RE-ENTRY

I’m thinking next summer of putting a moratorium on my Down East BLTs, which are Bacon, Lobster and Tomato rolls. They are my version of Maine’s justly revered lobster rolls. Basically, they’re about lots and lots of fresh-picked lobster meat mixed with mayonnaise that’s been drizzled with the juice of tomatoes rubbed against a fine-mesh sieve. You take the residual juices and whip them with mayo. There are only a couple other tricks – I don’t chop celery stalks, for instance, but rather mince celery leaves and add them to the lobster salad. I layer a slice or two of bacon inside the top-loading hot dog roll (and you can find them in these parts if you look hard enough, made by Pepperidge Farm and called either New England-style rolls or top-sliced rolls), a very thin slice of ripe tomato and pile on the lobster salad.

This is all there is to it. But every time we have folks over to dinner when we’re up in Maine, they want Down East BLTs. I love them, but I also love making lots of different things. So I told Jay he’s getting something else next summer and I told Rob he’s only got one more year of Down East BLTs, then he, too, has to cope with something lobster-new. Alison and Melissa, having trekked this year from Houston and Vermont respectively to the little cottage on Penobscot Bay, still have a few years of Down East BLTs to go before they hit the no-more wall.

Not that I didn’t cook anything else. Greens – oh, oh, the greens from Chase’s! That would be Chase’s Daily in Belfast, part restaurant, part farm market. At 11 a.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, the truck from Chase’s Farm pulls up to the back door of Chase’s Daily and starts unloading. Bunches of mixed greens – amaranth, miner’s, kale, chard, feathery Asian leaves and more, more, all string-tied in the same beautiful bunches. Heirloom tomatoes, cups and cups of colorful cherry tomatoes, onions red, white and yellow, leeks, beans of all stripes – skinny and fat, Romano and thread-thin yellow. Herbs galore, potatoes, potatoes, potatoes, squashes, melons, bouncy heads of lettuce, berries – tiny strawberries, tinier wild blueberries. And flowers, which I never get around to buying, since I’m always at three shopping bags of produce and already short a hand. I manage to squeeze in a bread or three, baked by the Chase family, as well, and rush home to contemplate.

Oh, dear, and I also go to the farmers’ markets. It’s the same there.

So I have this fridge full of produce, counters laden with tomatoes-potatoes, and everyone wants Down East BLTs???? You understand my dilemma.

Don’t feel too sorry for me. This year I forced on folks a potato salad dressed in lemon-mustard vinaigrette and powered by lots of parsley. Potatoes, too, partnered with Ducktrap Farms peppery smoked mackerel. Greens, of course, stir-fried crisply and squirted with lemon juice, as they do as Chase’s. Beans blanched and dipped in all sorts of pungent things. Mostly it was thread-bare stuff – food that let the all the various vegetables to their own tunes. It was glorious. Yes, I had a few Whoopie Pies. Why not? And crab rolls and fried clams up at Bagaduce Lunch on the Blue Hill Peninsula. Of course.

But though re-entry is hard – have you ever watched a nearly full moon rise over Penobscot Bay, when Penobscot Bay is inches away? – I felt so, so much better this year about Garden State produce. The heirloom tomatoes at Clayton Farm and The Farm in Freehold Township slam-dunk the tomatoes I had in Maine. Twin Pond Farm’s Sicilian eggplant remains the champ. The wonderful island crops out at Hallock’s rock and rule. Used to be that I came home from Maine mourning the loss of what I was leaving behind. This morning, as I write this, I’m eager to set out to see what’s on the farms here right now. I know it will inspire me.

So I’m off and scouting. In the coming days, I’ll chat with y’all about some of the issues you raised in posts below (a chain restaurant where Jersey Freeze is now??? What???) and, if you’d like, talk more about Maine.

Right now, I’m hungry. Again.

Cheers,
Andy
8.30.07