Food - Marblehead Current

30 Dec

FOOD 101: Soup traditions, resolutions for the new year

Leigh BlanderColumns, Food, Opinion

Here we are just before “Resolution Day” again. As always, I look to different cultures that cook some type of beans as a wish for prosperity and good health in the upcoming year. Many rely on beans, once used as money. Beans and rice. Black-eyed peas. Lentils and sausage. Beans were often dried to sustain people throughout the harsh winter. They gave rise to culinary superstitions, through generations. One year, I combined a few. Eating lentils while walking up a staircase backward was hilarious. So…

10 Dec

FOOD 101: Chocolate holiday dessert — still in the making

Saoirse StallingsColumns, Food

Childhood memories are often chocolate-coated. My brother and I would save up our change to buy candy at the corner store on the walk home from school. He would choose a Milky Way; I would get a dark chocolate Mounds bar. He liked his chocolate light and sweet. I liked mine with a dark jolt. As I explored chocolate’s intensely deep flavor, a friend’s mom added a splash of coffee to hot cocoa drinks, sending me further along this direction. I sampled everything that came…

03 Dec

FOOD 101:The joy (?) of Brussels sprouts

Saoirse StallingsColumns, Food

How Brussels sprouts can be your next great holiday food tradition. CURRENT PHOTOS / LINDA BASSETT If one vegetable could be voted “most likely to be disliked” by the largest number of people, I would guess Brussels sprouts. Broccoli follows at a close second. But wait! Give the scorned tiny cabbage-lookalikes another chance. They need coddling — and not like an egg because then you’ll get sulfurous payback. When treated gently, they react positively. Let’s start with their backstory. In season right now, Brussels sprouts…

19 Nov

FOOD 101: Two stews from a perfect kitchen

Saoirse StallingsFood

In home design, “coastal” style holds a special place in communities by the sea. Airy and cozy, it is best illustrated in Nancy Meyer movies set by the ocean. The California coast. The Hamptons. Even the Jersey Shore. Understated, luxurious living rooms are colored in comfortable tones of cream, caramel and blue. Carrots make for a delicious, healthy stew. CURRENT PHOTO / LINDA BASSETT Kitchens lean monochromatically white. Clutter is OUT. Countertops and islands, cleared of appliances, display bowls of white flowers or baskets of…

12 Nov

SOME OF MY FAVORITE THINGS: Abbot Library cooks up new club

Saoirse StallingsAbbot Public Library, Food, Local News

This fall, the Abbot Public Library launched a Cookbook Club, where local residents come together once a month to cook, share and celebrate recipes from a chosen cookbook. The Cookbook Club sets up tables for tasting recipes prepared by readers. / COURTESY PHOTO Kimberly Grad The idea came from Judy Eissner, who visited a Cookbook Club with a family member at West Concord Library. “Everything you read about today, relationships are important,” Eissner told the Current. “It's nice to be able to share an experience…

12 Nov

Go behind the counter at one of Marblehead’s favorite spots

Julie FlynnBusiness, Food, Local News

The Muﬃn Shop opens its doors at 6 a.m., welcoming the first customers of the day. Walking in to the smell of fresh coﬀee and an array of warm muﬃns, commuters grab their morning fuel. Luisa Capasso stands behind the counter at the Muffin Shop. She gets up around 1 a.m. each day to bake the popular pastries. CURRENT PHOTOS / JULIE FLYNN Sixteen diﬀerent kinds of muﬃns line the muﬃn trays, from pumpkin to peach. Blueberry is the best seller, with oatmeal raspberry a…

05 Nov

FOOD 101: Who reads cookbooks?

Saoirse StallingsColumns, Food, Linda Bassett

Who reads cookbooks? Who buys them? Who are they written for? The first acknowledged cookbook, De Re Coquinaria, was authored by Apicius during the Roman Empire. Discovered among musty manuscripts during the Renaissance, it is more a memoir of elite parties in Imperial Rome, more suggestion than instruction. Who reads cookbooks? CURRENT PHOTO / LINDA BASSETT In the following centuries, cookbooks guided heads of large kitchens who oversaw a staff of cooks in a castle or a manor. (Home cooks learned by rote from mothers…

04 Nov

Local volunteers join food rescue efforts

Leigh BlanderCommunity Resources, Community Service, Food, Top Stories

As food prices surge and federal benefits appear in jeopardy during the government shutdown, volunteers around Marblehead are working nearly every day with food rescue programs to ensure that no groceries or meals go to waste. On Oct. 28, Mimi Hollister and Richard Thibedeau picked up 100 pounds of produce and bread — past their prime but still healthy and nutritious — from Crosby’s Marketplace in Marblehead and delivered it to Lifebridge in Salem. Hollister and Thibedeau are members of Old North Church. Volunteers from…

22 Oct

Salmon fillets: Many days, many ways

Saoirse StallingsColumns, Food, Linda Bassett

Salmon fillets are one of my go-to meals when I’m fresh out of ideas, in a rush, or too exhausted to put together a big meal on a weeknight. I buy frozen (not farmed) wild salmon — several fillets to the package to keep for these culinary brain-freeze nights. Then all I have to do is pull as many pieces as I want out of the freezer, and look in the pantry for away to enhance them. I can play with mustard, mayo, hot sauce,…

09 Oct

Food 101: Preparing sweet (potato) dreams

khthomsonFood

Sweet potatoes are not yams. We know that even though the two often spill over into one another at the grocery store. You can barely tell the difference. Some cooks use them interchangeably, although a sweet potato, with its dark orange flesh, is a tuber of a different color. Russet potatoes (aka Idaho or baking potatoes) also sit nearby, but they are never confused with sweet potatoes. At the market, look for a firm exterior free of bruises or cuts. At home, store in a…