New England Oysters

Bagaduce (Maine):

Barnstable (Massachusetts):

Cotuit (Massachusetts):

Glidden Point (Maine):

Island Creek (Massachusetts):

Moonstone (Rhode Island):

Pemaquid (Maine):

Stonington (Connecticut):

Ninigret (Rhode Island):

Wellfleet (Massachusetts):

SEE MORE: How to Shuck Oysters | Advice Jeremy Sewall’s Oyster Stew Fried Oyster Roll

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Oysters are all about the place from which they hail, and New England oysters are no exception. Below you’ll find an oyster guide to some of the delectable oysters grown in the chilly waters of coastal New England. All are eastern oysters, but each type boasts a distinctive taste peculiar to the salty cove, plankton-rich bay, or brackish river where they are grown.

New England Oysters

Bagaduce (Maine):

Deep cups, with a fruity, almost berry-like finish. The Indian name means “fast water.”

Barnstable (Massachusetts):

White to brown in coloring, with medium cups and light and clean brininess; somewhat sweet.

Cotuit (Massachusetts):

Medium to large size; silky-smooth meat, with a clean and lingering ocean essence.

Glidden Point (Maine):

Big boys from the Damariscotta River, with a slightly briny, crisp, and clean ocean flavor.

Island Creek (Massachusetts):

Large shells with small meat; sweet and slightly nutty in flavor.

Moonstone (Rhode Island):

Often power washed to produce pearl-white shells; silky-smooth meat with a full-bodied, rich saltiness.

Pemaquid (Maine):

Very plump, with a crisp, cold-water richness.

Stonington (Connecticut):

Deep cups filled with plump meats; mild saltiness and a sweet finish.

Ninigret (Rhode Island):

Medium size, with a creamy, nutlike taste at first and a clean, briny finish.

Wellfleet (Massachusetts):

Wild samples vary from very good to excellent; deep cups brimming with strong brininess and a sweet seaweed flavor. Farmed Wellfleets are also consistently good, with a similar sweet and briny taste and a coppery finish.

This New England oyster guide was written in 2008 thanks in part to chef Gregg Reeves, B&G Oysters, Ltd., 550 Tremont St., Boston, MA; 617-423-0550. bandgoysters.com

SEE MORE:
How to Shuck Oysters | Advice
Jeremy Sewall’s Oyster Stew
Fried Oyster Roll

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1. Whether you’re at a big celebration, or on your own, be thankful. Take time to pause and reflect on the big and small things in your life that you’re grateful for.
2. A week beforehand, make a timeline so that you can schedule steps and oven usage throughout the days preceding and the big day itself.
3. Read through all of your recipes to make sure you’re clear about the order of instructions, the ingredients you’ll need, and how long each recipe will take to prepare.
4. Make a list of all the ingredients you’ll need. Look at it each day and add/delete as needed.
5. Check to make sure you have all the pots and pans you’ll need.
6. Check to make sure you have all the plates, flatware, napery, serving utensils, glassware, and chairs you’ll need. If you’re short, ask a guest to pitch in.
7. Go easy on the table décor — avoid fancy, elaborate floral arrangements and knickknacks. You’ll have a lot of color with all the foods you’re serving, and with all those plates getting passed around and the serving utensils poking out here and there, you’ll need more space than usual on your table.
8. Do as much as you can before Big Thursday. You can make most purées, soups, and marinades a week in advance and freeze them. Make the pies, stuffing, etc. the day before.
9. Pick up a few extra bags of cranberries and pop them in the freezer—after the holidays, they’ll be scarce.
10. Make use of extra hands in your house. The night before, rent a movie and put family members to work peeling butternut squash, green beans, or other time-consuming jobs that would slow you down the next day.
11. If your turkey is frozen, start defrosting it on Monday. In your fridge, a 14-pound turkey, for example, will take two to three days. If you forget, fill a large, clean cooler with cold water and put your bird in there, changing the water every other hour. If you’re lucky (we told you to defrost your turkey earlier!), your bird will be ready to roast in eight hours.
12. Invite guests to your home and don’t get hung up on the table’s being too crowded or things not being perfect … It’s better to have a neighbor, friend, or relative over who would otherwise have been alone than to fret that someone is sitting on a folding metal chair or eating from a plate that doesn’t match your pattern.
13. If a guest brings a surprise dish that doesn’t go with your menu, serve it anyway. So much of Thanksgiving is about tradition and memories. If Aunt Sarah needs to make chocolate cranberry turnip salad as part of her tradition, let it slide.
14. Thanksgiving is not the day to try out a new recipe. Stick with what you’re comfortable with and that you know will work.
15. Instead of one giant turkey, consider two or three smaller ones. Everything will cook faster. (Consider cooking one the day before and one the day of, so that you can present one beautiful browned bird tableside.) Also, smaller birds will be juicier and more tender, and if you have a large crowd, you’ll have more drumsticks.
16. Turkeys are notorious for being finicky to roast, because the white breast meat cooks faster than the drumsticks’ darker meat. There are several ways to even the playing field: Brine your turkey, butterfly it, remove the legs and cook them separately, and/or cover the breast with foil (remove it for the last 45 minutes to brown the skin).
17. To stuff or not to stuff? Most food-safety experts will tell you not to (some of the raw turkey juices could soak into the dressing and not cook thoroughly), but I prefer a stuffed turkey. Note that stuffing does slow down the roasting time.
18. To baste or not to baste? Basting does very little in terms of adding to your turkey’s flavor (not much of that flavor actually gets absorbed), but basting the breast does cool it down (by evaporation), slowing the breast meat’s cooking time and letting the legs catch up a little.
19. At 325 degrees, most turkeys cook at about 15 minutes per pound (stuffed, about 20 minutes per pound). But keep your eye on things. According to food-safety experts, your turkey is done when a meat thermometer reaches 180 degrees in the thigh, 170 in the breast, and 165 in the stuffing. Don’t tell anyone I told you this, but I’d go 170 on the thigh and 160 on the breast.
20. Remember who’s wagging this holiday’s tail: If your turkey is done at 2 o’clock, but you were planning on serving at 3, that’s fine. Remove the turkey to its carving place and “tent” it with foil (don’t wrap it in foil, or it’ll steam and the skin will lose its crispness). It will stay warm — I promise.
21. Have a few simple jobs for guests to do (such as pouring drinks, setting out water glasses, minding the ice bucket, making placecards with the kids, sitting next to Grammie and making sure she has what she needs, and so on).
22. If you’re a guest, be a good one. Don’t stand in the middle of the kitchen and ask, “What can I do?” If you bring children, watch them and keep them entertained. If you bring an appetizer, make sure it’s ready to go, not something that needs complicated assembly or oven cooking. Jump in and help with cleanup.
23. Have extra ice on hand. For some reason, you always need more ice than you or your ice maker can produce.
24. It’s the one day of the year to eat with no restraint. This is not the day for diets. It’s okay to be full … unbutton your pants if you have to.
25. Buy disposable plastic food containers, so that you can send leftovers home with your guests. My favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal is the turkey sandwich the next day.

SEE MORE: Thanksgiving Leftovers | Recipes Our Favorite Thanksgiving Disaster Stories Best Thanksgiving Side Dishes | Recipes

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This time of year, they’re everywhere — porches, benches, table settings, windows, sidewalks, farm stands, and grocery stores. Yes, pumpkins! And although those bumpy orange orbs are a terrific harbinger of everybody’s favorite dress-up holiday, what do you do with them after the goblins are gone?

Sugar ‘N’ Spice

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For too long, New England cuisine has suffered an identity crisis—or, more specifically, a split identity. On the one side, the pride of the region: fried clams, lobster rolls, and a perfect bowl of chowder, made all the more delicious by the patina of history. On the other side, a culinary punch line of underseasoned fish and overcooked potatoes. The resourcefulness and frugality of early New Englanders inspired cod cakes and Indian pudding—but compared with the culinary glories of, say, France, which at that time was enjoying the splendors of the Ancien Régime, our food was decidedly plain and practical, the product of a harsher climate than Europe’s or even the American South’s.

“While the New England culinary profile was framed by climate and geography—short growing season, poor soil, proximity of the ocean—the moral culture was dictated by the Puritans and their Boston Brahmin descendants,” says Professor Merry White, a food anthropologist at Boston University. Plain food wasn’t just practical; it was a safeguard against the perils of sensuality. As the country grew and the population began to diversify, early attempts to broaden the local diet were met with resistance.

“Italians who immigrated to Boston were ‘processed’ in settlement houses where the cooking classes trained oil and garlic out of their repertory,” White says. “Boiling was the only moral cooking method. One young social worker at the turn of the 20th century wrote in her casebook about a particularly recalcitrant family: ‘Still eating spaghetti; not yet assimilated,’ she wrote, despairingly.”

And so New England cooking mostly retained its rather plain reputation through the end of the “Continental” cuisine era of the 1970s. Meanwhile, the tides were shifting in the South and in California, where chefs began to explore the notion that, just as in Europe, America could produce legitimately praiseworthy regional food at the fine-dining level. In New England, we saw Chinese, Portuguese, and Italian cuisines work their way into the mainstream, but it took another decade before a few young chefs—most notably Jasper White—escaped from the rut of heavy sauces and overly fancified French cuisine. In the early 1980s White began reexamining our regional heritage at restaurants such as Jasper’s and Seasons. He hedged his bets that New England cooking could stand on its own; he made the seasonal ingredients of the Northeast his muse, turning out elegant recipes with a respectful hand. His first cookbook, Jasper White’s Cooking from New England, published in 1989, has become a classic.

With White leading the movement, other chefs followed. The availability and quality of local ingredients began to change as producers partnered with chefs. Mussel, clam, and oyster “farms” soon dotted the coastline. Farmers’ markets sprang up, with their fresh herbs and heirloom tomatoes, and long-shuttered gristmills began grinding whitecap flint corn again.

Thirty years later, Jasper White is still going strong, shifting from fine dining to his large, family-friendly Summer Shack restaurants (in Boston, Cambridge, Dedham, and Connecticut’s Mohegan Sun casino), yet he’s still cooking contemporary renditions of the classics. And now a new crew of Boston-area chefs is approaching our heritage as a source of inspiration rather than something to resist. Not content to merely source their ingredients from local farms, they’re returning to traditional dishes and reworking them in their own ways.

It’s a turning point for New England food, and it’s certainly not limited to the Boston area. But there’s a particular sense of momentum there. In addition to Jasper White, we spoke to four other chefs who have embraced what we’ll call the “new New England cuisine”: Marc Sheehan of Loyal Nine; Jeremy Sewall of Island Creek Oyster Bar and Row 34 (which has a second location in Portsmouth, New Hampshire); Mary Dumont of the newly opened Cultivar; and Will Gilson of Puritan & Company. And we also came away with five easy-to-make recipes that proudly serve up tradition with a twist.

MARC SHEEHAN | LOYAL NINE

In a November 2015 review of Loyal Nine in Boston magazine, food writer Corby Kummer pondered the phenomenon of “Boston’s braver chefs” who are in the “process of reinventing New England’s culinary vernacular.” Kummer was somewhat skeptical, while supporting the idea in theory. “Whether [Sheehan] can summon food that’s tasty, rather than just an academic exercise,” he wrote, “is the real question.” And it’s true that Sheehan and his earnest team are digging deep into the history of early America, serving thoughtfully prepared and thoroughly researched food that takes inspiration specifically from Colonial coastal Massachusetts. It’s as didactic as it sounds, but the fried soldier beans, served as a bar snack, are hard—no, impossible—to stop eating, as are the whole roasts, whether rack of pork or bluefish, served family-style, in the colonial style.

“As a kid,” Sheehan confesses, “I was a picky eater.” But he couldn’t resist the sweet smell of molasses, salt, pork, and onion that wafted through his childhood home. The intoxicating aroma came from his dad’s baked beans, made from scratch—old-school: “My dad would soak the beans on Friday, bake them on Saturday, and on Sunday they’d get served with dinner. No one could wait for Sunday for a taste—the aroma was everywhere in the house—so on Saturday, he’d pull the onions out of the pot and we’d eat them on toasted rye bread.” Slow-cooked onions stolen from classic New England baked beans, slow-cooked in a traditional beanpot: A recipe like that doesn’t need any updating. 

MARY DUMONT | CULTIVAR

And now we tackle pot roast, that mainstay of the Yankee Sunday dinner. It has certainly never lost popularity—it’s comfort itself. But the stuff of fine dining? Chef Mary Dumont takes her cue from the original, but bathes a chuck roast in equal parts broth and apple cider for a hint of sweetness and acidity to balance out the richness of the meat. And rather than leave the vegetables in the liquid to cook for hours, she adds them toward the end of the braise, preserving their texture and individual flavors.

The entire menu of her new restaurant in Boston’s Ames Hotel expresses a love of New England, particularly in the fall. “I grew up in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire,” Dumont says. “It was all apple orchards and farms—literally and figuratively ‘apple county.’ It was Ladies’ Auxiliaries, hayrides, hot apple cider, cold apple cider, hard apple cider, apple-cider doughnuts—apple-cider everything.”

JEREMY SEWALL | ROW 34 + ISLAND CREEK OYSTER BAR

Childhood memories also inspire Jeremy Sewall’s food. In fact, the history of this region is in his DNA. His ancestors go back centuries—chances are there’s a Sewall Road or a Sewall Bridge or a Sewall Hill near you, if you live in Massachusetts or Maine.

Sewall spent his childhood summers in southern Maine, where his uncle worked as a lobsterman. “What New England produces is amazing,” he says. “The farming, the fishing, the cheesemaking, and the artisanal products that are being made here … Just the last 10  years have shown such a dramatic increase in the quality of what’s available.

“The cooking part is simple,” he laughs. And with more access to quality ingredients, there’s more room for crea­tivity—all of which is evident in his book The New England Kitchen (Rizzoli, 2014).

Take baked clams, long a regional staple, particularly the giant stuffed quahogs that Rhode Island is known for. We’ve all had renditions in which the clams are tough from overcooking and overpowered by bread. They might still taste good at a clam shack by the sea, but in Sewall’s hands, the clams aren’t hidden; they’re given texture with minced apple, which, as with Dumont’s pot roast, brightens their flavor. Same historic ingredients, different era.

WILL GILSON

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Dahlias can be fickle beauties, a bit tricky to grow, but at Fivefork Farms in Upton, Massa­chusetts, a team of five media-savvy siblings has nurtured a business using sustainable practices to grow head-turning, long-lasting blooms, while bringing a new agricultural model to their customers.

The story of how the Lam siblings came to flower farming begins with one sister’s radical change of course, which led to a familial domino effect. In 2012, Grace Lam jumped ship from her budding career as a stock trader in New York and returned to her childhood home in Randolph, Massachusetts. Heeding an urge to begin growing things, she interned for a season raising vegetables at Dragonfly Farms in Pepperell, and then “ripped up” her parents’ lawn to experiment with selling flowers as a business. Soon, brother Lyh-Hsin, who had just wrapped up work with Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans, took note of her project, as did brother Lyh-Rhen, sister Lyh-Ping, and twin sister Joyce.

The desire to work together and live closer to the land became a gravitational pull for all five, and soon Grace was writing up a business plan. With a few calculated risks, the Lams bought a farm in the rolling hills of the Blackstone Valley—land that the family of cotton-gin inventor Eli Whitney had farmed for four generations—and began growing flowers.

“We knew we wanted to farm, and we considered all sorts of vegetables,” Grace remembers. “We also knew we wanted to grow sustainably and do something healthy for the land and for ourselves. After a lot of research and trial and error, we saw that there was a hole in the market for fresh, locally grown flowers.”

“Almost everything we knew about the wholesale flower business,” Lyh-Rhen adds, “was that [the flowers] were coming from very far away—Holland or South America—and weren’t grown organically, let alone with an eye to sustainability.”

Inspired by the thriving CSA (community-supported agriculture) model, in which consumers buy upfront shares in exchange for produce throughout the growing season, the Lams saw an opportunity to apply the same model to flowers. Now they’re part of a nationwide “farm-to-vase” movement that encourages people to trade hothouse roses for local blooms.

Fivefork Farms officially launched in 2012 with production on five of the Lams’ 38 acres. Today, they grow 100 dahlia varieties—the Lams’ star flower—but also provide all manner of blooms throughout the growing season, beginning with tulips and ranunculus in May to summer’s brown-eyed susans, zinnias, foxglove, and sweet william.

Grace, the youngest sibling, is the lead farmer, managing planting and harvesting. She and her father, Daniel (“Papa Lam”), manage their booth at Worcester’s Canal District Farmers’ Market on Saturdays; he handles deliveries, as well, and serves as Fivefork’s de facto brand ambassador.

Grace’s mother, Helen, tends the greenhouse and helps with the seeding and starting of plants. Lyh-Hsin spends most of his days in the field with Grace but also wears the infrastructure-and-operations hat, developing irrigation and fertilization plans. Creative projects and branding go to Lyh-Rhen, who does graphic design and creates arrangements for the CSA and farmers’ markets. Joyce and Lyh-Ping aren’t currently involved in day-to-day operations—they have jobs off the farm—but most weekends they’re in the fields.

“There was definitely a Green Acres vibe when we first started,” says Lyh-Rhen. “This,” he adds, pointing to the many rows of flowers and the hoop house, “is much different from the experiments we did at Mom’s.”

“We’re really happy that our flowers are in demand,” Grace says. CSA shares sell out quickly weeks in advance of each season’s first delivery date. “We work really hard, and it’s stressful,” she notes. “There are so many variables in farming, and you need to be on your toes, responding daily to a host of challenges—some that you can control and others that you just can’t. But we owe a large part of our early success to so many of the other CSAs and small businesses at the farmers’ market that we started with.” Not to mention the power of family and the simple pleasure of a beautiful bouquet. fiveforkfarms.com

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• Let your spouse take the shots. “Lisa takes much better photos of our children. She has more patience and she spends more time with them on most days. She’ll follow them around all day and snap, snap, snap until she gets what she wants — rather than trying to get them to do something. That never works. That’s when you get the cheesy, dramatic smiles. If you have a digital camera, take as many shots as your memory card will hold, then delete what you don’t want. It’s a great way to spend time with your children.”
• Again referring to the advantages of digital photography, Heath points out that you can look at what you just shot in seconds, giving you time to adjust the light or angle.
• Food has so much detail and texture, so get close: “You gotta get right in there.” If you are serious about food photography, invest in a lens that allows for more up-close detail.
• Use natural light whenever possible. If you are not outside, move the plate or bowl next to an open window.
• “Be ready and work quickly. If the food you’re shooting is hot, it will start to wilt and sauces will separate. If the food is frozen, it will start to melt. And things change color — lamb often turns gray. In the studio or on location, we set up a shot with a stand-in plate — then, when we have our lighting right, we swap it with the real plate and snap as fast as possible. But there’s no reason for that at home or if you are in a restaurant.”
• Take as many shots as you can — one usually comes out.

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A loaf of bread, a glass of wine … yes, satisfying things. But more satisfying is when you let life slow down (just a little bit) and you make the bread yourself. The overall time from start to finish can be days, but the actual “hands-on” is minimal. None of these recipes is difficult, even for first-time bakers.

Most culinary historians concur that leavened bread was likely “invented” (or more likely resulted from a kitchen accident) around 3000 b.c. by the Egyptians. (Unleavened breads had been around since at least 8000 b.c.) Bread is ancient and elemental, which is perhaps part of the reason for the particular fulfillment it gives us–like raising tomatoes from seed. A baker brings together flour, water, and yeast and combines them in a centuries-old process that makes magic: Water activates the yeast and lets the flour’s protein form strands of gluten; kneading warms and stretches the gluten strands to create the loaf’s texture and shape; the yeast feeds on the flour’s carbohydrates to produce the carbon dioxide that makes the dough rise; and oven baking gives the yeast one last boost.

For many of these recipes, the amounts of flour and water you’ll use vary. Often depending on the weather, the dough may need more of one or the other ingredient. The more bread you make, the more you’ll get a feel for when the dough is just right. Baking bread is a good thing to do any time of the year, but somehow these warming spring days are when I crave it most.

GUIDE TO YEAST

Yeast is everywhere. It’s a single-celled organism–actually a type of fungus, a nongreen plant. We’ve adapted one type of yeast to serve as a catalyst in the process of fermentation, essential to bread baking. Yeast activated by water feeds on the carbohydrates in flour and expels carbon dioxide, which fills up and expands the pockets in between strands of the flour’s protein (also known as gluten, which forms when you add water to flour).

Most yeasts you’ll find in the grocery store are either “regular active” or instant (also labeled rapid-rise, fast-rising, or bread machine yeast). You may use either one for baking. Instant rises faster, so if you’re in a rush, opt for that–but why rush when making bread? Savor every moment of this satisfying activity, creating your own flavorful, fragrant home-baked loaves from scratch.

I usually use all-purpose flour (King Arthur brand, specifically), but in the baking aisle of your local market you’ll likely find bread flour, self-rising flour, whole wheat and rye flours, pastry and cake flours, and so on. Most of the difference among these ingredients lies in the amount of protein in the wheat before it was ground. For details on each type, see the list below.

All-Purpose Flour. A combination of high-protein bread flour and low-protein cake flour. The bread flour is milled from a variety of “hard” wheat full of protein that you’ll call into action by adding water.

Whole-Wheat Flour. Milled from the entire wheat berry (bran and germ in addition to the endosperm), with a deeper, nuttier flavor.

Bread Flour. High-protein flour made with as much as 99.9 percent hard wheat flour, with a bit of malted-barley powder added to encourage yeast activity, which helps the bread rise.

Self-Rising Flour. Contains a bit of baking powder for an added boost.

Cake Flour. High in starch and finely milled from “soft” wheat (low protein content), which means that it contains less protein. You end up with a tender crumb, great for cakes. Most cakes get their leavening from eggs and baking powder (or baking soda), not yeast.

Pastry Flour. Similar to cake flour, but with a bit more protein, for a flaky crust.

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