Category: Cooking

The blogosphere will soon be awash in articles providing advice on what to do with leftover turkey. The Portland Daily Sun has taken a different tack. An article in Tuesday’s paper polled a number of local experts on what to do with leftover wine.

Erin Lynch, the kitchen manager at Rosemont Market and Bakery, recommends using leftover wine to poach pears or dried fruit.

“Add a vanilla bean and some sugar to make a delicious wine sauce,” she suggested. “We use red wine in our pasta sauce and red wine is also what turns an ordinary beef stew into Boeuf Bourguignon.”

Lindsey Sterling has published another ethnic cooking adventures on her blog Inside Immigrant Kitchens. This time she’s cooking with Bill Dilios to make Albanian Kotopita (recipe, family history).

My husband’s co-worker’s father, Bill Dilios, taught me how to make his favorite dish from Albania: kotopita. It’s like chicken pot pie, but with filo crust and an epic story inside

Don and Samantha Lindgren from Rabelais have authored a guest post on the Fall’s Best Chef Cookbooks for the  BA Foodist blog.

Lindsey Sterling has published another ethnic cooking adventures on her blog Inside Immigrant Kitchens. This time she’s cooking with Svetla Popova to make Bulgarian Bean Soup & Spanikopita.

As I cook with immigrants, a certain worldly wisdom always pops out in conversation. Here is my favorite from Svetla Popova, who moved here from Bulgaria twenty-one years ago. She says, “I’ll always take a fake smile over an honest growl.”

This week’s Food & Dining section features an article on pig roasts. David Mallari, Portland’s Pig Kahuna, was interviewed for the story.

Mallari credits the sluggish economy for the extra work. People are looking for less expensive, more informal alternatives to higher-end catering, which can run $65 to $100 per person compared with an average of $20 to $25 for a pig roast.

Plus, the pig is the star – you might even say the life – of the party.

Lindsey Sterling has published another ethnic cooking adventures on her blog Inside Immigrant Kitchens. This time she’s cooking with Jenny Sanchez from Nicaragua to make Chancho Frito and Vigoron.

She calls it chancho frito and vigoron. It’s Nicaraguan party food. “Vigoron eat with your fingers,” Jenny Sanchez, my Nicaraguan-American neighbor coaches me. We’re in her kitchen three blocks from L.L. Bean. “No fork o no espoon.” Okay, I think, you eat it with your fingers. I get it. “If you a scared,” she looks at me seriously, “I get you a fork.”

The rewards are big for fearlessness.

Portland Magazine has published an article on Julia Child’s 50 year history with Maine.

For a chef like Julia, who insisted on the freshest possible ingredients, Maine was a delight. The family caught pollock for her Bouillabaisse à la mode de Blue Hill Bay (which she made with the fish, potatoes, fennel, and saffron). At low tide they gathered fat purple mussels for her to make Moulles Marinères. Local lobsters became her Lobster Archduke and Butter-Poached Maine Lobster.