SOUP TO NUTS

SOUP TO NUTS
Corny concept
It may be a sad-but-truism that popcorn has lost some of its cachet as a Halloween treat, but you can still have a ball with it.
By MEREDITH GOAD
Staff WriterPortland Press Herald

When I was a kid, there was an elderly psychiatrist and his wife who lived across the street from us, on a precipitous hill.

Over and over again, on his way to work, the psychiatrist would back down his steep driveway and directly into our mailbox.

Over and over again, my parents would patiently replace said mailbox and look the other way.

They kept their composure, I think, because they didn't want to start a feud and deprive their children of Mrs. Pankratz's Halloween popcorn balls.

Every Halloween, her house was one of the "must stops" on our long traipse around the neighborhood. This was in the days before all the paranoia about razor blades and pins supposedly stuck into candy apples by some crazed Halloween buzz killer. Dr. P (I hope he was a better psychiatrist than driver) would come to the door in some creative costume -- usually a vampire, as I recall -- and Mrs. P would appear behind him with a tray of caramel popcorn balls wrapped in wax paper.

At other homes around the neighborhood, the treats might be homemade cookies or brownies, Rice Krispie treats, or maybe candy or caramel apples.

Vicki Bradeen of Westbrook laments the loss of a traditional Halloween that was both fun and safe. When she was a child growing up in Stillwater, she never set foot out of the house on Halloween until after dark because, of course, trick-or-treating is supposed to be a little scary. She raided her mother's and grandmother's closets to come up with a princess costume. (Think long white gloves and a tiara.)

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=144068&ac=Food


The Popcorn Board

Soup to Nuts
Recipe for success: The kids in the culinary-arts program at Sweetser come away with important life skills. And they sure can cook.
By MEREDITH GOAD
Staff Writer Portland Press Herald

SACO — The chicken Parmesan has gone out, cleanup is under way, and Ann Pelchat-Savoie is chatting about how much her student cooks hate her. At least, in the beginning they do.

"When Jonathan first came in here, we had a difference of opinion, I can say that," she said. "He would go storming out every day, right out the door."

Jonathan Tapscott, 16, looks over when he hears his name.

"We're talking about you, Jonathan," Pelchat-Savoie said. "I'm telling her about how when you first came over, you used to blow out on me."

Now it's hard to get the teenager to take his apron off. Tapscott has created his own secret salsa recipe, cooks for his family at home and has worked the line at a local restaurant. He's considering going to culinary school.

No more "blowouts."

"I don't want to leave here," Tapscott said, a little mournfully. "I like it here. I'm going to miss the people, and I'm going to miss the work."

The culinary program at Sweetser's Saco school for students with special needs provides a creative and emotional outlet for troubled middle- and high school-age children by teaching them their way around a kitchen. Students who attend Sweetser struggle with learning disabilities, behavioral problems and emotional disturbances that prevent them from succeeding in a traditional academic environment. Some have been abused.

"Their buttons get pushed, and they're out of control in a public school," said Carlton Pendleton, president and CEO of Sweetser. "If people had time to drill down, they'd find it's more than a behavioral issue, but the behavioral issue is what gets the attention. You threaten your teacher, you push your principal, you run away."

The school's culinary-arts training is one of several experiential learning programs that provide structured, yet creative, hands-on environments where the students are able to succeed, build self-confidence and get difficult behaviors under control. The students rotate through the various programs, which include a greenhouse, an engine shop where they learn car repair, woodworking and a barn where they work with farm animals.

They begin as novices, then work their way up through apprentice and journeyman to the "mastery" level. They earn pocket money along the way, but more importantly, they learn how to adhere to limits and meet expectations set by their teachers. They are graded daily on their behavior.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=177774&ac=Food




Photos by John Ewing/Staff Photographer

Soup to Nuts
Feeling the bite? Eating well and healthfully in this economy comes with a high price indeed. But there are ways to trim excess fat from the food budget, and those pennies can quickly add up.
By MEREDITH GOAD
Staff Writer Portland Press Herald

Once upon a time, a typical American meal consisted of roast chicken, potatoes mashed and seasoned by hand, and green vegetables picked fresh from the garden.

That same meal today is likely made from pre-cut vegetables and either instant spuds or potatoes that have been mashed by a machine. And the chicken? Roasted in the grocery store's rotisserie oven.

The modern meal is awfully convenient, but it comes with a premium price -- a price people may not be as willing to pay as food prices rise and belts tighten.

Groceries take a big bite out of the average American family's monthly budget -- $709, according to the U.S. Department of Labor -- but it's also one of the easiest places to cut, if you're willing to spend some time planning and give up the idea that chopping your own broccoli is a hardship akin to crossing the Mojave Desert barefoot without water and sunscreen.

"We find that, for most people, food is where they can make the biggest impact on what they spend without either moving or selling a car," said Gary Foreman, a former purchasing manager who runs a Web site, DollarStretcher.com. "Most of us spend between 15 and 20 percent of our money on food and we make purchasing decisions virtually every day. We can make small changes that don't really affect our lifestyle much, if at all.

"If you're spending 20 percent now and you're able to reduce that by one quarter, well, that's a 5 percent move in your expenses. Shoot, if somebody told you (that) you could get a 5 percent after-tax raise, you wouldn't mind that."

Hey, free money? Count me in. Here are some tips from the experts for trimming the fat out of your food bill:

Let's start with something easy: Pop your own popcorn instead of buying microwave brands.

"It is a dramatic difference, absolutely dramatic," said Kathy Savoie, a registered dietitian with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Service. "Air-popped popcorn poppers are an inexpensive things to invest in, and you would recoup that in, like, a week's worth of popping corn."

Buy lean, boneless cuts of beef such as chuck and round steak so you aren't paying for the bone, said Brenda Bracy, a nutrition associate at the extension service who teaches classes on how to stretch a food dollar. Leaner cuts will be a little tougher, "but you can slow-cook them in the crockpot, and you can add a tomato-based marinade. The tomato is acidic and will break down those meat fibers so it will be a little more moist."

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Photo illustration by Alfred Wood/Staff Artist







Photos by Doug Jones/Staff Photographer

SOUP TO NUTS
Salts of the earth: There are all sorts of exotic ways to fulfill your daily sodium requirement.
By MEREDITH GOAD
Portland Press Herald

Chef Esau Crosby prefers Peruvian and Filipino salts at home, along with -- of course -- Maine sea salts. In his restaurant, he cooks with Hawaiian red Alaea sea salt and Turkish black pyramid finishing salt.

Chef Rob Evans has three favorites, but when it comes to Malden sea salt from England, "I can almost eat that like candy."

And how about Rod Mitchell, owner of Browne Trading Co., where there's a wide variety of artisan salts on the shelves? His favorite is fleur de sel, the finishing salt from France that is so popular among chefs.

"With the fleur de sel," Mitchell said, "you can really taste the ocean in it. It's a mild, mineral-ly flavor."

The salt shelf is starting to resemble a wine cellar. With so many choices in taste and price, it can make a diner dizzy.

Some salts are characterized by their point of origin, such as the Himalayan pink variety harvested at altitudes over 10,000 feet. Others are known for the way they are produced. A popular salt from South Korea, for example, is roasted in bamboo.

Color and texture are considerations, too: Red, black, pink, gray or white? Flakes or crystals, moist or dry, coarse or fine?

Then there's flavor -- natural flavor imbued by trace minerals, wood flavors introduced through smoking, and flavor infusions such as saffron, lavender, cinnamon or even red wine.

"There are some salts that are extremely, extremely salty, and others that are very mild and briny, and others that have a very strong mineral component," said Crosby, chef at Solo Bistro in Bath. "It all depends on what you're looking to bring out in the food, because they all have their own little nuances."

Crosby uses Hawaiian red Alaea, which gets its color from red clay, in spice blends to season meat. An alderwood-smoked or maple-smoked salt would go really well with chocolate, he said, because of their flavor and crunch.

Smoked salts are available from companies in Maine, including alder-smoked and hickory-smoked salts from the Maine Sea Salt Co. in Marshfield.

Quoddy Mist in Lubec makes wasabi-flavored salt, and owner Clayton Lank is working on lemon butter and Cajun varieties. Quoddy Mist is perhaps best known for its sea vegetable blends that incorporate nori, kombu, dulse, sea lettuce and other wild sea vegetables into its salt harvested from the Bay of Fundy. The sea vegetables supposedly impart health benefits as well as flavor.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=181710&ac=Food


Illustration by Michael Fisher, Staff Artist/Photo by John Ewing, Staff Photographer

SOUP TO NUTS: Sweet and sour
A film that digs into America's food supply is part of a series of local events exploring origins of what we eat.
By MEREDITH GOAD
Portland Press Herald

Hey gang, let's grow an acre of corn!

Well, Ian Cheney wasn't quite that naive when he and best friend Curt Ellis headed to Iowa to try their hand at farming, but he admits he experienced much of their agricultural adventure through the eyes of a city kid.

Cheney and Ellis are the filmmakers behind a new feature documentary, "King Corn," a close-up look at how subsidized corn has driven America into the fast-food lane and right into an epidemic of obesity.

The pair met at Yale and discovered that their great-grandfathers, quite by coincidence, lived just a few miles apart in a small town in Iowa farm country.

Both young men had an intense interest in local foods and the industrialization of America's food supply, so they decided to return to rural Iowa together, grow an acre of corn and follow their crop through the food system to see what they could learn.

Cheney, 27, will be in Portland for a screening of "King Corn" at Space Gallery at 7:30 p.m. Friday. The screening is part of Food + Farm, a weeklong series of talks, films and workshops that explore access to sustainable food.

The subtitle of "King Corn" is "You Are What You Eat," a fact Cheney discovered first-hand when a scientist told him he could trace the carbon in his hair back to corn in his diet.

"In the film, I think we come across as pretty naive, but I think that's pretty genuine," Cheney said in a phone interview. "We really didn't know a thing about corn farming, we didn't know a thing about our great-grandparents and how they grew up, and we certainly didn't know how a corn cob could find its way into our hair."

Growing up in New England, Cheney said, "I guess I imagined that all those miles of corn across the Midwest were somehow sweet corn. I never gave much thought to it, and in that sense I think I was an average city kid."

As an average city kid, he'd had years of consuming high-fructose corn syrup, corn-fed meat and processed foods containing corn and corn products.

In 2005, the federal government spent $9.4 billion on corn subsidies to farmers. Federal subsidies to promote corn production date back to the Nixon era, and have helped struggling farmers maintain their profits.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=183107&ac=Food


Sam Cullman photo

Courtesy photo

SOUP TO NUTS: Fiesta!
As holidays go, Cinco de Mayo is no big deal in Mexico. It's quite another story north of the border, where Americans have seized on the idea with their usual party-happy glee.
By MEREDITH GOAD
Portland Press Herald

Cinco de Mayo is sort of like the Mexican St. Patrick's Day. It's a minor holiday that's not observed as much in Mexico as it is in the United States.

Just as Americans have embraced shamrocks, parades and green beer on St. Patrick's Day, Cinco de Mayo -- the "Fifth of May" -- has become a great excuse to down margaritas, eat enchiladas and have lots of fun celebrating Mexican culture.

"It's just a reason to party and to celebrate Mexican food," says Barbara Ramirez of Mesa Verde, a Mexican restaurant on Congress Street in Portland.

On this side of the border, it's widely believed that Cinco de Mayo is Mexico's Independence Day. Mexico's version of July 4 is actually Sept. 16. Cinco de Mayo commemorates May 5, 1862, the day Mexican troops beat back the French in the Battle of Puebla, just 100 miles from Mexico City.

Sounds like a good excuse for a party, doesn't it?

Several local Mexican restaurants are planning celebrations. At Fajita Grill in Westbrook, there will be specials on beer and margaritas. At Margarita's in Portland, the party starts on Thursday, with giveaways of skydiving jumps, whitewater rafting packages and passes to Six Flags daily through Sunday. After 9 p.m. from Thursday through Sunday, pints of Dos Equis will be $2, and regular and strawberry margaritas will be $4.

On Monday, the restaurant chain will be offering chances to win an adventure trip for two to Mexico and a million pesos -- that's about $90,000. Those prizes are company-wide, but if the local winner doesn't nab the trip, he or she will be handed a "passport" good for dinner for two for a year.

Mesa Verde isn't usually open on Mondays, but on Cinco de Mayo, it will be serving and celebrating from 11:30 a.m. until 11 p.m. Ramirez and her staff plan several specials, include chorizo and sun-dried tomato quesadillas and horchata, a popular Mexican rice-milk drink.

Ramirez and her husband, Marco Polo Ramirez ("No lie," Barbara says), have retired from the restaurant they ran for 13 years. The day-to-day operation is now in the hands of family, but Ramirez still considers it her job to maintain the quality and consistency of the food. She drops in regularly to check on seasonings and make sure things are running smoothly.

Marco Ramirez grew up in Mexico and helps determine if a recipe is hitting the mark for authenticity. Many of the items on the menu, including homemade rellenos, tamales, salsa and mole sauce, were passed on to Barbara from her mother-in-law.

"To me, authentic is just fresh," Barbara Ramirez said. "My husband grew up in the Baja, and that's what it was -- just go out in the garden. You pick it, you wash it, you chop it, you eat it."

Americanized is refried beans made with lard. Authentic, Ramirez says, is pinto beans cooked with chile de arbol and some chile seasoning. If you're cooking your own dried beans at home, Ramirez suggests buying red arbol chile peppers and making a kind of Mexican bouquet garni.

"Put them in a cheese cloth and drop them in there, because that really gives a nice warm heat," she said. "It really adds nice flavor."

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=184654&ac=Food






Photos by Gordon Chibroski/Staff Photographer

Courtesy California Milk Advisory Board

Soup to Nuts
It's a chef magnet: The guys and gals in the white hats are beating a path to Edgecomb, where the popular cooking show 'The Chef's Kitchen' is now taping episodes in a to-die-for, state-of-the-art space.
By MEREDITH GOAD
Staff Writer Portland Press Herald

EDGECOMB — Philadelphia-area chef Alison Barshak wrapped up her "Chile-dusted Skate," and before you could say "mise en place," David Carmichael swept into the kitchen to finish the final prep work for his "Maine Huckleberry Creme Brulee."

The TV crew for "The Chef's Kitchen" took a short break to enjoy one of the perks of their jobs -- tasting small plates of Barshak's skate, prepared with citrus brown butter and served with masa cakes and a bite of jicama and avocado salad.

"How long do you need, chef?" a voice boomed in Carmichael's direction.

"Oh, 5 to 10?" Carmichael replied as he scurried around in his white chef's jacket and beret.

Carmichael is executive pastry chef at Gilt in midtown Manhattan, and has also worked at famed establishments such as Daniel, Le Bernardin, Lutece and Oceana. He has made numerous appearances as a guest chef on "The Today Show," and even baked the cake for Katie Couric's last show on the program.

Now here he was in Maine, explaining to cooking show host Hope Cohen (in a very short 25 minutes) how to make dulce de leche; why he prefers Bourbon vanilla over the Tahitian variety; the difference between coastal and mountain huckleberries; why he uses strudel leaves instead of phyllo; why he doesn't like silicone pastry brushes; how turning your hand up disperses the sugar more evenly on top of the custard; and, finally, how to use a heated iron instead of a torch to caramelize the sugar on top of the dessert.

Whew.

Carmichael was one of 17 top chefs who visited a new cooking show studio last week on Route 1, just over the Wiscasset bridge, to tape episodes of "The Chef's Kitchen," formerly known as "The Fretz Kitchen."

The show airs locally on Channel 8 every Saturday at 12:30 p.m. It can be seen online weeknights at 5 p.m. on the Comcast Network ( www.cn8.tv/ ) as well as on YouTube and iTunes.

PHILADELPHIA TO MAINE

"The Chef's Kitchen" began filming in Maine in October after years of being based in Philadelphia. Steven Horn, director of the show, has partnered with Maine restaurateur and developer Roger Bintliff to create a new "culinary arts campus" in Edgecomb.

The idea is to tempt tourists to visit Maine during the winter months by offering them a cozy place to stay, cooking lessons with some of the country's best chefs, wine tastings, chef's tastings, and classes in everything from dining etiquette to waitering and bartending.

Bintliff has developed a 59-acre luxury resort just down the road on Davis Island, where the chefs and tourists who buy one of his culinary vacation packages will stay while they're in Maine. Horn, who owns a home in Kennebunk, plans to turn his barn into a gluten-free bakery, baking school and studio.

The collective project is called the New England Culinary Arts Forum. Bintliff wants to brand Maine as an East Coast version of California's Napa Valley by showcasing the region's fresh local foods.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=185882&ac=Food




Photos by Jack Milton/Staff Photographer

SOUP TO NUTS
From behind a saloon-style bar on Munjoy Hill, Sarah Richards dispenses bits of wisdom along with lots and lots of feel-good brews.
By MEREDITH GOAD
Portland Press Herald

Walking into Homegrown Herb & Tea is a bit like walking into a Western saloon that has been transported into the 1970s.

There's even sarsaparilla in one of the tea blends proprietor Sarah Richards serves up in big, steaming pottery cups the size of soup bowls. Belly up to Sarah's bar, pardner, and get a healthy dose of Eastern philosophy with your "El Mexicano Por Favor," an herbal tea blend of cinnamon, cumin, cayenne, sarsaparilla and cacao nibs.

I had heard of this apothecary-style tea shop on Munjoy Hill through two friends who are fans, and have seen references to the place on local food blogs. But I'd never stopped in myself until a few weeks ago, when my best friend suggested we swing by after brunch at the Front Room because she wanted to pick up an ounce of herbal tea to take home.

Richards, 37, is known for her herbal teas, but also for her knowledge of Ayurveda, an Eastern system of medicine that uses nutrition and herbs to bring the body into balance, and for her uncanny ability to tune into peoples' needs. She's often described as being "like a bartender," which makes sense because she was a waitress and bartender for many years. Customers come in, sit at the bar and tell her their problems, and she concocts something herbal to make them feel better.

During my first visit, she laughed about the bartender comparison, saying at least now her customers can remember her advice in the morning. She likes the analogy because "it takes all the stuffiness out of 'tea shop."'

Jay Levine, an energy trader who moved to Portland from New York, comes in every day and sits at the bar with his laptop. He said he finds Richards' store "extremely comforting and very inviting. There aren't that many places that exude this kind of aura."

Some days Richards asks Levine how he's feeling emotionally. On the day I met him, he was a little under the weather physically, which was unusual, and Richards was mixing up a custom blend for him.

"She's a good read," Levine said. "I trade energy for a living, and my hallmark -- the reason I'm successful -- is because I read things from a gut-instinct standpoint. I go on the fly, which suits me and my clients very well. And she's the same thing."

How much of the appeal of Homegrown Herb & Tea is based on physical results and how much is psychological is up for debate, but there's no question Richards' regulars love the place and its mystical mojo.

And so does Richards.

"This is absolutely like nothing I've ever done in my life in terms of it just making me happy -- happy to be here, happy to be doing what I'm doing," she said. "I'm exhausted most of the time, and I have a lot of stress in terms of making the finances meet. In meeting my needs financially in life, this was a big shift from stability to kind of instability."

Richards grew up on a farm in New Sharon, where her brother still lives and grows some of her herbs. She spent nine years as a Spanish teacher, but the idea of becoming "the tea lady" was always in the back of her mind. She's been making tea blends for friends and family for 15 years.

Richards first learned about Western herbalism and its more medicinal approach to using herbs. About three years ago, she started studying Ayurveda, which is all about "balancing" a person's constitution.

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Photos by Jack Milton/Staff Photographer

SOUP TO NUTS
Shell-shucked
A machine uses water pressure to quickly dispatch the lobster and separate meat from the shell, at a rate of thousands of pounds per day.
By Meredith Goad
Portland Press Herald

RICHMOND — Annie Hall would have loved this contraption.

In the classic Woody Allen film, Diane Keaton as the title character gets the willies and freaks out when it's time to throw a live lobster into a pot of boiling water.

If only she could have come to this small industrial park, where Shucks Maine Lobster processes thousands of pounds of soft-shell lobsters every day. All she'd have to do is push a button and lower the lobster into oblivion.

The huge shucking machine uses high-pressure water to send crustaceans to their Great Reward and to loosen the raw meat from their shells. And it's all done in 60 seconds.

We're talking pressurization on the order of 87,000 pounds per square inch. That's seven times the pressure in the deepest part of the ocean, according to Charlie Langston, chief operating officer at Shucks.

"Basically what happens is you just compress everything that's in there," Langston explained. "With the lobster, the whole animal shrinks, but the meat loosens from the shell. This kills them like that, much faster than boiling or steaming or even hammering with a knife."

THE 60-SECOND SHUCK

The day I visited, workers shucked almost 1,000 pounds of lobster. On a big day in summer, they'll handle 10,000 to 15,000 pounds.

The technology was developed to kill the bacteria and other pathogens that cause food to spoil. When seafood processors tried it on Gulf of Mexico oysters, they noticed an interesting side effect -- the oysters fell out of their shells. Turns out it does the same thing to lobsters, without deforming or squishing the meat in any way.

For chefs, especially those outside of Maine, raw lobster falling out of its shell is a dream come true. Until now, their only choices were to buy live lobsters or use cooked and frozen lobster meat.

If they buy lobster live, they have to deal with shipping issues and pay their staff to process it by hand. That usually means blanching to loosen the meat, then picking whatever meat they can out of the shell.

The problem with buying already cooked and frozen lobster is that "it's kind of like buying cooked and frozen filet mignon," Langston said. "You've got to cook it twice, and you end up ruining it.

"Well, it's good for mixing with mayonnaise and making lobster rolls," he said. "Or oftentimes what chefs will do with that cooked and frozen lobster is chop it very finely so people can't tell how chewy it's become."

The lobster that's shucked by the machine in Richmond comes out whole, with claws in one piece and even the meat from the flipper and swimmerets intact. It's either frozen or packed fresh into a small tub. There's a whole lobster in each package, including the hard-to-get meat from the legs.

Shucks Maine Lobster calls the leg meat "lobster spaghetti" and promotes it as a good ingredient for stuffing a fish dish or for use with pasta.

Other products include lobster packaged with the perfect amount of butter for poaching, and "fluffed and stuffed" lobster tails that come with three different sauces.

Shucks has also started processing Maine shrimp during the off season.

"Basically to get raw shrimp out of the shell now, they have to soak it in fresh water for 24 to 48 hours, and then that loosens it enough so they can pick the shell," Langston said. "The problem is that you soak flavor out of it, and you end up soaking shelf life out of it, because as it's sitting there, it's starting to decompose."

The shucker at Shucks does the same job in 60 seconds, retaining the flavor and shelf life of the shrimp.

But lobster is the company's bread and butter.

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Photos by Gordon Chibroski/Staff Photographer

SOUP TO NUTS-Culinary art in Kennebunkport
Chefs and artists pool their creative talents for Kennebunkport's Arts in the Inns Festival, which promises a visual and gustatory explosion of colors and flavors.
By MEREDITH GOAD
Portland Press Herald

Scott Lee, chef/owner of Bandaloop in Kennebunkport, isn't exactly sure yet what he'll be making for dessert on June 5.

One thing he is sure of? It will be moving.

Lee is one of several chefs being paired with artists for the Fourth Annual Kennebunkport Arts in the Inns Festival, which will be held June 4-8. Lee has been teamed with Lyman Whitaker, whose kinetic copper wind sculptures will present a unique challenge for the chef.

Chefs participating in the series of chef-artist dinners during the festival are charged with creating a menu inspired by their artist's work. Lee's menu will be unveiled during a $100 dinner at 7 p.m. June 5.

He got his first good look at Whitaker's work last week, when he paid a visit to the sculpture garden at the Maine Art Gallery. He has not yet had any long tete-a-tetes with the artist himself, but he is already thinking in shapes -- pinwheels, or perhaps using some duck to reflect the wing-like appearances of some of the pieces.

"Because these are wind sculptures and they move, I assume at the very least my finale for dessert is going to have to be something that moves and spins, and I'm not sure how I'm going to do that yet," Lee said. "But I'm going to make that happen."

Jonathan Cartwright, executive chef of the five-star, five-diamond White Barn Inn, and Joseph Schaffer, head chef at the inn, will be working together June 5 to interpret the work of painter Charles Movalli in a $185 dinner that begins at 7:30 p.m.

THE ARTFUL CHEF

Chefs are in a sense artists themselves. Cartwright recently invited Movalli to the inn for a long chat (he's also been in touch via phone and e-mail) so they could discuss how they'll work in the kitchen and on canvas.

"I think we've got a lot of art already in our food," Cartwright said. "For me, it's about how we have similarities in the way that we work, and how we build colors and build taste and things like that."

The two men reminisced about how they came to their life's work, laughing over shared stories of abuse by mentors -- Cartwright's hit him in the kitchen; Movalli's slapped him on the forehead.

Cartwright said that, as a chef, it is always good to interact with someone who comes from "a different lifestyle, a different background, but very much a creative background as well."

Listening to Movalli talk about the way he blends colors on the canvas reminded Cartwright of when he viewed the food at the inn through a camera lens during the making of a cookbook. Usually he has a one-dimensional view of a plate, looking straight down on it in the kitchen, but "really, you don't eat like that."

"You're more across from food, horizontal with it, so you see it at a little different angle," he said. "I think it's always fun to look at it from someone else's perspective."

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=190253&ac=Food


John Ewing/Staff Photographer