Dinner

Roasted beets, homemade cheese, pickled turnips, toasted almonds, and spinach

Our famous (soon to be) lobster panelle sandwich with olive oil and garlic

Stuffed shells with homemade cheese, roasted tomato, caramelized onions, spinach, and bechamel

Salad and risotto

Spinach, roasted beets, pickled peppers, peanuts and provolone

Sweet Maine shrimp risotto

We have been watching a lot of these competitive cooking shows that feature a bunch of up and coming chefs. Most of them try and make trendy sauces, foams and other flashy things instead of nailing the basics. Also there is way too much unnecessary garnishing and busy plating going on. What seems to be lacking in this generation of cooks is a style that is steeped in the basics. We like to see simple dishes done really well and try to do the same. Making a great risotto, pasta, polenta, or salad, can be difficult if one tries to get too fancy and stray from what makes the dish amazing in the first place. We used local fresh Maine shrimp, homemade lobster stock, our own oregano, and a nice arborio rice.

Sweet Maine shrimp

Since the first time we went to the old veteran to buy fresh seafood, we were hooked. We went for lobster and ended up getting sweet Maine shrimp as well. These shrimp are very small and sweet and have a very short season, which happens to be in the winter. Yay for us! 

Another interesting fact about these shrimp is that they may start out as a male, but they all end up as females in the end of their life cycle. They come from the icy waters of the north Atlantic to Maine where the waters are warmer to lay their eggs. If you like roe and aren't squeamish, these bad boys are packed with it.

Fresh Maine Lobster in 5 courses

Since lobster is the biggest thing around here, we decided to try a couple of dishes from a couple of fresh lobsters. We had a great time highlighting the really fresh product and don't see a need for superfluous garnishes. 

For the first dish, as to be expected is panelle with a fresh lobster claw and some olive oil.

Spinach salad with fresh lobster, beets, pickled peppers and a lemon vinaigrette 

This was a completely ridiculous dish, generously filled and topped with lobster. It is one massive raviolo with shredded carrot, horseradish, sage and butter.

 Creamy polenta with lobster, caramelized onions and red chili flakes

Lobster panelle sandwich

We bought this lobster from the veteran with the seafood truck on the side of the road. It was out of the water and on our plates within 24 hours. We made all of these dishes in true Italian fashion by not doing too much to the lobster and letting the freshness of the product shine through.

Crab ravioli

We really think we made a good one this time. Since the seafood is so fresh around here we decided to go to the source and made a great new dish.

Along route 1, between Waldoboro and Rockland, there is an old veteran who sells fresh seafood from a couple of miles away. His Maine accent is so thick, it's hard to understand what he's saying, but he's there every day, even in the middle of winter.

Originally we wanted mussels, but the ground was too frozen to get them out. We ended up scoring delicious, delicate, fresh crabmeat. Since Matt is now a master at making fresh pasta, we decided to keep the dish simple and highlight the main(pun intended) ingredient, the pasta and crab. The sauce on top is simple. Tomatoes, zucchini, onion and garlic. Really amazing!

New Year, new food

With this new year, we're really hoping to bring TapRootFood to a new level. Hopefully we will reach our goal on our kickstarter campaign and our Italian food cart will be a huge success! It will be the year of the panelle and polenta!

Thank you to those of you who have already donated, there will surely be a place in the panelle cart hall of fame. Please tell all of your friends to help support our venture. Here's to a great year full of food, health and success!

 Since it's getting colder and colder here in Maine, we're trying some new things in the kitchen, mainly to heat the place! We also love our neighbors and are having another party, so we're practicing new dishes for our next party, my birthday! My birthday falls on Wednesday, so the party will be that Friday, which is the 13th. NICE!

We're working on making our own mozzarella and ricotta cheese, which we are still perfecting. Here, we baked the mozzarella cheese with homemade breadcrumbs. It came out delicious.

 

 Thanks to mom and dad, we came back to Maine with so much food! We got a bunch of mini peppers, which we filled with the mozzarella cheese we made, sauteed onions and red chili flake. Roasted then baked with homemade breadcrumbs. The sauce on top is a balsamic reduction. Awesome appetizer.

For the main dish, we made crab zucchini cakes with shrimp and a homemade horseradish tomato butter. The shrimp were marinated in horseradish and were so tender.