Island Institute, 2009
74 pages, $16.95
Just peel and eat
Aside from the couple of times I journeyed (by car) or voyaged (by sailboat) to Maine in June for weddings, I ventured northward from New York to Maine in the winter. My city friends could not understand such insanity-even when I described the incomparable culinary rewards of Maine shrimp, cooked in any number of inventive ways.
Julia Child’s delicacies, James Beard, others with gustatory nuance have strengthened and nourished my cookery challenges in my years living in Maine, but none have quite excited my dinner (or lunch or breakfast) possibilities in various ways as has Diane Schetky’s new cookbook.
“I love to cook,” Diane tells me, adding, I got into this really in order to promote sustainable fishing and encourage people to buy locally.” Thus the cookbook became a fundraiser for the First Universalist Church in Rockland, where Schetky worships, and a way of working jointly with the Midcoast Fisherman’s Cooperative of Port Clyde. The book was edited, designed and published by the Island Institute (which also publishes Working Waterfront), and includes photos by the Institute’s Peter Ralston.
This book, as Schetky writes, ” is an outgrowth of the first Universalist Church in Rockland’s experience in starting the first Community Supported Fisher (CSF) in the United States in 2007.” Members purchased shares. “We wanted to know where our food came from, that it was grown free of toxins…was not genetically modified.”
There is a very personal introduction to the sexy intimate life of Pandalus borealis by Island Institute President Philip Conkling and the seemingly limitless cuisine awaiting our shelling and eating of Maine local food.
Before even glancing at the recipes, there are impressivenesses to notice: The smashing cover photo of a shrimper heading out into a cold dawn; the spiral binding enabling a cook to let a page out flat with ease; the glistening paper of the pages-if you spill anything on your page it wipes off with ease (I checked this out); the clear easy-to-read and follow recipes, with the occasional happy-shrimp-image accompanied by a historical factoid (or shrimptoid, as Schetky prefers to call them).
The cookbook committee canvassed the area, including chefs and fisher-families themselves for recipes, ultimately choosing appetizers, soups and salads, traditional Maine delicacies, pasta & rice, international flavors, brunch thoughts, sauces, stocks and marinades. There are interesting introductions about going out with a shrimper for a day’s fishing, the nutritional value of shrimp, and the life and times of the Maine shrimp, which includes their interesting sexual life-yes everything you never expected to know before sitting down before a simmering feast.
The layout of the recipes is a cook’s delight, clearly defined for ingredients with adequate instructions. As the first recipe for Maine shrimp in shell states: “Just peel and eat”