elrap

Hi folks; I finally fell off my diet long enough to stop at this place on Route 1A along the coast near Ipswich. You know, this ain't Tennessee, and while you can debate over whether or not clams should be breaded, battered, buttered, basted, or simply shucked and sucked, really good barbecued ribs are about as rare in these parts as pupusas. So - The American Barbecue in Rowley is a really fun place that stinks of smoke, has free peanuts, good prices, Sam Adams Summer Ale in season, rolls of paper towels stuck onto the ends of the tables, and very seriously tender and delicious ribs. It also has darned good pulled pork, surprisingly tasty barbecued shrimp, bacony baked beans, a light, cakey version of cornbread, and surprisingly sweet and fresh grilled corn. It doesn't have table service, a full liquor license, or reservations. You order from a counter, then sit down, drink beer, shell peanuts, and listen to country music until your food is ready. I really don't want to bother trying to find anything negative to say about this place. I guess there could be a few things here and there, but to be honest I'm really so pathetically grateful to have cold beer and tasty ribs in a place I can easily drive to and eat at while wearing a sweaty t-shirt that I would feel like a traitor to my own cause if I started quibbling. Hope you enjoy the place as much as I do, L. Rap

Hi all; Unlike the last two years, which were a bone-dry disappointment for mushroom hunters, this year the New England fungi are out early and in profusion. Chanterelles, black trumpets, milkmaids (lactarius hygrophoroides), oyster mushrooms, lobster mushrooms and many more are having by far the best growth seen in my brief (four year) but delicious picking career. Chanterelles are going particularly nuts right now, to the point where I'm getting kind of sick of preserving them. I know this will drive a lot of you crazy if you don't know how to find and positively identify them, but believe me they're out there (try sparse grassy areas in the woods under oak or especially hickory). Anyway - if individual members somewhere generally near the Newburyport area want to email me I'd be happy to either invite you on a personal foray, if that works out, or forward some news about the nicely organized local trips sponsored by the Boston Mycological Club. Keep on pluckin', L. Rap

A friend told me someone on the radio was advising listeners not to eat lobsters for awhile. Personally, I hope the price drops, I'll pick up some up. Sewage isn't any worse than what lobsters eat normally. Regarding mushrooms, it hasn't been a great morel season but there are a few around. Mostly, these rains are too early to help the more typical NE edible fungi, which don't get going until July. But I'm hoping it will help, last year was a really bad mushroom year. I expect the shellfish will be back in a week or two but I'll be anticipating jonnyd's report! --L. Rap

Well, on the personal level I had around 21" of water in my basement, but as of today, I'm feeling lucky. There are clamming grounds that just opened in the flats of Newburyport, right where the Merrimack empties into the ocean. I expect these will be affected for a while, but they are routinely shut down for a week or so after any heavy rains. I think I'll be optimistic & predict no huge effect on NE shellfishing this summer. The floods themselves have been pretty localized. My other thought is - lots of water, lots of nice raw sewage floating around - maybe it'll be a great year for wild mushrooms! --L. Rap

Blair, I just noticed that Morel Mania has them dried at $10 an ounce mail order; that would rehydrate to half a pound. They seem nice, you might give it a shot. --L. Rap

I went out and harvested what morels there were from the lawn of a very nice lady who has them growing out of mulch around a flowering ornamental tree of some type, and amongst low juniper bushes. Very nice black morels, but only 24 or so - less than half what I found there last year. So perhaps not a great season for morels, though these intense rains bode well for lots of other species (not including humans). I found some snow pea shoots at Idyllwild Market in Acton (where they were selling fresh gray morels at $50 a pound, btw!), and brainstormed a dish of baby new potatoes, sliced into fingers and cooked in chicken broth, braised in a sauce of reduced heavy cream with the morels, a diced shallot, and tangles of the pea vine. Broiled farm-raised arctic char, and a nice and inexpensive chenin blanc (Stellenbosch), most spring-like and sustaining! Probably put the recipe on my site at some point. There's a few left (I gave away some) and I'm going to quarter them, egg batter them, roll then in cracker crumbs or panko or something, and fry then in shallow butter as an appetizer tonight, the way so many lucky mid-westerners say that the good Lord intended. Enjoy yourself, L. Rap

I doubt that you're thinking of the Pitcher Inn, which is smack in the center of the town of Warren, and backed up against the Mad River. Would've been someplace with more land around it. L. Rap

Warren's fun, we have a place near there but rarely eat anywhere fancy. There isn't much IMHO right in town, or in Waitsfield, other than the place you're staying. A sandwich or salad from the Warren store is a darned good lunch alternative, especially to eat it on the patio next to the river. I like the Den for burgers and beer, and Flatbread for hippie-era pizza, but something about that place disturbs me. I often hear about, but have never been to, the Farmer's Diner in Barre. They're serious about using local produce, and even cure local hams. I hope you hear from folks with better suggestions! Notice the nice suggestions for Burlington, not to far away. If I may be so bold - for local meats and produce, the Schoolhouse Market. The Trapp Family greenhouse and gardens (Waitsfield) are incredible in growing season. Don't miss the falls, even if it's too cold to swim, and for a short but vigorous hike late in the day, Sunset Ridge in the Lincoln Gap.

If you're in the fair city of Chelmsford, Drum Hill area, Pho 88 is a good choice. I used to go there for lunch often with my Vietnamese pho consultant and her Cambodian friend. Great idea for a thread, btw. L. Rap

What a cool article, thanks! If anyone's interested, I highly recommend David Arora's book, even though it's mostly about w. coast fungi. We don't get as much burned forest here but I do have a patch or two to look at. --L. Rap

Four of us tried to get into NoHo against Saturday traffic this past weekend, thinking we'd dine at Spoleto's, but lost the battle of Rte. 9 and dropped into Carmelina's for an early dinner. This was the favorite place to splurge for an old buddy of mine and his future bride, both of whom went to UMass. I don't see him much anymore, but he always told me to go there, though I always kept driving by. Carmelina's either looks rundown and forlorn in its dusty parking lot, or else impossibly overcrowded. To cut to the chase, it was really very good mostly northern Italian, with fast, smooth service and a great piano player at that early hour. We had nice, crisp calamari (with chunks of raw jalapeno instead of the usual pickled peppers, actually kind of nice), pillowy gnocchi, a fresh-looking pasta dish with sausage, and a very tender lamb shank sauced with enough demi-glace to give it a nice, gamy, gummy feel. Unremarkable pre-packaged dessert (Meyer Lemon mousse), good espresso and $10 in tips to the piano man finished off a great evening. Compared to the other places around, this seemed to attract an older, very regular crowd, though again that may have been due to the early hour. --L. Rap

Reading the posts from people born in this region and still tied to it by invisible trails of Ritz cracker crumbs, clamshells and lobster picks makes me remember a phrase I swear I first heard of as an old Chinese saying, translated as "What is patriotism but the love of the good things you ate as a child." I must hasten to add that I've tried this out on several native Chinese of various ages, and they've never heard it before. But, you know, China is a big country, so I'm still in search of the source. I sympathize with how people immediately think of NE Cuisine as one or another dish that brings back fond memories, but I think I'll propose for the purposes of this thread that NE Cuisine is very much about process, as well as product - the preparation of local goodies in simple, prudent and economical ways. To free associate, a lot of the classic NE dishes use foods that are plentiful and prepared either very simply (like lobster steamed in seawater or cooked over stones in rockweed; and we've all heard tales about how abundant these 'bugs' used to be in colonial times), or else cooked in a fashion that suited the workflow of the times - like baked beans, made with preserved goods (beans, salt pork, molasses) that were put up in a fireplace to cook throughout the long services of a Sabbath, to be ready when church was done. The many stuffed dishes made with cracker crumbs pont to the need (this is my personal supposition, OK - I'm sure we have some real food historians out there waiting to correct me if I'm wrong) to use up the hardtack that was a common staple, of which the Nabisco Pilot biscuit is the closest living NE relative. Even the fried clam, the ne plus ultra of NE Cuisine and the thing I dreamed most about during a 12-year exodus in California, is claimed to be the result of a serendipitous meeting between a man (Woodman, supposedly) shucking clams at breakfast (!) and some leftover or misplaced pancake batter. True or not, it sounds like NE to me - the wife probably saying, you're surely not going to eat that, and the husband saying, can't let it go to waste. And the wife saying, you've ruined the pancake batter, now it will all taste like clams. And the husband saying, could be worse. Hard tellin', not knowin'. Anyway, that's what I associate with NE - great local provender cooked very simply or in some dish created with ingenious frugality to use up what's around - where sensation meets sensibility. Kind of like Italian . . . --L. Rap

Saw my first photo of New England morels (Newport, RI) dated May first, courtesy of the Boston Mycological Club's listserv on Yahoo (this is a very worthy organization which sponsors numerous well-led walks and other fungus-related activities). And I have a report of some in Framingham area as well. So the time is definitely now (and the oak leaves are just starting to come out)! The RI morels (black morels according to the source though they looked yellow; I'll have to look them up again) were growing on disturbed soil covered with compost. That might be one of the commoner themes around here as the site in Framingham is the same way. I think maybe it's imported topsoil, not as acid as typical NE soil, and kept nicely moist by the cedar mulch, which also maybe helps in some mysterious way. This year, I am going to do the classic midwestern thing & dip them in egg batter, then cracker crumbs, then fry and eat just like that. Dry the rest of course. --L. Rap

I finally made it to Portland for the first time ever in my middle-aged life, and I have a whole lot of you to thank for this thread. I live in Newbuyrport Mass, which is just an hour south, so though I go north a lot along the coast I've always skipped Portland on the grounds that it's (a) a city, which I'm usually trying to avoid, and (b) tucked out of the way on the 295 loop. I've always been in a rush to get someplace like Tennant's Harbor or Castine, or else too close to home to bother stopping. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Anyway - Negroni cocktail at Oolong if you like Campari, which I do, along with every other bitter edible thing in the world. The other food there OK but not really exceptional. Damariscotta oysters at Harbor Fish, thank you JohnnyD! O. My. God. Also very nice packets of wild smoked salmon trimmings, extraordinarily lean and low-priced. These were my take-home souvenirs. The next weekend (this past) I wound up back in Portland yet again to show it off to my visiting older brother, who had also never been. Against my very much better judgment he ordered seafood chili at Gilbert's Chowder House, and wouldn't you know, it was really pretty darned good. --L. Rap

It's always fun looking. I've found morels in deep pine forests sometimes. There are a few state parks with old lime quarries (usally says so in the name), I'd try them first if they were nearby. I like the mouse ear thing, sounds accurate too. No oak leaves as yet in my area. Chicken mushrooms (laetiporus sulfureus) usually come out maybe July/August, Hen of the Woods (grifola frondosa) not till late Sept/Oct. I've often heard people refer to chicken of the woods but I never know which of those they mean (the ones on trees are the chicken mushrooms, the ones at the base in the ground are hen of the woods and of course they are nothing like each other. Dim possibility of finding oyster mushrooms on dead logs; they will come out anytime they feel like it. Please do post if you find something! --L. Rap

Hi mushroom lovers; You're lucky to find morels at all in any quantity in New England; the soil is too acid compared to the great morel hunting grounds in places like Michigan and Iowa. I'm in northern Mass and it's still early, I would say first week or two of May but they could show up anytime. The most I've ever seen at one time were on a lawn/mulched area in Framingham surrounding a decorative pear tree and some low junipers (go figure), but if you want to hunt them look in particular for old or dying elm or apple trees, and places where the soil is more alkaline: lime quarries, old orchards in farms that might have been limed (but are no longer sprayed with heavy-duty insecticides), burned areas (the ashes lower the Ph), old driveways lined with oyster shells, and so on. The primo morel spots, according to local rumor, are areas where elm trees have burned. Never found any myself, just finding old elms is rare enough. Good luck, L. Rap

WHS is right on about the Four Sisters Owl Diner and Eliots. Actually, Lowell is full of wierdly interesting spots. Try the Romeo & Julietta Brazilian sandwich shop near Eliots. Red Rose in Pai Lin Plaza is one of the best Cambodian restaurants in the area; try the chow fun noodles. Angkor Kingdom used to be great Cambodian tho was sold very recently so not sure anymore. There's a few other places - Thanh, for Vietnamese, some Vietnamese sandwich shops and a Portuguese place or two. Some sort of regional TV gourmet guy went there maybe 6 mohts ago so you might find their stuff still on the web. I'll write more later. Happy Hunting, --L. Rap

I'd thought I'd note an article that appeared this AM in the newburyport daily news, which is right now on the front page of their online edition at Click here for Newburyport Daily News Shrimp Article 1-14-06 The gist being that there are lots of shrimp but no one around here wants to fish them because the sole major processor left is not calling for the product. I wrote earlier that the shrimp had yet to appear at my local fish market, where I usually find it shelled (!) this time of year for around $6 a pound, but apparently there are some at the local Shaw's - I'll see if I can't get some today for the PATs game! L. Rap

You knock me out as always johnnyd. I still don't see these in my haunts just 50 miles to the south in the Newbryport area. My contacts at David's Fish Market in Amesbury (aka 'The Greatest Place on Earth') say they haven't gotten to the right size yet - I think they process them there and will sell them shelled maybe in a few weeks at good prices; they do processing for a number of local fishermen. Cheers, L. Rap

Thanks Yah-Roo, very funny and a great flow. I wound up going back several times to see if I couldn't find anything in the food he ordered which might have dropped a hint of innate masochism. Maybe the lotus root? Something about poking your chopstick in the holes of those chewy little slices? Sorry, I better stop now, but thanks again. --L. Rap

Maggie, what do you mean you WISH you wrote as well as Maureen Dowd? Maureen Dowd never makes me hungry. Thanks for a great article. --L. Rap

Clueless about exact location of Easton but if it's near No. Conway I like the Moot Mtn. Smokehouse. An elevated brewpub & BBQ joint, quite enjoyable & informal. Place right downtown is good too - Horsefeathers? Something like that? As I so often find in the hinterlands, anything with gourmet pretensions is an overpriced disappointment. I'll second the opinion of eating lunch at the Mt. Washington. Unbelievable view and ambience, passable food.

Popular but seafood-y places include the Dolphin Striker and the Oar House. I've eaten at both, and they're OK but unremarkable. I have a friend who swears by Muddy River Smokehouse but I've never been. Portsmouth is a fun town with a lot of restaurants, but none of the supposedly better ones have really knocked me out as much as just eating at the Portsmouth Brewery, a large brew pub. Excellent, fresh beer makes up for a lot IMHO. Food is fine, service friendly though they can get very busy. They don't get real ambitious food-wise, which is a virtue in a place like this. Nachos, burgers, fish, steaks, and a few creative items that make use of the aforementioned beer. Major youthful bar scene. Make a reservation or get there early. Another fun place afterwards is Cafe Kilim, a Turkish-owned coffee house with a lot of local atmosphere (and characters). Cheers, L. Rap

I like to make a green goddess variant salad dressing. I call it Earth Goddess dressing. It's like a ranch dressing with Avocado and a ton of fresh basil. Roughly speaking, I process: half an avocado, some sour cream or plain yogurt, a little bit of squished anchovy, some lemon juice, maybe a third of a cup of packed basil. I might add a little garlic and I think I add Rose's lime juice in small amounts if it needs a little sweetness. Salt, black pepper, and at the very end about 1 T of EVOO. Good on chopped salads if you keep it thin, and a reasonable dip for fresh vegetables if you leave it thick. But I think the coolest thing I've seen done with an avocado was to make pasta. Some friends used it in place of egg yolk and it came out beautifully, with a lovely pale green color. Don't have a recipe but I believe there was no egg at all so if it were me I'd just start with a half a mashed avocado and maybe just a tsp or two of water, adding flour until it feels right! Good luck, --L. Rap

First morels appeared in Boston last week under an old apple tree, according to the Boston Mycological Club's listserve. One member has picked around 40 yellow morels. Haven't seen any personally yet, but I'll be looking this weekend under old/dead apples, elms and maybe cedar trees. --L. Rap