New Potatoes, Rosemary and Leeks

I love leeks. They make everything better, especially soup. These darling little poe-TOTS came from my Mum's jardin in New Gloucester, Maine. So did the leeks, and the rosemary, too. The only thing that didn't come from her garden was the olive oil I drenched it all in before baking it in the oven. Seasonal roasted vegetables tossed in oil and salt and pepper = a marvelous mini-meal.

My Baby Makes Bagels

My boyfriend Aran is amazing in many ways, but one of the most endearing things about him, I find, is his knack for making NY style bagels. We lived together for a short time in Jersey City this past winter (across The Hudson from Manhattan) and there was this hole-in-the-wall kind of a place across the street from our apartment called Wonder Bagels. Wonder Bagels wasn't open for very long during the day. In fact, they only stayed open a few hours in the morning. Funny little place, really... The folks there hardly ever got your order completely right. Their coffee tasted like shit (they always put too much sugar in it). They interrogated your order out of your mouth (no time to contemplate how you might like your bagel that morning). Their fruit cups were overpriced and the seating was maddening, but Goddamnit do they know how to make a bagel. NO WONDER IT'S CALLED WONDER BAGELS!
All I could think of when I ate a Wonder Bagel was the scene in So I Married an Axe Murderer, where Mike Meyer's (playing the Scottish father) says the following about KFC chicken: "They put a chemical in it that makes you crave it fortnightly, smaaaaaart-ass!" I don't know what they're dusting into the 'ol bagel batch down there in Jersey City, but whatever it is, it got us hooked, BAD.
After we came back to live in Maine, Aran started hankering for the bagels from Jersey City. I was saddened to tell him that Portland, Maine, as far as I know, has no breakfast joint that serves up a bagel even remotely like the bagels at Wonder Bagel's.
So what did he do? He made his own.
(To be continued...)

A Food Quote for the Day

"As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans."
— Ernest Hemingway (A Moveable Feast)

Nina Clemente: A Big Inspiration.

(Photo by Emily Hart)
After publishing my first blog post ever yesterday for The Skinny Chef, I was feeling pretty snazzy about my ability to follow through on something (I've been meaning to start a food blog for ages!), so I decided to celebrate by feasting my eyes on the pages of Vanity Fair, Portland Magazine and US Weekly while I did a quick load of laundry at the Eco-mat in the West End. I'm glad I chose to celebrate my anti-procrastination by hanging out in a laundromat because if I hadn't, I probably never would have come across the Vanity Fair issue that had a one page write-up about the beautiful and spunky personal chef/caterer in Los Angeles named Nina Clemente. Nina Clemente, in ten words or less, is who I want to be when I grow up.
You can learn all about her on her website: www.ninaclemente.com, but I'll quickly explain why she's my new favorite food enthusiast. First of all, she's young, only 28 I think, and she works for herself doing something she loves. Inspiration numero uno. Numero dos? She's obsessed with farmer's markets and promotes the benefits of utilizing local produce and supporting local agriculture as much as she can. Numero tres? She doesn't use measuring spoons or cups when she cooks, which makes my heart soar, because I don't either and I was always afraid that was the wrong thing to do. But heck, I doubt Anthony Bourdain or Wolfgang Puck measure anything either...
Anyway, Nina sounds like a neat lady not only because she works for herself, which is my biggest goal in life, but because she had the courage to explore something that she knew meant a lot to her. Nina attended Brown University for Anthropology, but felt after graduating that that wasn't her true calling. After going to a farmer's market in LA with her Godmother Lauren Hutton, Nina didn't have to ponder her vocation any longer. She knew she loved food and always had! So she started cooking for friend's dinner parties and plating up some really fabulous grub. People quickly began clambering for her services and attention and the rest is history.
Check out her website and be sure to click on the video tab. You can watch her make two delicious meals for her friends. Nina has a smashing sense of humor, too, and she cooks everything super fast. Not frantically, but efficiently. And she's so darn purty!

The Best Pizza in the World...EVER.

I spent the first two decades of my life convinced that the best pizza in the world was slung straight from the piping hot oven of Jason's Pizzeria in Woodland, Maine, right next to the crap-hole of a town I grew up in in Washington County. A tiny Cambodian woman, not named Jason (I never figured out who Jason was) lived out her days for years on end in the sweltering, windowless kitchen of Jason's Pizza, and cranked out some of the most incredible ah-peet-za-pies I have ever had. I have ever had. My siblings, mother, father and friends all agree that Jason's Pizza is the best, and I pine for it like an ex-pat sometimes pines for their homeland. I would recommend that everyone make the lonesome, 4 hour trek northeast to the dismal town of Woodland, Maine just so you can experience this little Asian woman's signature pies, but I can't because Jason's Pizzeria isn't there anymore. It closed it's doors about a year ago after the Woodland paper mill changed ownership for the billionth time and everyone got laid off. I guess having the best 'effing pepperoni and Canadian bacon pie for dinner three nights a week became less of a priority for people. Understandable.

With the untimely death of Jason's, I unenthusiastically tried all of the pizza joints Portland, Maine has to offer. Each and every one of them epically failed my palette's review, EXCEPT for the pizza at Otto on Congress Street (I shall save my thoughts on Otto's awesomeness for another day). I won't mention my list of Stanley Steemer's, but suffice to say, no one in this friggin city knows how to make pizza taste like and/or visually resemble traditional pizza in any way, shape or form, except for Otto.

But I digress! The point of this first post is not to lament over the loss of Jason's, or to give Otto gushing praise, but to mention, and this is very hard for me to do, that I think I may have stumbled upon pizza that was even BETTER than Jason's. I know, it's treasonous to say, but it's true. And you'll never believe where I found it... BROOKLYN, NY! (Who woulda thunk??)

Yep, the best of the best can be found under the Brooklyn bridge in NYC's most notorious borough. The name? Grimaldi's. The reason why it's the best? Because their pizza tastes like an ancient secret. The sauce makes me think of a giant stock pot simmering all day with the dregs of fat, robust roma tomatoes, onion and spices. The crust reminds me of the wood-fired oven the dough napped in before becoming thinner, crunchy and lightly dusted in black crumbs on the bottom. When I was there eating it, I remember seeing the tubs upon tubs of perfectly sliced mozzarella balls. Mozzarella balls, I say! No bags of shredded cheese, OK. The worker bees at Grimaldi's churned out those pies at a frenetic pace, grabbing big handfuls of fresh basil LEAVES, roasted red pepper, slices of dried salami, oily anchovies, huge chunks of fresh garlic. The ingredients were alive. And as I ate the pizza, there was no processed grease dripping down my chin. There were instead, natural oils from the quality ingredients leaving little, delicious pools on my plate, which I mopped up with my crust ends. As much as I adored Jason's pizza, nothing about it was alive, or real. It was hands-down, 110% generic pizza. Yes it was good, but it was no Grimaldi's.

I bet Grimaldi's has the recipe for their pizza sauce under lock and key. Or maybe some guy in the mob named Franky threatens to do unmentionable deeds to the family dog if any new staff utters a word about how the dough is made. Or maybe Border's has a Grimaldi's cookbook and it's all right there for my crazy ass to read. Who knows. But one thing I do know is this: if ever in New York, get your butt to Grimaldi's.