August 24, 2017 Four wonderful meals.

August 24, 2017  Four wonderful meals.

First: The food trip started with a couple of simple fried eggs over easy on a round of Canadian bacon on the back patio eating with Jim, a business friend of Ricardo’s from the film business, who dropped by.

Second: Then Suzette and I took Cynthia’s two grand daughters to the flea Market at the end of the street.  We looked at lots of stuff but the only thing I bought was a plate of fish and chips with two pieces of haddock with straw onions instead of fried potatoes or 12.00.  I shared the dish with Suzette and Emma.

Then we drove home at 12:30 and I took a nap until 2:00  when we drove down the coast to Perkins Cove to visit the Ogunquist Contemporary Art Museum and its current exhibit of John Marin watercolors of Maine. The museum was started but a wealthy painter and patron of the arts named Henry Strater, who was friends with Ernest Hemingway in Paris after the First World War.  The museum is beautifully sited on a high cliff above the ocean that is visible through the upper gallery the minute you enter the museum, like Louisiana in Elsinore, Denmark.

There are four smaller galleries attached to the main gallery, one devoted to Henry Strater’s career, one devoted to the artist's of the Ogunquist school that grew out of the ash can school in NYC around 1915, a large gallery with curated exhibits and a smaller gallery devoted to sculpture.  The exhibition in the curated gallery was about two dozen watercolors painted by John Marin of the Maine coast.  The show in the main gallery was a collection of Will Barnet paintings.  Besides the pensive introspective figures in mostly black, there were a number of exuberant colorful pictures of family scenes, such as young children playing at a table.  After viewing the pictures and talking to a curator then walked the sculpture garden surrounding the museum.

Third: from the Museum we drove back into Perkins Cove at 3:45.  Suzette mentioned  that happy hour began at 4:00 with many restaurants serving $1.00 oysters.  We began looking for happy hour signs and soon found one advertising $1.00 oysters so we stopped and walked to La Orilla (the Edge) Restaurant.  We asked for a table with a view and were escorted to the bar area beside and behind the restaurant that had a view of the small sound formed by the Ogunquist River flowing between the village and a barrier island or peninsula dominated by public beaches about 200 yards from the restaurant.

We ordered two dozen oysters and Suzette ordered a mojito.  I tasted a Rose’ Cava and an Albariño but was impressed as I watched the lady bartender mix Suzette’s mojito because when she stripped several stalks of mint with her hand it liberated an aroma of fresh mint that was intoxicatingly fresh.  She then mulled the mint with slices of limeade simple syrup with a mortar and then added a squirt of lime juice, a shot of rum and topped off the drink with ice and club soda.  I was sold and switched from wine to mojito ($6.00 for happy hour).

When the oysters arrived we were pleasantly surprised again.  Although the oysters were shall they were full of flavor.  We asked and were told that they came from New Brunswick.  What was most interesting to me was that the cocktail sauce was served in a small steel ramekin with lemon wedges and a small mound of flakes of freshly grated horseradish on an oyster shell.  We were further surprised by the warm creamy flavor of the cocktail sauce and were informed that the chef adds Smoked Spanish Paprika to his cocktail sauce.  What a pleasant surprise!  We loved our happy hour in Perkins Cove with a view of the beach and ocean with a table full of delicious fresh oysters.

We then rejoined Maine Route 1 and drove back up the coast toward Arundel, but stopped at a cheese and wine store in Wells where we bought three bottles of wine: a French rose’, a bottle of Mohammed Sauvignon Blanc, and a bottle of French Entre deux Mer plus a wedge of Morbier cheese for $42.00.

We returned around 6:00 and showered and got ready for the arrival of Ezra and Courtney and their other two children.

Four:  when they arrived Cynthia began cooking dinner which included reheating the squash, onion, and corn sautéed vegetables, preparing ahead of time a homemade tartare sauce with bits of fresh cucumber and pickle relish, then dipping  pieces of the fresh haddock we bought yesterday first in a mixture of egg and milk and then  into panko and sautéing them in butter, making a large fresh salad of spinach, romaine lettuce, slivered red onion, and diced cucumber, and a beautiful caprese salad prepared ahead, after the children were fed.  Cynthia is a wonderful cook.  She keeps everything organized in her head and develops the meal step by step so that it is all finished at the same time. For this meal she had prepared the tartare sauce and caprese salad ahead, the fresh salad,  and the squash dish was a PPI, so she only had to prepare the sautéed fish, microwave the squash dish and dress the salad to complete the meal.

We opened another bottle of La Playa Sauvignon Blanc from Chile, which was quite good with a slightly tart citrusy flavor, for dinner I opened and poured the Mohua New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and it blew everyone away, just as it had when Janis and Tom brought it with crab cakes on the July 8 meal.  I was glad to find it, especially since it cost $11.99.

A fun day of food.

Yesterday we bought steamer long neck clams and Cynthia steamed them for dinner along with the squash dish.  We had anticipated cooking the haddock but Dick cooked a chicken and string bean dish for dinner that was overly peppery that I was unable to eat.  They also brought diced sugared peaches and strawberries and shortcakes and whipped cream for a delicious strawberry shortcake dessert and several bottles of wine.

We ate shaved roast beef on wheat thins spread with a cream cheese cucumber and dill spread and slices of sweet Bologna on the plane ride from BWI to Portland.

Bon Appetit

Bon Appetit