Lobster Rolls and Blueberry Pie: Three Generations of Recipes and Stories from Summers on the Coast of Maine

by Rebecca Charles, Deborah Di Clementi

Overview

Escape to the Maine seashore, an exquisite summer sanctuary where vacations stretch out forever during long, golden days and food is the stuff from which memories are made.

The summers that acclaimed chef Rebecca Charles and her family spent swimming in the Atlantic, scouring the beach for shells, and eating shore dinners inspired her to open the famed Greenwich Village restaurant Pearl Oyster Bar. In this heartwarming memoir, Rebecca combines more than seventy of her favorite recipes with captivating family stories.

Rebecca's adventurous granduncle Sam Goldsmith first took the family from the sweltering summer streets of Brooklyn to the exclusive seaside resort of Kennebunkport. But it was his sister–in–law Pearle Goldsmith, Pearl Oyster Bar's namesake and an opera singer with the Metropolitan and New York City operas, who fell in love with the rugged coast of Maine. Pearle passed this love on to her daughter, Eleanor, and her granddaughter, Rebecca.

Rebecca recounts her family's three–generation love affair with the small Yankee fishing village and shares the recipes that have New Yorkers waiting in line for hours to taste what food writer Ed Levine described as "the best lobster roll I have ever eaten."

Rebecca breathes new life into classic beach food. Whether re–creating an old–time clambake or grilling a whole pompano, she imparts the expertise that has made her one of the foremost seafood chefs in the country.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060515836
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/28/2006
Edition description:	1ST
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	7.38(w) x 9.12(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

Rebecca Charles is the owner and head chef of Pearl Oyster Bar in Greenwich Village, New York. In Maine she was awarded four stars at the White Barn Inn before returning home to Manhattan to work as Anne Rosenzweig's sous chef at her landmark Upper East Side restaurant, Arcadia. She opened Pearl Oyster Bar in 1997 to enormous critical and popular acclaim. She lives in New York City.

Deborah DiClementi is a former television producer and freelance writer who has written for Cooking Light, Marie Claire, and Mademoiselle.

Read an Excerpt

Lobster Rolls and Blueberry Pie

Three Generations of Recipes and Stories from Summers on the Coast of Maine

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By Rebecca Charles

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2006 Rebecca Charles
All right reserved.
ISBN: 006051583X

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Blueberry Crumble Pie

Serves 8 to 10

This recipe is best served warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Ingredients

For the crust

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon salt
2 sticks cold butter, cut into tiny pieces
1/4 cup ice water

For the crumble

1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 1/2 sticks sweet butter, cut into little pieces

For the filling

3 pints blueberries, wild Maine if you can get them
1 cup granulated sugar
4 teaspoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon finely chopped lemon zest
Pinch of freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

To make the crust, combine the flour, salt, and cold butter in a food processor by pulsing until the mixture has the consistency of sand. Add the cold water while pulsing until the mixture comes together; don't overwork it. (To mix the dough by hand, combine the flour, salt, and butter in a large bowl. Add the cold water and work by hand until the mixture comes together.) Remove the dough from the food processor or bowl and on a lightly floured counter or board, shape it into adisk about 1 inch thick. Wrap with plastic film and refrigerate for at least 1 hour before rolling it out.

To make the crumble, mix the flour and brown sugar in a food processor until thoroughly combined. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture forms a crumble (do not overwork the mixture). Refrigerate until you are ready to use it.

To make the fruit filling, in a large bowl, mix all the ingredients well. Crush about 20 percent of the blueberries so the juice mixes with the cornstarch and thickens the filling.

To make the pie, preheat the oven to 350° F. Roll out the dough on a floured surface, place in a pie plate, and crimp the edges. Use a fork to poke holes around the sides and bottom of the crust. Cover with a piece of parchment paper and fill it with dried beans. Bake for 8 minutes, or until the crimped edges are firm. Remove the paper and beans and bake for 3 to 5 more minutes to firm the bottom. Fill the crust with the berry mixture, spread out the mixture, and top the pie generously with the crumble. Bake for 1 hour, or until the filling starts to bubble. Cool on a rack.

Pan-Seared Scallops

Serves 2

I like to serve scallops on a bed of risotto in the winter or on a vegetable ragout in the summer. They are great on the Sweet Corn Ragout (page 69).Anything with tomatoes, which compliments the sweetness of the scallops perfectly, and they are also lovely with roasted vegetables and bacon. When I was cooking in the early 1990s, I served my version of a BLT in which I put caramelized scallops on a bacon and potato tart with tomato butter sauce.

Ingredients

4 scallops per person, U-10 size (10 per pound)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Peanut or vegetable oil for sauteing

Instructions

Cooking scallops can be difficult at home because it is hard to get a pan as hot on your home stove as we can get it on a restaurant stove. Some of the newer model stoves, however, are now being made with one burner that has a higher BTU output, so eventually home cooks will be able to prepare seared foods in the same way a restaurant does.

Season the scallops lightly on both sides with salt and pepper. Put your pan on very high heat. Do not add the oil until you're certain the pan is hot. When you add the oil it should shimmer and you might see wisps of smoke -- too much smoke means the pan is too hot. Immediately put your scallops in the pan, flat side down. After 2 minutes, lift the edges gently. When the scallops are caramelized and a mahogany brown color, turn them over and reduce the heat by half. When they are firm to the touch, which should take another minute or two, they're done. Serve them immediately, as scallops tend to lose their juice once they're cooked.

Continues...

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Excerpted from Lobster Rolls and Blueberry Pie by Rebecca Charles Copyright © 2006 by Rebecca Charles. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

	Foreword	ix
	Introduction	xi
Part I	Kennebunkport Bound
	It Happened One Night	3
	Brooklyn, 1919	7
Part II	My Grandmother
	A Scottish-Jewish Suffragette	19
	The Jazz Age	27
	Objectionable Strangers	45
	The Forest Hill House	53
	A Summer Table	73
	The Darling of the Gods	81
	Low Tea at High Tide	99
	Twilight Time	115
Part III	My Mother and Me
	The 1950s	129
	Pearle's Gift	141
	Smackmen and Lobster Gangs	159
	Red Dogs and Whoopie Pies	177
	Pearle and Pearl	195
	Back to Gooch's Beach	217
	Acknowledgments	223
	Index	225

What People are Saying About This

Beverly Sills

“I remember Rebecca’s grandmother Pearle...made the best shortbread cookies, and Rebecca’s book is just as delicious as those cookies!”

Editorial Reviews

Deliciously entertaining. A novel with recipes.” — USA Weekend

“Will remind you of the best summers you ever had.” — O, The Oprah Magazine

“I remember Rebecca’s grandmother Pearle...made the best shortbread cookies, and Rebecca’s book is just as delicious as those cookies!” — Beverly Sills

“A charming memoir of summers spent on the coast of Maine.” — Daily News

“Personal and evocative.” — San Francisco Examiner

“A satisfying mix of memoir and cookbook.” — Boston Globe

“A charming, well written account of three generations of women and their summer adventures in Kennebunkport.” — Portland Phoenix

“A book bound to leave readers feeling that summer just can’t come soon enough.” — Los Angeles Times

“A homespun travelogue that’s breezy, practical and likely to charm even armchair gourmands not partial to the beach.” — Baltimore Sun

“A pleasure to read. . . . You’ll have this book plastered open on your kitchen counter all summer.” — New York Times

“An interesting, mouth-watering read.” — Bangor Daily News

From the Publisher

A book bound to leave readers feeling that summer just can’t come soon enough.

|Los Angeles Times

Will remind you of the best summers you ever had.

The Oprah Magazine O

A homespun travelogue that’s breezy, practical and likely to charm even armchair gourmands not partial to the beach.

Baltimore Sun

A satisfying mix of memoir and cookbook.

Boston Globe

A charming memoir of summers spent on the coast of Maine.

Daily News

A pleasure to read. . . . You’ll have this book plastered open on your kitchen counter all summer.

New York Times

Deliciously entertaining. A novel with recipes.

USA Weekend

I remember Rebecca’s grandmother Pearle...made the best shortbread cookies, and Rebecca’s book is just as delicious as those cookies!

Beverly Sills

A charming, well written account of three generations of women and their summer adventures in Kennebunkport.

Portland Phoenix

Personal and evocative.

San Francisco Examiner

An interesting, mouth-watering read.

Bangor Daily News

A book bound to leave readers feeling that summer just can’t come soon enough.

Los Angeles Times

Charles's tiny Greenwich Village restaurant, Pearl Oyster Bar, may be one of the best -- it's certainly one of the most charming -- dining spots in Manhattan, and here she shares a selection of her first-rate seafood recipes, from chowders and oyster pan roasts to shrimp cocktails and lobster pot pie. Worth the price of admission is her recipe for lobster roll, a mayonnaisey dream on a buttery toasted bun. Charles is a pleasure to read when she's talking about food. — Dwight Garner

The New York Times

Half seafood cookbook and half family history, this volume's greatest strength is in the recipes for over 70 dishes that define New England summers-corn on the cob, salt-crusted shrimp, and lots of lobster-reproduced here in honor of Charles's family's summertime trips to Maine. Charles, owner and head chef of the widely hailed Pearl Oyster Bar in Manhattan, offers her hard-drinking, quick-learning adventures in the restaurant business in the memoir portion of the book, and though they will be nothing new to Kitchen Confidential fans, they make for a piquant prelude to her recipes. The book gets a little bogged down, however, in the chapters that detail early family trips to Maine. Although Charles's desire to tell her family's story is heartfelt, she often leaves out important details, such as dates and introductions to the characters, that would make the narrative easier to follow. The story alternates from intriguing family explorations (how did the author's family locate the one hotel in the Kennebunk region of Maine that accepted Jews in the 1920's?) to textbook historical notes that don't quite mesh with the personal tone. Readers will wonder, too, about such asides as when she mentions her one-time estrangement from both parents ("I discovered my father's death in the late 1980s quite by accident"). Still, when the focus is on the food that Charles loves, the book is an accessible and authoritative guide to seafood preparation, as Charles offers not only divine recipes, from Pearl Oyster Bar Cocktail Sauce to Blueberry Crumble Pie, but tips on selecting (never buy wet scallops), cleaning (leverage is the key to shucking oysters) and preparing (don't marinate fish much more than 30 minutes) all types of seafood. B&w and color photos. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly