up there is a small shiitake, fruiting on a block made out of wood chips. Shiitake is one of the twenty-two varieties Nantucket Mushrooms is growing this year, and it's one of the best known. They also grow a jumbo shiitake, which has caps about three to four inches in diameter. Shiitakes, like many of the varieties the farm grows, are considered both edible and medicinal, and are full of all kinds of surprising health benefits. For instance, did you know that shiitakes are a great source of iron and B vitamins? 

Below are descriptions of a few of the other varieties Nantucket Mushrooms is growing this year. Different varieties are available at different times of year, but they can all be grown either inside the greenhouse following the rise and fall of temperatures over the seasons or outside during the warmer months. The company was started on Nantucket and recently moved to Chatham, so we're lucky to have a new local source of mushrooms! The farm will be participating in farmers' markets all over the Cape this season, including Wellfleet. 

ENOKI: This has been called an "indispensable ingredient" in traditional Japanese cooking. It's a bunched pale ivory mushroom with very long, thin stems and small round caps. It's often used in soups, stir-fries, and sometimes salads. The Japanese love it in a winter dish called nabemono, which is made of other veggies and proteins (meat and seafood) in a warm broth.

REISHI: Reishi is one of the oldest known medicinal mushrooms. It's been used in traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years. Amongst other things it's said to fight cancer, tumors, and lower blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar. They are most commonly used in soups and to make a savory health brew called mushroom tea.

WHITE ELM: These pretty flat white mushrooms are great for all kinds of things. One recipe in particular that I found that sounds absolutely delicious is this focaccia with white elm mushrooms and rosemary (scroll down!). 

LION'S MANE: You have to click on the link below if only to see the photos. This mushroom is wild looking. It's covered in long, white filaments that hang down kind of like a shaggy dog, or cheerleading pom-poms, or...a lion's mane! This article says it tastes similar to lobster or shrimp, and that it's best caramelized in olive oil, deglazed with sake, and finished with butter to taste. Yum!

OYSTER MUSHROOMS (WHITE, KING, GOLDEN, PINK, BROWN): Oyster mushrooms are considered a delicacy in many countries. They're great in soups, stuffed, in stir-fries, and are sometimes made into a sauce. You want to eat oyster mushrooms young as they get tougher as they age. 

NAMEKO: This small, amber brown mushroom has a somewhat slimy coating. It's very popular in Japan and has all kinds of culinary uses, including as an ingredient in miso soup. Americans are often scared off by the slime-factor, but farm manager Troy Janusz says he thinks it's delicious.

They're also growing brick top, black poplar, shimeji, chicken of the woods, maitake, turkey tail (check out the photo!), cauliflower, wine caps, nebrodensis, and hypholoma capnoides. It's a mouthful, in every sense. 

One of Wesley's favorite things to make with mushrooms is something he calls mushroom tea—he uses dried mushrooms known for their medicinal properties and warms them up on low in a crockpot with water. He says you don't want to boil it because this will take away some of the beneficial properties, but just sip it warm like you would chicken broth. 

If anyone's interested in a full list of mushroom varieties with descriptions or the farm's production schedule, shoot me an email and I'll send them along. 

MUSHROOM FARMING // the local food report

Most farms operate on a familiar narrative: plant a seed, give it water and sunshine and nutrients, harvest a crop. As I recently learned, mushroom farming is a little more complicated. It has its own language—mycelium and hypha and primordia being key players. Once you speak it, it's not too tricky, but I had to haul out a dictionary at the beginning. 

The farm I visited was Nantucket Mushrooms in Chatham, a state of the art modern fungi farm recently relocated from the island. Wesley Price, the business manager and a passionate mycologist, and Troy Janusz, the farm manager, showed me around. The pictures you see up there are of one of the two 30 by 100 foot greenhouses and a big, beautiful king oyster mushroom.

Basically, the mushroom reproduction process works like this: you produce mycelium in a sterile lab. You can do this either using spores or tissue culture, and the difference between the two processes is essentially comparable to the difference between making a baby and making a clone. What you decide to do depends on what you're going for. 

Once you have mycelium—the vegetative part of a fungus made up of hyphae—you have to innoculate it into a growing medium. For two species—white and brown oyster mushrooms—the farm uses pasteurized straw—but for the majority it uses blocks made out of wood chips. The blocks are wrapped in plastic and kept in the greenhouse, where a fog machine adds plenty of humidity. Depending on the variety of mushrooms growing, the top of the bags are opened to encourage growth upward, or slits are cut in the sides of the bags to allow mushrooms to grow out horizontally. Each block can be fruited between three and five times depending on the species of mushroom growing, and then the process starts over. 

It's a pretty fascinating and technical process. 

The exciting news for eaters is that the farm grows twenty-two species of edible and medicinal mushrooms, and as farmers' markets open up in the next few months the mushrooms will be available at many different markets all over the Cape. Next week's Local Food Report will focus on all the different varieties they're growing...so stay tuned!

VIBRIO // the local food report

Oysters are big business on Cape Cod. Since 2005, oyster production in Massachusetts has grown by almost 300 percent. This year, somewhere between 15 and 20 million oysters are expected to be grown here. Mostly, we eat them raw, on the half shell. (Caviar and sour cream don't hurt.) And because of our tourism season on the Cape, we do a lot of this eating during the summer months.

In recent years, though, there's been an increase in the number of reported gastrointestinal illnesses linked to eating raw oysters. It isn't clear if this represents an actual increase in the number of people getting sick—for one thing, health officials estimate that for every reported case of Vibrio parahaemolyticus, or Vp, the culprit behind these illnesses—142 cases go unreported. For another, when almost 3 times as many oysters are being consumed, it's not surprising the number of people getting sick would increase accordingly. Furthermore, doctors are more aware of Vp, so they're testing for it more. 

But the rise has prompted state, federal, and local parties to start studying Vp a little more carefully. While we've known about the family of bacteria called vibrio for a while, we actually don't know all that much about our local species. There are other vibrios in other parts of the world—Vibrio vulnificus makes people much sicker and is common in warm saltwater climates, and Vibrio cholerae is the culprit behind cholera and is spread through contaminated drinking water. Vp is found in saltwater, and while it's possible to get infected with the bacteria from simply swimming with a cut, it's very unlikely. The vast majority of cases are associated with eating raw seafood, and roughly 70 percent occur between May and October, in the warmer months. High levels of bacteria are linked to warmer weather—studies show that the parts per million double every 15 minutes at air temperatures above roughly 70-75 degrees. People who ingest Vp are more likely to become ill if they have a compromised immune system.

Beyond this, we don't know all that much about Vp. We know that there are different strains of Vp, but we don't know if they all make you sick, or if only some of them do. The FDA recently hosted its biannual shellfish sanitation conference in Texas, and one major decision that came out of it was to put more resources toward studying the bacteria. 

In the meantime, because of the increase in the number of reported Vp cases in the past few years, last year the state changed the regulations for how long oysters can be out of the water between harvesting and icing, and this spring they are expected to come out with an updated Vp control plan for the summer season. I'll keep you posted once the new regulations come out.

And just to put the odds in perspective: it's still much less risky to eat a raw oyster from local waters than it is to get in a car. 

SUGAR SEASON // liz

Winter is loosening its grip, folks! We still have a foot of snow in our yard, but the sun is higher and stronger, the chickadees are giving their spring phoebe call, and best of all is what you see here: the sap is running!

I wish I could say that this photo was taken on our property, but it wasn't. I took it across the bay, where our neighbor Brad Babson has a beautiful stand of sugar maples. He taps about 45 trees every spring, and his sister, who lives across town, taps another 11. Brad boils down the sap in the little sugarhouse he built, firing the evaporator with wood collected from his own property, and bottles the syrup in quart and pint jars. It's a small-scale operation—some commercial sugarmakers have as many as 60,000 taps—but it nets him enough to provide family and a few friends with maple syrup every Christmas. Last year was his best yield ever: 7 gallons.

A typical sugaring season lasts about 6 weeks. The syrup made from the first run of sap is the lightest in color and is considered the "fancy" grade. As the sap continues to run, it picks up more minerals from the roots, and the syrup gets darker. Every year Brad's wife sets aside a small bottle of syrup from each sap run; you can see the gradations in color in the photo below.

Brad tapped his trees last Thursday—March 6—and hopes to be busy in his sugarhouse for at least another month. He'll have the coffee pot on too, and for lunch he'll be making maple-steamed hotdogs on top of the evaporator. Family and friends will join him, sitting outside the sugarhouse in the sun on warm days and huddling around the evaporator on chilly days. He loves the entire operation. "Sugaring is what makes March worthwhile," he says.

Sunday, March 23, will be Maine Maple Sunday. Sugarmakers will also be celebrating the season in Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire. We plan to celebrate right here in our kitchen and at our dining room table. Oatmeal pancakes and homemade maple ice cream have long been two of our favorite ways to use maple syrup, and Anna recently turned us on to a great maple glaze for salmon. Really, when it comes to maple syrup, the possibilities are endless.

WINTER INSPIRATION // liz

Isn't this lettuce gorgeous? I bought it at the Brunswick Winter Farmers Market a few weeks ago. I also bought kale, spinach, and chard. Onions, garlic, and leeks. Potatoes, rutabagas, carrots, parsnips, cabbage, whole-wheat flour, navy beans, and some freshly pressed cider. Oh, and some knockout tomatillo salsa too! All of it grown right here in midcoast Maine. 

Not so long ago, it wasn't this easy to find fresh local food all winter long. It's amazing what our farmers bring to market now, thanks to hoop houses, improved storage facilities, and a ton of hard work. Even on the coldest and snowiest Saturdays, they've supplied us with amazing greens and so much more. Six River Farm in Bowdoinham, for example, brings as many as 25 different crops to the winter market. By mid-February, when the challenge of growing and harvesting greens reaches its peak, that number drops to about 18. These are remarkable numbers; we live in planting zone 5b, where the annual extreme cold temperature is regularly as low as minus 10 or minus 15 degrees!

The farmers are accomplishing this, in part, with a combination of unheated hoop houses and, inside them, row covers on their crops. If you're interested in doing some four-season gardening yourself, check out one of Eliot Coleman's books on the subject: The Winter Harvest Handbook or Four-Season Harvest.

The photos here (thanks, Jan!) are just a small sampling of what you can find at the Brunswick winter market. There's also seafood, poultry, beef, and lamb; eggs and dairy, including great artisanal cheeses; baked goods, spices, and locally roasted coffee; beautiful crafts; and foot-stompin' live music. You can even get your knives sharpened! 

If you think eating locally in winter is pie-in-the-sky impossible, please think again. We are fortunate beyond words to have such amazing farmers in Maine. And more winter markets are popping up every year; the Maine Organic Farmers & Gardeners Association currently lists 28, in 13 of our 16 counties. The Brunswick market is open every Saturday, 9:00 A.M. to 12:30 P.M, from mid-November through April. See you there!

SEED ORDERING 2014 // the local food report

I have never been so over a winter. For a while, I tried to embrace it. Well, now I am trying denial. Let's talk about gardens! Spring! 

These pictures were taken by Andrew Cummings, and they're of his garden in Wellfleet. As you can see, he's meticulously organized, and it pays off. His beds are both beautiful and productive. Each year he keeps a notebook tracking the varieties he grows and what does well, and he revises his seed order based on year after year of experience. Last week, I talked with him about what varieties he's planning for this season. Below the photos is a list of his top picks for 2014.

PEPPERMINT CHARD

The peppermint name comes from this Swiss chard's pale pink stems. Andrew says it consistently out-performs the other chards in his garden, to the point where this year Peppermint is the only chard he's growing. He finds it less susceptible to pests and and excellent eating green.

UCHIKI KURI SQUASH

This winter squash is a beautiful deep orange. Inside, the flesh is the same color and incredibly sweet. Andrew found out about it through friends, who say it's excellent for pie or simply baking.

LUTZ GREEN LEAF BEET

This is the only beet Andrew grows. It's sweet, it's a great keeper, and you can eat the greens.

BROWN RUSSIAN CUCUMBER

This is an heirloom Ukrainian variety. The skin makes it look just like a potato! Reviews say it's great tasting, very prolific, and mid-sized. Andrew's trying it for the first time this year.

GREEN MEAT RADISH

Wow. What a name! It's related to the daikon radish and ... it's green! Andrew says it grows well all season long, and he likes to eat it ground up and mixed with mashed potatoes. The greens are edible too.

SHIN KURODA CARROT

Another Asian variety...this time a sweet, short, stocky carrot that does especially well in cool weather. Andrew says it's great for eating fresh and for cooking, and if you plant it in the fall, it will overwinter.

MUSHROOM SOUP // liz

I'm so eager to tell you about this mushroom soup. I've made it four times in the past four weeks, which even for a soup lover like me seems a bit over the top. First, however, I have to tell you about the milk in it. It's MOO—Maine's Own Organic—Milk. Isn't that a great name? It has a great story, too.

In 2009, when 10 small organic farms in Maine were dropped by the national dairy processor HP Hood, the farmers had two options: sell their farms or join forces and try to preserve their traditional dairy heritage. They chose the latter and formed MOO Milk. It had a rocky start—the award-winning documentary Betting the Farm tells the story—but the small company with a big dream has made impressive strides. It's currently working on new packaging and new products, including...yes, chocolate milk!

We've been buying MOO Milk for the past year and love it. It's available at every Hannaford and Whole Foods in the Northeast and at a few other grocery stores too. The milk reportedly travels a shorter distance from cow to cooler than any other organic milk in New England. It's also pasteurized at a lower temperature than other organic milks, which better preserves its nutrients and its taste.

Which brings us back to the soup. It's wonderful—velvety smooth and full of taste—and so easy to make. What's more, it can be made with almost all local ingredients. There's the MOO Milk, of course, which I buy at Hannaford. I get the onions and potatoes at our winter farmers market, and also celeriac, which I often use instead of celery. For a special treat, I sometimes splurge and use fresh mushrooms from Oyster Creek Mushroom Company in Damariscotta (I can get those at the farmers market, too). Regular button mushrooms also work well, though.

This soup is especially good on a bitter cold night—which may explain why I've been making it so frequently in recent weeks. As the wind whistles through the trees and the sky over Middle Bay Cove grows dark, we set the table, light the candles, and sit down to warming bowls of mushroom soup.

Or maybe I should call it MOO-shroom Soup.

MUSHROOM SOUP

This recipe, with a few small tweaks, comes from the original Moosewood Cookbook. You can make it richer by swapping cream in for the half n' half or some of the milk, or lighten it by making it entirely with 2% milk, as I usually do. Either way, it's delicious. The amount below serves 4–6 as a main course.

6 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 cups diced onion
about 2 teaspoons salt, divided
1 stalk celery (or 1/2 cup celeriac), diced
3 first-sized potatoes, thinly sliced
1 1/2 pounds fresh mushrooms, coarsely chopped
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
3 cups milk, scalded
1 cup half 'n half (or milk, if you prefer a less rich soup)
3 tablespoons dry sherry
2 tablespoons tamari
freshly ground black pepper
freshly chopped chives or scallion, for garnish

Melt the butter in a large soup pot and sauté the onions with 1 teaspoon of the salt. When the onions are translucent and soft, add the celery and potatoes. Cook over low heat, stirring often so the butter coats everything, for about 5 minutes. Then add the mushrooms, water, thyme, and remaining salt and stir well. Cover and cook over medium heat for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool a bit.

Pureé the mushroom mixture in a blender or with a stick blender until it is velvety smooth. Return it to the soup pot and heat it very slowly—"with utmost care," as the Moosewood puts it—as you whisk in the scalded milk and then the half 'n half, sherry, and tamari. Heat only until hot enough to serve; if boiled, the soup will curdle and lose its texture.

Serve with freshly ground black pepper and, if you have it on hand, a garnish of chives or scallions. A few thinly sliced mushrooms add a nice touch too.

HARVEST OF THE MONTH // the local food report

Kids will be kids. Trading cards! Woo! It doesn't matter if they're about tomatoes and apples, kale and carrots. This is just one of the things the Massachusetts Farm to School Project has figured out.

They've also figured out how to make introducing local food to school cafeterias easy. This year they piloted a program called Harvest of the Month, and over six hundred Massachusetts schools participated. The basic idea is this: the Massachusetts Farm to School Project does the legwork. They work with suppliers statewide—purveyors who already have contracts with individual schools and entire districts. They connect these purveyors with farmers. Then they put together the roster—tomatoes in September, pears in October, apples in November, and so on—and all the publicity and materials the schools receive. Then all cafeteria directors have to do is sign up and come up with ways to serve the featured crop at least twice each month. It makes serving local food a no brainer.

I learned about it through Wellfleet Elementary, where my nieces attend. It turns out the whole Nauset district participates, as do schools on the Vineyard, Nantucket, Barnstable, Sandwich, Fall River, Chatham, and Bourne. This year was the program's pilot year, and it ran six months. The response from food service directors has been overwhelmingly positive, so next year the creators at Mass Farm to School will offer a full calendar year. 

When I stopped by the Wellfleet cafeteria on Monday, the kids were trying a carrot soup. Fifty-five liked it, and fifty didn't try it. But there were no dislikes. If an item is popular enough—like kale chips in December—it goes on the menu. Pretty cool, huh?

WINTER SHEPHERDS PIE // anna

Oh, shepherds pie.  I've been missing out for too many years.

You see, it's kind of funny that I'm here posting this recipe.  We have some history, shepherds pie and I. Until a few years ago I had only eaten the dish once before (that I can remember).  I swore it off around age six when I developed a stomach bug a few hours after having it for dinner.  Despite my mom telling me it was just a coincidence, I decided I was allergic to shepherds pie and spent the next fifteen or so years ignoring it.

When my boyfriend and I moved to Portland, I was reintroduced to shepherds pie at The Front Room. And, lo and behold, it was delicious.  (I mean, how can you go wrong with lamb and mashed potatoes? What was my six-year-old self thinking?!) Now I make my own version on winter nights that are especially cold and dark, which unfortunately are all too frequent these days.

WINTER SHEPHERDS PIE

Any Brit would probably cringe at this recipe, because I don't think it's very traditional.  I used lamb sausage for my version because I can get it locally and the flavor is amazing, but any well-seasoned ground meat would work.  I also happened to have some frozen peas on hand that I wanted to use up, but they could certainly be left out. 

5 to 6 medium potatoes, cut into quarters

2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil

3 large links lamb sausage, equaling about 1 and 1/2 cups ground meat total

1 large shallot, chopped coarsely

1 small sweet potato, cut into small cubes about 1/4 inch thick

5 to 6 medium carrots, sliced into rounds 1/4 to 1/8 inch thick

3/4 cups green peas

1 large bunch kale, stems removed, roughly torn into small pieces

2 to 3 tablespoons worcestershire sauce

Salt and pepper, to taste

2 tablespoons butter

Cream, milk, or half and half, to taste (for the potatoes)

1/4 to 1/2 cup cheddar or parmesan cheese, grated

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Place the potatoes in a large pot and cover by about one inch with water.  Place over medium-high heat and boil until a knife slides easily through the largest pieces.

While the potatoes are boiling, cook your sausage.  Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large frying pan or skilled.  Remove the sausages from their casings and break into pieces as you add them to the skillet.  As the sausages cook, break them up into smaller pieces with a fork or wooden spoon.  When the meat is cooked, remove it from the skillet with a slotted spoon, place it in a bowl, and set it aside.  Leave the remaining sausage grease in the pan, as it will add flavor to the veggies as they cook.

Place the chopped shallots in the skillet with the lamb grease and sauté over medium heat until soft, about five minutes.  Add the sweet potato and carrots and cook, covered, until soft, about 5 or 10 minutes.  When the largest pieces of potato and carrot are soft, add the peas and the kale.  Cook another 5 or so minutes, until the kale is wilted and can easily be mixed into the rest of the vegetables.  Stir in the worcestershire sauce and salt and pepper to taste.  Mix well.

When the potatoes are soft, drain and place back in the pot.  Add butter and begin to mash the potatoes with a wooden spoon or potato masher.  Add cream, milk, or half and half and continue mashing until the potatoes reach your desired consistency. (I find this varies from person to person, so I'll leave it up to you—I think I added about 1/4 cup of half and half.)  Add salt and pepper to taste, and set the potatoes aside.

Now it's time to assemble the pie.  First, place the sausage pieces in the bottom of a large casserole or cast-iron skillet.  Pour the veggie mixture over the sausage.  Finally, place large dollops (that's a technical culinary term, right?) of the potatoes throughout the casserole, spreading them together so they fully cover the veggie mixture.  Sprinkle the grated cheese over the potatoes.

Bake for about 20 minutes, until the cheese is melted and is beginning to brown.  It doesn't hurt to turn the broiler on at the end for a minute or so to crisp up the cheese.