June 2019

Summer produce is struggling to get to market as our cool spring and early summer continues, impeding the arrival of the full spectrum of Maine grown fruits and vegetables.  Rhubarb made a strong showing about a month ago and strawberries, its vital partner, are here at last.  The cool weather made the crop a little late by a week or two, but their flavor is intense.

I prefer to keep this duo separate.  While I like strawberry-rhubarb pie I tend to make separate uses of these two, the latter is a vegetable technically but is used like a fruit in desserts.  And strawberries should be left unadulterated.  The next time you have the urge to make a strawberry rhubarb pie, increase the berries to use alone and omit the rhubarb; make a double crust pie (crumb topping is good too) in the usual way.  For a thickener I like to use tapioca flour, a cleaner way to set fruits in a pie.

But for me it’s the fresh strawberry pie that is really the winner.  There are two methods that I offer here.  The most common form is to puree the strawberries to cook them in a sugar, cornstarch and water bath until thickened to pour over hulled uncooked berries arranged in a bake pie shell.  The last time I did this I used a cookie crust instead of pastry dough.  I sometimes prefer this because I don’t like chilling pies housing a pastry case; chilling ruins the flakiness of a dough.  The cookie crust (use crushed shortbread, vanilla wafers or tea biscuits mixed with a bit of sugar and plenty of melted butter and baked until firm) survives much better.  For a recipe for this pie see Fresh Strawberry Pie recipe link.

Fresh Strawberry Pie

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The second time around at Luke’s Lobster (see previous impressions) left me high and dry.  Granted the noon hour at lunch  this week was not as brilliant a sunny day as it was on my first visit.  Instead the weather was chilly, wet and dreary. Though the view was just as jaw-dropping, and the service was also excellent.  But  the free parking on the pier that existed on opening week turned into metered parking at 3 bucks an hour.

Also on my first visit the staff boasted that the first-floor dining room was an order-and-eat deal.  No table service.  Upon entering you placed your order at the front desk, paid for it and picked a high top, table or bar stool to eat.  The food was brought to you.

Though a gray day, the place still looks bright and appealing

Now it’s less casual with table service–a  lobster pound with urban stripes.

Luke’s Lobster is everywhere: It’s like the Whole Foods/Amazon of lobster, with locations from Boston, New York, Las Vegas, Miami, Tokyo, et al, spawning like guppies.

The staff was not sure if at the Portland Pier location that the table service thing was just a weekend event or seven days.

On my Thursday visit,  the restaurant was busy at noontime, filled with tourists, some off the cruise ships—the type you can spot anywhere, if you know what I mean, as though each male diner—60-somethings,  with gold chains and dyed hair, if any, — pulled up in  Dodge GTOs.


I’m working my way through the menu with each visit.  This time I picked fried clam bellies.  I looked for a clam roll, but the menu offered either a clam plate ($19) with nothing else or the platter ($22) with fries, slaw and pickle.  Twenty-two dollars is the average price for clam plates or baskets at many places in Maine within a 100-mile radius.  Two Lights offers it at $21.99 including biscuit, fries and slaw.

At Luke’s the color of the fried and battered/breaded clams was sort of gray rather than golden hued. According to an early devotee of the restaurant he found out that the clams are coated in rice flour, which is gluten free, and thus the lack of deep color. Read more…

Portland has two distinguishing features that separate it from other cities looking to make a difference.  One fact is that it’s one of the shortest cities in America with a skyline of skimpy skyscrapers as high as a paltry 10-12 stories and residential buildings (mostly overpriced condos) topping out at 4 to 5 stories high.  What’s left behind is for the average Portlander given short shrift to enjoy the city’s other attribute, views of and proximity to the water in a city known as The Peninsula, which means being surrounded on three sides by water.  You’d never know it.

That has changed with the opening of Luke’s Lobster at the end of Portland Pier in the heart of downtown Portland.  It has stunning views of the harbor being mere inches away from the water’s edge. It has navigated the Byzantine zoning laws that rule what’s commonly known as the working waterfront (which is more precisely the heart of the  working waterfront on the western end of Commercial Street).  And it handled it brilliantly and beautifully.

The dock, the pier and Luke’s at the water’s edge at the end of Portland Pier

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It’s been a rare moment that the Portland Press Herald food coverage actually inspired me, especially in its recently abridged edition that has been shoved from the national food day newspaper coverage on Wednesdays to a skinny Sunday section, meant to replace the very Mother Earth style news that was found in the old Source.

Last week the paper ran a dueling article on the vigor and vagaries of rhubarb. On one side of the equation was the PPH food editor’s rare appearance in which she shows her admiration for rhubarb versus the paper’s prolific food pro, Meredith Goad, who expressed her extreme dislike for rhubarb. I don’t think either side was all that convincing, though Goad’s take had substance and style in its viewpoint.

After reading these two punchy diatribes I had the sudden urge to make rhubarb pie. And in the process of devising a different recipe from the usual, I wound up with one of the tastiest rhubarb pies ever. One that even a rhubarb foe might consider.

Rhubarb Crumble Pie

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