Cookbook author's palate is right at home in Maine
SEDGEWICK, Maine -- After decades of vacationing in Maine and living in Connecticut, award-winning cookbook author Brooke Dojny packed up her suburban life and moved year-round to fogbound Blue Hill Peninsula. Dojny, looking summer regal in linen, pearls, and a fresh pedicure, lives with her husband , Richard , in a shingled cape overlooking windswept meadows that roll down to the saltwater Benjamin River. ``This is our little piece of heaven," she says.
Dojny, whose most recent book is ``Dishing Up Maine," likes to say that she moved here for the food. And in her volume, she covers it all: clam shacks and lobster pounds, small farms, wild seafood and aquaculture, farmers' markets, public suppers, fine dining temples , and quirky little joints. In short, all the things that make the food scene in Maine so alluring.
She remembers when the food in Vacationland wasn't this way. ``When we first started coming to Maine, the food situation was pretty tough," she says. ``There were strawberries in June and plenty of lobster, but the supermarket shelves were pretty bare-boned -- just tired old broccoli wrapped in plastic, and no good bread. "
Dojny made her own biscuits and made do with the basic groceries. ``The local ingredients were fine for a summer vacation . We could just live on lobster, crab rolls, and blueberry cobbler for a couple of weeks, but year-round we wanted more to choose from."
Her kitchen is sunny and scrubbed clean. She's preparing several dishes from her new book. Rosie, her ancient lapdog, is sleeping in the corner. A pot of mussel chowder simmers on the back of the stove, and ingredients for a strawberry-rhubarb croustade are laid out on granite counters. The croustade can be made with any summer fruit.
``I love this kind of free-form tart," she says, `` and the raggedness of the edges." Before the tart goes in the oven she paints the crust with egg wash and throws on a few chunks of butter to melt over the fruit. She shakes her head at the lopsided pile of strawberries and rhubarb towering over her crust. ``You know, that fruit might overflow its banks and burn on the bottom. But that's all right. I mean, how could it be bad?"
While the tart bakes, Dojny ladles mussel chowder into bowls and serve s it with a plate of boiled fiddlehead ferns with lemon and aioli. The mussels come from the Blue Hill salt pond, and the chowder recipe from Thurston's Lobster Pound in Bernard on Mount Desert Island. She also offers bread and pilot biscuits. The fish stew is rich and creamy, studded with colorful vegetables and brought to life with black pepper that a friend of hers toted back from Vietnam.
The tart is indeed overflowing with the juicy fruits, and golden brown around the edges. She spoons on ice cream and digs in.
Making coffee, Dojny leans against the wall opposite big picture windows. Outside, it's one of those perfect scenes: golden light, seagulls screeching; lobster boats cruising by, wooden sailboats on their moorings. Dojny sighs, soaks it all up for a few minutes, and then goes back to work. 