When you’re on an island you have to adapt to what’s available. I bring a lot with me such as a Cuisinart, my favorite rolling pin, spices, good butter, a hand mixer and even stored items such as last year’s sour cherries, which I had stashed in my freezer.
Grazing sheep at Sheep Meadow Farm on Crabtree Point, North Haven
After that you’re at the mercy of what’s available. Fortunately for the locavore minded, North Haven offers a plentiful lot of local provender within limits. When, for instance, I bought eggs from Foggy Meadows Farm I hadn’t realized that they were duck eggs, which farmer Doreen Cabot uses in most everything instead of chicken eggs. I beat them into the batter for a pound cake, thinking they were chicken eggs until I looked at the box that was clearly marked “duck eggs.” I’ve made this pound cake countless times and have featured it here (see Pound Cake for recipe). But with the richness of these eggs, with their large yolks, this was the best version ever, making the cake extremely fluffy. I’m totally converted and will use, as Cabot does, duck eggs in baking and custards for ice cream.
Foggy Meadows farm shop for ice cream, canned pickles, jams, relishes and lamb and duck eggs; native oysters from the North Haven lobster and oyster shed
Lobster from North Haven Lobster and Oyster Company was the perfect lunch on the deck
Local crabmeat salad simply dressed; locally made lemon pie
Other meals prepared using local ingredients included steamed lobster from North Haven Oyster Company. On North Haven, the available lobsters are still hard shell but the meat was sweet and delicious. Another great meal was a perfectly simple crab meat salad. The island’s little grocery gets wild caught Jonah lump crab from a purveyor in Rockland. It’s expensive, about $14 per four ounces, but it was the best crab ever which I mixed simply with snipped scallions and mayonnaise and garnished with slices of Cabot’s bread and butter pickles. I meant to put it on a bed of local lettuces but forgot and merely placed the leaves over the salad. It was fantastic.
The centerpiece of last night’s dinner was a leg of lamb from local breeder Doug Record who raises sheep at his Sheep Meadow Farm, on Crabtree Point Road. Talk about grass fed and free-roaming, these animals live a very cosseted life, grazing on the rich emerald green grasses irrigated by the fine sea mist coming off the ocean.
Serious grilling on the rocks with 20 knot winds off the ocean took some doing but the results were fine with Sheep Meadow Farm lamb
The lamb was incredibly flavorful and tender. My usual seasoning for lamb is to make a paste of parsley, garlic, thyme or rosemary, salt and pepper, mustard and olive oil, which I zizz up in the Cuisinart until it’s similar to a paste like pesto; it’s gets rubbed over the entire joint. (Incidentally, I couldn’t get all the herbs that I generally use and substituted local mint, rosemary and oregano for the parsley and thyme.)
I grilled it on a covered barbecue with natural coals and apple wood over a fairly hot fire. The six-pound leg cooked in just over an hour to about 135 degrees for medium rare. With it I made my favorite dish of new potatoes, which I brought over from Beth’s Market in Warren, mixed with freshly shelled peas. Merely pre-cook the peas and boil the potatoes separately until tender. Drain everything, and add the peas to the pot of potatoes, adding a generous chunk of butter and a good pour of heavy cream; simmer until it becomes thickened. I seasoned it with local mint from Turner Farm, salt and pepper.
Grilled lamb, panzanella salad, potatoes and peas in a cream and mint sauce
For a lighter side dish I served a panzanella salad made with the basic ingredients of a day old boule from Nebo (cut into chunks), which I brushed with olive oil and toasted in the oven. The salad included a paste of crushed garlic, local tomatoes, thinly sliced white onions (I didn’t have red, which is preferable), Kalamata olives and local cukes from Turner Farm. A classic panzanella calls for mozzarella. I didn’t have any and didn’t want to make another trip to the store so I used packaged mozzarella sticks wrapped in prosciutto, which I brought with me from Portland’s Whole Foods to use as a hors d’oeuvre; I cut the sticks into small chunks. The salad is moistened with olive oil, a few drops of balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper. It was a perfectly light dish for a summer menu.
Sour cherry pie
I finally used the sour cherries to put in a pie. I had just enough to fill an 8-inch pastry case (4 cups). The cherries are mixed with 1 cup sugar, 3 tablespoons flour, teaspoon vanilla extract and half teaspoon almond extract. Dot the top with about 2 tablespoons butter before affixing the lattice top, which is brushed with heavy cream to glaze and sprinkled with dusting sugar. Bake in a hot oven (425 degrees) for 20 minutes then lower the heat to 350 degrees and bake for another 40 minutes or until the filling is very bubbly and crust is golden brown. Brush the finished pie with melted butter just to glisten. Topped with duck-egg-custard vanilla ice cream from Foggy Meadows it was a great ending for a perfectly simple summer supper based mostly on what’s available locally.
