Heather Atwood - In Cod We Trust: From Sea to Shore, the Celebrated Cuisine of Coastal Massachusetts

An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

Copyright 2015 by Heather Atwood

All photography copyright 2015 by Allan Penn

Text design: Nancy Freeborn

A Hollan Publishing, Inc. Concept

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from thepublisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

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ISBN 978-1-4930-0403-4 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4930-2236-6 (e-book)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

For all of you who think coastal Massachusetts cuisine starts with salt pork and ends with cream, watch out. Watch for gorgeous chunks of golden fried cod slathered with garlic whipped potatoes. Watch for quahogs stuffed with chourico, Cohasset Chocolate Mousse Cake, and bronze, rich-as-Croesus loaves of Massa Sovado, a delicious Portuguese sweet bread. Did you know the Portuguese in New Bedford serve loaves of this bread beside a bowl of daffodil-yellow rice pudding called Arroz Doce? New Bedford children dream about spoonfuls of this creamy pudim. What a breakfast!

Some of the coastlines most beautiful dishes are being prepared by the Portuguese in kitchens from New Bedford to Newburyport. Portuguese Caldeirada consists of layers of fish, potatoes, and vegetables that simmer for hours and create a bourguignon-like richness. The Portuguese and Azorean tomato sauce called Molho de Tomate, is a ragout of tomatoes, crushed red pepper, red wine, vinegar, garlic, and parsley that simmers on the stove for half a day. Poach eggs in this finished masterpiece, or dip crusty Portuguese Broa in it, and have yourself a bold Massachusetts breakfast.

Across Buzzards Bay to Marthas Vineyard, farmers are heroes; the cuisine built around local ingredients there dazzles. Cavatappi with Nasturtium Pesto is whats for dinner tonight! Lets begin with a Rhubarb Cocktail, and then well share some Zaatar Seasoned Kale Chips, and a Smoky Eggplant and Fresh Tomato Platter. The flavors in an Aquinnah Salada ravishing composition of local greens, roasted butternut squash, and red onion, topped with wild blueberries and toasted sunflower seeds reflect all the colors and tastes of this sacred Wampanoag land on a late summer day.

The Wampanoag influence is seen in our cuisine even today. Sobaheg is the powerful Native American stew made with coastal Massachusetts ingredients and thickened with toasted sunflower seeds. Made with venison or chicken, this stew is surprisingly light and vegetable fragrant; its a soulful weeknight dinner, but would also be a perfect way to begin a Thanksgiving feast.

There is so much that is not dull about the coast of Massachusetts! On Nantucket, old recipe boxes are filled with ways to pickle limes and make inky, black gingerbread. Pickled limes were once so common in Massachusetts that in Louisa May Alcotts Little Women the schoolteacher reprimands May for bringing them to school. Pickled limesthe combination of tart citrus with molasses, vinegar, and cloveis a natural. Yes, a well-roasted chicken would love a pickled lime beside it, but when you taste the old Nantucket recipe for Beebe Gingerbread you taste the affinity molasses has for the sweet citrus. Yes, Beebe Gingerbread with Pickled Limes is historic, but it also packs such a wallop of flavor that it never goes out of style.

In Cape Cods West Barnstable, the older Finnish families remember shining loaves of fragrant joululimppu, a Finnish spice bread brushed with molasses. Perhaps someone in a West Barnstable kitchen right now is also stirring a fruit soup. The Finns there and in Gloucester love fruits and berries and use them to make soups, which become cherished meals. Ive come to love having a jar of dried fruit soup in the refrigerator. With no sugar, just jewel-like cooked fruit, it makes an ambrosial instant lunch topped with yogurt. The Finns make a beautiful rice pudding, also, one that cooks very slowly and almost caramelizes the milk. A few tablespoons of the apricot-, orange-, and cardamom-scented fruit soup over a small bowl of warm rice pudding is a dessert that needs a better name than soup or pudding; its sublime enough to impress a king.

Finns settled into both capesCape Cod and Cape Anncarrying to each variations on their homelands cuisines: souffl-like pancakes that puff to cumulus heights, and then descend to a bowl broad enough to fill with berries; creamy casseroles of turnips and rutabagas in steaming nutmeg clouds. The Finns have taught us to love their golden braids of cardamom-laced bread, the beloved nisu, meant to resemble a young Scandinavian girls tress of hair.

The Massachusetts coast, a gnarled, glacier-shredded 1,500 miles of peninsulas and islands, is as gloriously various as the coast of France. Like strewn pearls along these tidal marshes and granite promontories, fishing villages from New Bedford to Newburyport hold distinctively different culinary treasures.

When people think of dock-side dining in Massachusetts, they imagine buttery toasted lobster rolls, steaming bowls of creamy fish chowder, and porcelain scallops piled with bread crumbs. All this is true, and some of that is in this cookbook, but there is so much more to the coast of Massachusetts.

History is everywhere and it need not be dull. Buttercup Stew, for instance, turkey and fresh corn braised inside a buttercup squash, is a recipe that reflects what Myles Standish learned from Massasoitpumpkins and squash make fine pots and pans. Better than the history lesson, this recipe is about hot wedges of blistering sweet squash tumbling with turkey and vegetables, proving that roasting inside a pumpkin is not a gimmick, its brilliant.

And then theres chowder, which no one would be making if not for the Wampanoag lessons. But the history of chowder is for another book; this is about offering recipes for the best chowder being served on the coast of Massachusetts. And we can start with the Wampanoag version, still being made in Plymouth and Aquinnah. Its a heavenly homemade fish broth thickened with nothing but cornmeal. Oysters and young spinach are added at the end and heated just enough to plump the shellfish. This combination makes an elegant soup, far more sophisticated than the word chowder suggests. The Portuguese in Provincetown brought their own clam-as-stew variation to America; loaded with cumin, saffron, and fresh tomatothats the way the Portuguese like their quahogs chowdered.