This past weekend was Chris and my annual trip up to Maine to chill out with his family at a house they rent every summer. We used to take the trip by car, but for the past two years, we’ve been taking the quick 40 minute-airplane ride to Portland, followed by the 1.5 hour drive to Pemaquid. Yeahhhh, that’s all well and nice in theory… Quick comparison: 6 hour car ride vs. leaving for the airport at 8:30PM for a 10:30PM flight, just to find out that we’ve been delayed an hour… then an hour+ security line that somehow still left me feeling less-than-secure and actually thankful for the delay since we never would have made our flight had it been on time… then surprised with yet another delay once we made it to the terminal, where we caught a few cocktails before finding out that we could tack on yet another hour to our wait. Nice and tipsy, we finally boarded the plane, only to get delayed on the tarmac for another hour. Luckily, I fell asleep a little after midnight and woke up to find us landing on what MUST have been the shortest landing strip in history judging by the lurching halt that shook me back into awareness around 2:30 AM in the morning. Chris’s entire family had come to pick us up… but that was around 11:30 PM. They were still pretty chipper by the time we arrived and 6 of us piled into their SUV (seats 5) for the 1.5 hour drive to Pemaquid… in a downpour… with everyone exhausted. We probably all should have been frightened, but Chris and I were too tipsy and exhausted to care. At 4AM, we were just happy that we had a nice, warm bed to sleep until noon in. So let’s take the tally again: 6 hour car ride vs. 8 hour plane travel.
By my first basket of fried clams accompanied by a cup of fresh, homemade clam chowder, I could care less how I got to Maine. All I knew was that I was in Maine and I was going to take advantage of as many Maine-related calories as possible. And I don’t want fried clams UNLESS I’m in New England (northern Connecticut counts – especially if we’re at Flanders Fish Market). Even though it was monsooning outside, we all could care less, comforted by hot tea and mass quantities of carbs. By nightfall, the rain stopped just long enough for some grilled lamb, marinated by me in a rosemary-dijon sauce, and grilled-to-medium-rare delight by father-in-law. Of course, family-time always has complications and it’s always a little harder when you marry into family… think of experiencing all of your own family’s quirks for the first time and all at once as a fully formed, fully opinionated adult.
Luckily, Chris’s immediate family and I have definitely come to feel like real family and our choice moments are more amusing to us now than tear-filled. Unfortunately, I’m not quite there yet with Chris’s uncle, who was visiting from Paris. He and I (fueled by 4 bottles of wine) got into a heated “discussion” about his feelings on Food Technology. It went a little like this: he said, “I don’t think what YOU ‘do’ is actually cooking.” If you use any form of technology in the kitchen, he doesn’t consider it cooking… oh, that’s unless he uses that technology (fyi – he told me later that he had a Nespresso machine). He also thinks that if you are a chef (Michelin-starred or not) and use food technology or do any type of avant-garde cooking, that you can’t cook “simple” food. In fact, he doesn’t think Ferran Adrià can roast a chicken… Thank goodness for the wine and love of Chris’s family, because instead of going into a rage blackout, I tried to find humor in his antagonism (which for the record, was contradictory and hypocritical… but I’m over it, obviously).
Chris’s sister, Sophie, jumped to my defense and the conversation detoured into how her uncle had criticized her ratatouille (which he did again when she brought it up) and how he had once also told her that he didn’t want her to play bocce ball on his team because he didn’t want to lose… she was 7 at the time and the match was against her other uncle and brother… He didn’t remember the story, but clearly, she did. Actually, so did Chris for that matter, and he remembers very little outside of sailing rules and our anniversary (the latter because it’s engraved in his wedding ring). Luckily, that little gem of a story ceased our debating, had us laughing in no time, and we all had a final toast to family. As you get older, you start to realize that family is family and it’s more fun to argue with them than anyone else.
The next day was sunny and we filled it with activity to take advantage of the outdoors… and to maybe tire ourselves out enough so we didn’t have the energy for another debate later that night. All those lost calories had to be replaced, though, and I helped myself to blueberry & strawberry waffles, sausage, a few blueberry-infused beers (actually really amazing) chocolate doughnuts, another cup of clam chowder, 3 Pemaquid oysters, clam steamers, a softshell lobster, a cone of homemade butter pecan (with plenty of sass from the most bitter teenager to wield an ice cream scoop that I have ever seen), and a slice of carrot cake.
If you’ve never had softshell lobster (aka “shedder” or “peeler”) straight from a lobster coop before… Ok, so I hate having butter with my lobster. Lobster is so rich and decadent that the last thing it needs is to be coated in flavor-blocking butter. I know, lots of people love it, but I prefer my lobster dipped in a traditional Vietnamese mixture of lemon juice (when lime is unavailable), salt & pepper. These softshell lobsters, however, didn’t need a drop of ANYTHING. I literally ate the tender lobster meat straight out of the shell without one blessed condiment. It was so perfectly sweet and salty. I tried not to let a drop of the flavorful lobster jus go to waste either as I carefully broke my lobster apart and held each separated piece with the break upright so no jus would spill out. Then, I eagerly drank it like an athlete sucking down gatorade. Picture this: me hold up a lobster claw to my mouth, head tilted back, drinking juice out of it like I’m sucking on a sports bottle.
I can expertly take all the meat out of a lobster shell and leave it clean. This knowledge comes from YEARS of eating lobster with my parents, who made it every summer for my brother and I growing up. As far back as I can remember, my parents always steamed 2 lobster per person, even when we were just children. Lobster was a treat and when you get a treat, you indulge like there’s no tomorrow, or rather, like cholesterol doesn’t exist. And I love eating the lobster tomalley – the green stuff that’s caked in the body. Some people hate it and it’s supposed to be bad for you, but all I know is that it tastes SO good. It looks gross, but it has a great personality…
While I was digging into my lobster, I must have zoned out. I didn’t notice the MANY mosquitoes that were swarming around me (many of which got a nice taste of me seasoned with lobster jus), and I definitely didn’t realize that every time I cracked into my lobster, that it thanked me by spraying me with salty lobster liquid and white bits of albumen. Sophie looked at me, covered in lobster debris, and took a paper towel and gently tried to blot the lobster flotsam and jetsam off of me, as if she were a nurse blotting the brow of this lobster surgeon. I briefly looked up and realized what she was doing, but just shrugged and turned my attention back to my lobster before it got too cold.
Our Maine adventure was over too quickly and as we prepared to drive back to Portland (again in a downpour) to catch our flight, we found out that it had been cancelled. The last flight of the day… No worries, Chris’s brother, Alex, was going to drive back to Connecticut anyway, so we hitched a ride and ended up in Connecticut 7 hours later around midnight. Unfortunately, we missed the express train back to the city this morning, but waited on the platform, exhausted, for the next train to arrive. I could have flown to a foreign country with the time spent just trying to travel up and down the east coast, but I doubt that I would have had as good lobster or as blood-pumping discussion anywhere else. And throughout all the chaos, I didn’t rage blackout once… which must mean that my ongoing attempts to be a less-bad-person (vs. a fully good person – BOR-ing), are starting to work. Lobster and less rage. What more could you want from a long weekend?
Have you ever been asked whether or not your a sweet or savory person? You know, what do you prefer as a treat, a salty pretzel or a piece of chocolate? I hate that question. It depends. It always depends. I don’t like hard pretzels – they remind me of being an idiot teenager who knew squat about what “carbs” were and ate dry, brittle pretzels by the bag to lose weight. And I like chocolate, but it has to be dark chocolate (ideally around 70%) and it can’t have the words “milk,” “white,” or “Hersey’s” anywhere near it. Not interested. I’ll take the pretzel if it’s that or white chocolate. Oh, but if you dip that pretzel in some form of dark chocolate, or maybe a jar of nutella, then you have a snack that’s pretty tempting (and you also have what I religiously ate as a train snack while backpacking through Europe).
I’m a novice (super novice) at Food Porn. Santi Suarez, Food Porn Director, sits in his Director’s chair (complete with his name on it) at the wayyyy other end of that spectrum. Who is he? What has he done? Well, if you, like me, broke thousands of plastic straws trying to jam them into an orange like Tropicana did, you have Santi to thank for that. Oh, and I personally hold him responsible for the few adolescent years where I was obsessed with pepperoni, which means he’s also accountable for the fat and acne that came along with that obsession. And here’s an interesting little factoid: it’s because of Santi’s wife, Bonnie, and Santi’s son, Nick (of 
Last night, after the shoot, I went to take a picture of my 
I’m on my way home now packing half a Peking duck and 2 wonton noodle soup. Yes, it’s all for me. No, I’m not eating it all in one sitting – I plan to have it for breakfast tomorrow, too. When I get my duck home, I throw it under the broiler for half a minute or so to crisp up the skin. Then I put it in my wonton noodle soup with crispy skin side up and the bone and meat submerged. Ok, here’s where it’s going to get a little dicey for you non-Asian folk. After I eat the meat off the duck bone, I put the bone BACK into my soup and shove it back down into the liquid. Yeah, I know, so ladylike. It’s not that I’m too lazy to get a separate dish to throw away the duck bones in, it’s that the delicious bones sit in the broth and season it with five-spice-duckiness that elevates wonton noodle soup to an elysian level. Yup. It’s yummy… noodles! Hah! Get it??? Get it? Yeahhhhhh.
Please insert your own soundtrack of crickets chirping here. We were literally only the second (and third) people to arrive. Oh, ok… how old was that blog review that we read? Tam asked to sit at the bar (which I also love to do! I think I’ve found another dining soulmate) and we were escorted past a long row of empty seats to the very beginning of the bar and asked if these two stools were ok. Sure. Ok. I mean if that’s all you have…
This shio (salt) ramen was in a category by itself. Listen, I love me my hakata/tonkotsu pork-broth ramen and do prefer it to all other ramens in a Sophie’s Choice situation, but this shio ramen was Dy-No-Mite! Beyond the perfect savory balance that shio usually offers, this broth was smokey and a little sweet. There was depth to this broth that tasted like roasted crustacean shells. Just writing about it makes my mouth water – but that’s a new daily side-affect from the whole blogging thing. The broth also benefitted from stealing a little of the earthy, nutty, piggy notes from barbecued pork belly. Damn. I love moments like that first taste… these are the moments that always convince me it’s better to carry a little meat on your bones than to refrain from these sense-memories-in-the-making food moments. Don’t even think of commenting about how exercising helps offset blah blah BLAH BLAH. I don’t want to hear it – shhhhh… don’t disturb my ramen memory.
Once I put down the camera, I started digging in. I’ll be honest, I’m not a fan of overcooked seafood and there’s just no way to leave a scallop submerged in hot broth without it getting a little dense and mealy. That texture kills me, but it actually blended in nicely with the grainy texture of the egg sack surrounding the scallop proper. It all became pleasantly grainy the way pears are. Luckily, where texture leaves something to be desired, flavor does not. Even better was when, after nibbling the first part of the scallop to test, I then submerged and pulled it back with a spoonful of broth. Ahhh, so this is the way shio broth was meant to be savored.
Again, pork belly gets tough when cut thick and submerged in boiled ramen broth, making thin slices ideal in texture, but not in aesthetics. I appreciated the beauty of the thick cuts, but I have to say that I prefer a thinner slice. Still, the flavor on this pork was entirely satiating: savory, wood-smoked, porky-sweet.
By now, the restaurant had started to fill and Tam and I began to quietly congratulate ourselves on getting there early. I’m not sure if anyone else ordered the ramen – I saw a lot of sushi plates – but I felt extremely proud of ourselves for getting there early enough to guarantee sampling the umami deliciousness. The noodles were a little softer and too close to Top Ramen noodles than I would like, but they did absorb the flavor of the broth nicely. Oh, and the ramen came with what looks like mix-it-yourself-crab-congee that was nothing to write home about… so I won’t. In the end, this shio ramen proved that it holds its own and cannot be measured against a different type of ramen. I definitely enjoyed it and wouldn’t mind having it again… although it did leave me wishing that I had an “in” to get me past the hours of waiting at Ippudo – you know, some sort of “golden ticket” that will take me behind the scenes of its noodle and tonkotsu fabrication empire. In fact, I’m adding that to my list of things to do with this blog: make an Ippudo-inspired parody of Willy Wonka complete with Japanese, noodle-slinging Ooompa Loompas.
Mindy's Recipe For Disaster 