Photo: conbon33/Flickr

In her first time writing for PRK, Megan Riesz, a BU journalism student who interns for The Christian Science Monitor, brings us behind the scenes of Downeast Cider House, founded by three college graduates just one year ago in Waterville, ME.

Megan Riesz

Ross Brockman and Tyler Mosher used to wake up at 7 AM to study for the GMATs. But one morning, Mosher turned to Brockman and admitted he hadn’t looked at the test materials for two weeks.

“I was like, ‘me neither,’” Brockman said in a phone interview. “This was a turning point for us.”

Instead of pouring their efforts into getting into business school, the two former Bates College graduates – along with another former classmate, Ben Manter – were in the midst of building Downeast Cider House, a hard cider company currently based in Waterville, ME, but set to relocate to Leominster, MA, in two weeks’s time.

In their senior year at Bates, the trio realized “none of [them] wanted to get real jobs,” as Brockman put it. While having dinner with Mosher’s father one night, they talked about job prospects, what they wanted to do, where they wanted to go upon graduation day.

Manter then voiced his frustration about not finding good cider anywhere outside of the apple orchard he grew up on in Vassalboro, Maine.

Bingo.

“We went back to the dorm and started talking about it,” Brockman said. “It had a life of its own.” Continue reading →

Personal chef Tony Carbone in the how2heroes Studio Kitchen, Cambridge

LOCAL BITES

See ‘Em Live, In Action!
how2heroes is inviting anyone who loves to cook to their brand-spanking-new Kitchen Studio for an Open House. Guest chefs — live, in action, in the h2h Kitchen– will be Jody Adams, Amanda Escamilla, Joe Faro, Mark Goldberg, Michael Scelfo and Peter Tartsinis, all turning out delicious fare in front of your eyes this Wednesday, May 30, 6-10pm in Inman Square. Ryan & Wood Distilleries of Gloucester will provide the cocktails. Register (the event is free!) via Facebook.

Shhh, It’s a Secret!!
On June 1 Bully Boy is hosting an underground speakeasy party to celebrate their 1st anniversary. A number of bars and restaurants (including Toro, Trina’s Starlite Lounge, Russell House Tavern, Moksa, Citizen Public House, Local 149, Saloon, Rialto, Henrietta’s Table, Meade Hall, Bristol Lounge and Post 390) are currently handing out branded coasters with a QR code on the back. When scanned, this gives hints as to where the party will be located! Read more here. (But can you keep the secret?)

Somerville Eats
The Taste of Somerville returns June 5,  5:30-7:30 pm, at the Boston-Somerville Holiday Inn. For $30/pp, the Taste gives attendees a “crazy” amount and array of food and drink from the likes of Casa B, Redbones, the Independent, Foundry on Elm, Kick*ss Cupcakes, Fasiak Ethopian Restaurant, Olde Magoun Saloon and Casa B (with many more eateries participating). Proceeds benefit RESPOND, Inc. — New England’s first domestic violence agency, founded by four Somerville women in the 1970s. You’re advised to ‘come hungry.’

Dine at the NEAQ
Armand Toutaint, Chef de Cuisine for Turner Fisheries, and Christopher Masco, Executive Chef of The Westin Copley Place, will be the featured chefs at the New England Aquarium’s next sustainable seafood dinner, June 7, 6:30pm. Chefs will lead an informative cooking demonstration using U.S. farm-raised bay scallops, wild Alaska salmon and Pacific halibut. Wine pairing included. Tickets are $99 for NEAQ members, $109 for non-members. The dinner will be held at Turner Fisheries. Register here. Continue reading →

Botticelli's Birth of Venus (photo: FLORENCEandTUSCANYtours/ Flickr)

People always ask me how I come up with recipes. After 14 cookbooks, countless articles, newspaper pieces and blog posts, it’s a good question.

How does one create a “new” recipe — is there really anything that qualifies as new? How does one continue to be creative and push oneself to make work that is better and better? I suppose these are questions you could ask any painter or sculptor or choreographer.

Here’s the story behind the birth of one “new” recipe. Continue reading →

Attendees of Central Bottle's Txacoli Fest 2012 (All photos: Katie White)

Txakoli (pronounced chah-ko-lee) is a bone-dry, effervescent white or rose wine from the Basque Country of northern Spain. The Basque people, fiercely proud of their heritage, celebrate this local libation each summer at festivals that include pinxtos (pinches) — small appetizers that complement and soak up the alcohol.

“The good news,” Chef Robert Grant of the blue room told me last Thursday evening at his restaurant’s own Cambridge-style Txakoli Fest, supplied and co-hosted by Central Bottle, “is that these wines pair well with almost anything.”

Grilled octopus with lemon aioli

Roasted pig's head

For ticket-holders to Txakoli Fest ($45 in advance, $60 at the door), Grant and his team fired up the blue room’s outdoor grill to serve roast pig (via Savenor’s), sweet calçot (young green onion) with creamy romesco sauce, homemade blood sausage and Spanish octopus with lemon aioli. The octopus, Grant explained, is flash-frozen on the boats in Spain and shipped to Brooklyn, where his importer tenderizes the meat by running it through a washing machine fed a saltwater brine. ¡Qué rico! In addition, passed appetizers included bites of Spanish tortilla and black-and-white anchovies. Continue reading →

Photo: naotakem/Flickr

iPhone-toting foodies and oenophiles, rejoice: here’s an app that lets you share what you like and discover new favorites when you go out to eat. Forkly is a social network for food and drink recommendations and reviews. Think of it as an inroad to “what’s good” at restaurants and bars.

Here’s how Forkly works. The app bills itself as a personal rating card and a roadmap to the “must tries” wherever users are. Users snap pictures of a superstar dish or cocktail. Others can “want it,” meaning the app will remind them to try it next time they’re in the neighborhood. Continue reading →

Photo: ubrayj02/Flickr

LOCAL BITES

A Savory Cycle
The 2nd Annual CYCLE Kids Breakaway Charity Ride — a fitness and food affair — will take place this Sunday morning, May 20, at the DeCordova Museum, Lincoln. Participants can choose to ride 62, 36, or 5 miles for the benefit of Cambridge-based CYCLE Kids, which fights childhood obesity through a school-based program integrating riding bikes in P.E. with nutrition education, literacy and mentoring. The post-ride party includes a grilled gourmet lunch cooked by chef Paul O’Connell of Chez Henri, plus complimentary wine and locally-brewed Pretty Things beer, lawn games and live bluegrass music. (Food lovers can even choose to skip the ride and attend only the savory celebration!) Register here.

Seedlings for Sale
The Powisset Farm Spring Fest and Seedling Sale takes place this Saturday, May 19, 10-3pm at Powisset Farm, Dover (MA). There will be seedlings for sale, music, food, local vendors selling plants, jams, crafts, activities for kids, pigs, chickens and general “awesomeness,” per farm manager Meryl LaTronica. Free and open to all.

The Sound of Fish
People have claimed to hear sounds made by deep sea fish for 50 years, but no one has ever confirmed the underwater chatter until now. Rodney Rountree, a marine biologist at UMass Amherst, has recorded the sounds of fish living as deep as 2,000 feet below the surface. This technology could be used to help track fish before they’re caught – thereby improving sustainable fishing techniques. WBUR’s own Beenish Ahmed reports.

A Pretty Profile
Devra First of the Boston Globe has written up Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project, telling the story of its co-founders Dann Paquette and Martha Holley-Paquette and the improbable beginnings of their non-business. If First’s profile goes down easy, try Annie Ropeik’s post featuring Pretty Things’ historical X-Ales here at PRK. (Who knows, perhaps their next project might include a foray into the reified sap beer of Vermont’s past…)

Too Sexy
Move over, Food Trucks? Boston Business Journal reports that fashion trucks might just be the next big thing to hit the streets of Boston besides the Hub’s “explosion in food trucks.” If a licensing plan is accepted, however, who’s to say whether fashion trucks will fare better with City Hall than food trucks currently have, as Colin Kingsbury of Boston Magazine recently questioned.

Continue reading →

Ice Box (photo: dok1/Flickr)

Earlier this week Radio Boston spoke with Mark Kurlansky, author of Salt: A World History, World Without Fish and Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, about the entrepreneurial life of Clarence Birdseye, the man who revolutionized fast-freezing last century and forever changed how we eat. (On March 6, 1930 Birdseye frozen food went on sale for the first time.) Birdseye is characterized as a “man of his era” and a “foodie” at heart who constantly wrote home about what he ate. Kurlansky’s new book is Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man.

Curious? Understatement. Listen to the segment here.

Photo: Sam Howzit/Flickr

I can relate a lot to the opening lines of Erin Cooks‘ most recent post. Like her, farro has been “haunting” my kitchen, too, and I haven’t spent the time lately trying to find the right recipe with which to make it.

I also have two young kids to pack lunches for each day. Monotony is a problem, especially at this point in the school year, with camp (more packed lunches) around the corner. Eep!

For Erin, the Cranberry Farro Quick Bread she crafted is a kind of two-fer. She’s honest about her doubts in using the grain, but delightfully surprised by the end results. “The loaf rose, it sliced beautifully, and smelled lovely,” she writes. Check and check: 1) whole grains used up, and 2) nutritious new breakfast food created.

For me, Erin’s farro quick bread is also a two-fer. Over the past year, I’ve taken to baking breads for my kids (banana, pumpkin, zucchini, etc.) as a nutritious replacement for the crackers they like to take for lunch. Cranberries are as constant in our house as milk. Now I can check two things off my list, too: 1) whole grains used up, and 2) nutritious new lunch food created.

Can you?

Photo: Images_of_Money/Flickr

Beef is as American as apple pie.

So, in essence, argues Alex Loud below. But high-quality beef is not a dinner — or a school lunch — option for many Americans due to price. This leads us to the crux of the issue behind the so-called “pink slime” controversy.

In my last post I alluded briefly to the battle over Pink Slime (or “LFTB” for Lean Finely Textured Beef, if you’re inclined to be precise). I want to say a bit more about it now. The debate over the stuff — if you can call it a debate — has in the last few months taken on that farcical you-couldn’t-make-this-crap-up quality that typifies much of our public discourse these days.

By way of a recap, the anti-Slime movement began with a call from celebrity chef Jamie Oliver to label LFTB as an ingredient in foods (it’s currently considered ground beef). From this, the Pink Slime story was picked up by the blogosphere, which then gave way to the involvement of the network news shows. It’s at this point — perhaps not surprisingly — that everything went batsh*t crazy.

In less than two months we’ve seen competing websites, news stories, experts, scientists, government officials and celebrities all spouting wildly divergent views. LFTB maker AFA has filed for bankruptcy while the company that invented the stuff, Beef Products Inc., has shuttered three plants, laying off thousands of workers. The Governor of Iowa has even demanded a Congressional investigation into the slandering of the Slime (not into the safety or nutritional content of LFTB, mind you, but who’s been saying mean things about it). Continue reading →

Photo: Elizabeth Hathaway

As all of us website-surfing, blog-reading, iPhone users know that, in this digital age, it is almost too easy to stay in touch with Mom. Since I moved to New York City six months ago, not a day has gone by when my mom and I have failed to exchange text messages, emails or a quick phone call.

But this does not starve off homesickness. I’m grateful I can call my mom when I’m standing in a crowded Trader Joes on Monday night and ask her what to buy. But then she’ll tell me she’s in the middle of taking salmon off the grill or putting a chicken in the oven, and I’ll wish I was back home at the kitchen table. People say you can find anything you’ve ever wanted or needed in New York City, but I can’t find my mom’s cooking.

So, on this beautiful sunny weekend, with summer right around the corner, I felt a pang when I checked my email and saw a picture sent from my Mom of one of our oldest family recipes: Rhode Island Clam Chowder. The newspaper article shown above, published in May of 1965 in the New Haven Register, features my Grandmother talking about her family tradition of making clam chowder based on of her own mother’s recipe.

Both of my grandparents grew up on the island of Jamestown, RI, where they had to take a ferry to school everyday. Continue reading →