Weeknight Shrimp Soup

serves 2 as a main dish or 4 as an appetizer

• 1 liter homemade fish stock*
• 250 gm shelled Maine shrimp – frozen or fresh
• white portion of one medium leek, minced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 2 Tb oil-pack sun dried tomatoes, minced (I like California Sun Dry brand)
• 200 ml (½ can) unsweetened full-fat coconut milk (I like Taste of Thai brand)
• 2 tsp red curry paste (I like Thai Kitchen brand)
• 50 ml Manzanilla sherry (Optional... but if you don't have this, what are you going to drink with the soup? Recommended brands are Baco, Hidalgo "La Gitana", or Lustau)
• 1 Tb butter or oil
• 2 tsp flour

In a heavy saucepan, cook the leek, garlic, curry paste, tomatoes, and oil over low heat until the leeks are translucent and fragrant. Do not brown. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute or two more. Stir in the stock with a whisk and bring to a simmer. Cook for 10 minutes to blend flavors. Whisk in the coconut milk and bring back to a simmer. Raise heat to high and add the shrimp and the optional sherry. When shrimp are opaque, remove from heat and serve in heated soup plates. Accompany with jasmine rice, green peas, and a glass of the sherry. (We like to add the rice and peas to the soup as we eat it.)

* If you don’t have this, wait until you do before making this recipe.

2007 White Wine Values for Summer 2008

One problem we wine buyers have had here in Maine is that white wines - many of which are properly vibrant and vital only for a comparatively short time - sit on retailers' shelves too long. (In the summer of 2008 no one wants a 2005 Pinot Grigio. At any rate, s/he shouldn't.) With this in mind, it's always a thrill when the previous autumn's wines start appearing in the market. They have now begun to do so. Here are two good ones that we've been drinking lately.



"Kung Fu Girl," from Washington state, has a package that blares Madison Avenue. I got a chuckle out of it anyway, but mostly it is just darn good wine: Honeysuckle and cider on the nose; with crunchy, juicy apple and pear fruit. As Rieslings from the Northwest often do, this one hits a stylistic point somewhere between Mosel and Alsace bottlings. A balancing hint of sub-Kabinett-level sweetness is held very much in check by bright but not false acidity. At $12 this is a good deal, particularly when you consider what qualitatively equivalent wines from Alsace or the Mosel are selling for now ($20).

The second white wine is a Verdejo from Spain's Rueda region: Javier Sanz's Villa Narcisa.



Steph and I became attached to Rueda's wines about ten years ago, when we started drinking the Marques de Alella (which seems no longer available here in Maine). We love its clean, refreshing, go-with-anything qualities that nevertheless are not so neutral as to be boring. The Villa Narcisa has a lemon grass and air-dried laundry nose and a snappy citrusy palate that has enough softness and weight to it to make it delicious as an aperitif as well as with food.

Blueberry Fields Forever

I've been on vacation all week. I suppose it's possible to have a vacation even when you don't go anywhere and it rains every day, but the past week has not provided much good evidence for the idea. We did have a very nice hour picking blueberries on someone's property off of Long Hill Road in Gray on Friday, during a break among the downpours, drizzles, and just plain rainy spells.

There is something about the smell of a blueberry patch. It doesn't matter where it is. In this case, it was on an otherwise lovely low hilltop studded with one large cell phone tower and several plunked ranch houses surrounded by predictable rural home detritus - think rusty rowing machine circa 1989. Several pickups sporting Yosemite Sam mudflaps and "peeing Calvin" window stickers added to the atmosphere. My snarky comments are probably extra unfair given the fact that we picked three full quarts of berries and the guy charged us all of four dollars - a dollar a pound. That's about 20% of the farm stand price.

Where I was: It doesn't matter where it is, the smell of a blueberry patch always recalls a pristine lake's pine- and granite-studded point or island from your youth. Mine, anyway. I can think of several of these specifically. One such island of relatively recent memory is on Donnell Pond in Hancock County.

Cold fruit is nice, but there is nothing like a fistful of blueberries still warm from the rays in which they were basking before you plucked them. Much more flavor. Much more emblematic of those two resources so scarce in Maine: Sun and Heat. On this occasion we encountered a nice example of promiscuous cultivation, in which dewberries were intermixed with the blueberries. Double the pleasure!