[Upbeat acoustic music] [Walter] As light creeps across the Atlantic Ocean each morning, it arrives here first in Maine at the easternmost point of the continental United States.

Beautiful!

This state is known for its spectacular scenery, lighthouses and fresh ocean cuisine and the rich maritime heritage of this remote region can be found along its rugged, an alluring coastline.

Join me as I learn about one small town in Maine whose rebellion against the British led to the first naval engagement of the American Revolutionary War.

[Cannons firing] I'll meet with a few of the region's industrious residents who harvest the natural bounty of land and sea.

And of course, we'll cook some spectacular dishes along the way All this for A Taste of History from Maine!

[Narrator] This program is made possible by.

Pasture-raised Australian beef and lamb, adding variety into your weekly meals or unique touch for your next celebration.

Widely available at your local market.

For recipes and more, we're at aussiebeefandlamb.com [Whimsical music] [Bells ringing] [Walter] Lighthouses are a quintessential part of this region of the world.

These beacons of light have guided ships safely to foggy harbors for centuries.

In fact, George Washington commissioned the Portland Headlight in 1787, which still stands today as the oldest in Maine.

It's no coincidence that harbors with lighthouses were favored by mariners to set up their industry.

And to this day, they continue to provide a pathway for a booming seafood economy.

Each year, lobster fishing in Maine produces nearly 100 million pounds of lobster.

And the lobster roll is as associated with this region as the Philly cheesesteak is to my neck of the woods.

So, you know, the first thing I had to do is try one.

Here at Chipman's Wharf and Downeast Maine.

They're known for their lobster roll and their steamed lobster.

We're lucky today because it's soft shell lobster season.

Not only is the soft shell easier to break apart and eat, but the meat is also more tender and delicious.

The lobster roll comes two different ways.

The hot version is as simple as it gets, the meat gets pulled from the shell, chopped and cooked in butter on the grill.

A New England split top bun is also brushed with butter and toasted until golden brown.

It's a perfect vessel for the tasty meat.

Now the traditional Maine lobster roll is served a bit differently.

The cooked lobster is chilled and served cold.

Once it's chopped, it's tossed in a little bit of mayonnaise.

Then its seasoned with salt and pepper and presented beautifully.

At Chipman's Wharf, they serve it with a little bit of dill as garnish, which I think is perfect.

And let me take a bite.

Oh.

Unbelievable.

Unbelievable.

So fresh, so clean, so beautiful.

On a hot day, fresh caught lobster I mean, it doesn't get better than that.

[Upbeat acoustic music] [Boat engine whirring] [Walter] I have never seen how a lobster actually gets caught, so I'm looking forward to learning more.

Beautiful.

[Monica] Hello, Chef Walter.

You're on the Atlantic Ocean, on the FV Monica Tymin with my husband, Chris, and my son Maverick.

They are four generations of fishermen.

My husband, he would go out with his dad, and our kids are doing the same thing.

It's in their blood.

[Walter] So tell me what is like a typical day?

[Monica] A lobster fisherman typically gets up between three and four, is on the boat to haul his lobster crabs.

[Walter] Looking out there on the ocean I see so many buoys.

[Monica] Each fisherman has their own color combination.

First buoy is your marking buoy, and then the second buoy is a float to help with hauling the trap.

Each fisherman is allowed 800 traps.

[Walter] I guess you have a scheduled rotation of checking different traps every few days?

[Monica] Yes.

A lobster that's large enough to keep, it has to be three and a quarter inches by the right eye socket to its back.

[Walter] Definitely.

[Monica] He's large enough.

- Yeah, yeah.

[Walter] He becomes, [Monica] He becomes lobster stew.

[Walter] That's what I'm saying.

[Both laughing] [Monica] A lobster typically is seven years old before it's large enough to keep a female lobster that is large enough to keep.

You have to inspect her because if she has one visible egg, you have to throw it back and that is to help for future generations that there are still lobsters here to catch.

[Walter] And I saw your husband marking their tail, is that to let other fishermen know that there is an egg bearing lobster?

- Yes [Walter] Are you able to maintain your inventory?

[Monica] Lobster fishing, like any other industry, has its cycles.

There are good years and there are bad years.

And you just kind of have to weather out the storm.

[Cage splashes] [Country music] [Walter] You know, I've been called many times, Doctor.

I guess doctor of food maybe?

But guess what?

Today I have a real doctor helping me out.

And what a pleasure it is to work with him, not only helping me, but giving me so much insight.

Really is a pleasure.

[David] Thank you.

I'm really excited about cooking this recipe because we're always having lobster.

We live on the coast.

There's many lobsters and everyone cooks them differently.

[Walter] Yeah, and when you think about it, this recipe was penned in 1745 by no other than my favorite 18th century author and chef, Hannah Glasse.

There was very few recipes written in the 18th century because it wasn't really popular.

[David] Lobster in itself has lots of ingredients that are healthy for you, high in copper, selenium, iodine high in B12.

And so it's a healthy dish.

[Acoustic music] [Walter] Once it's cooked, you lay it straight.

The easiest way to do it is from the back side.

There's less chance to cut yourself and then you go here and you cut off this part.

Take that meat out.

Just take it off like this.

You taste a little bit of that.

Hey, doctor.

- Isn't that lovely?

[David] The ultimate white meat.

[Walter] Oh, man.

[David] So we'll cut these up into small pieces.

[Walter] While you get started over here I'll have my pan behind me.

So it's white wine, a little bit of vinegar, and I'll let this reduce a little bit.

I have the luxury today, fresh chanterelle mushrooms.

They're beautiful.

What you can do for me right now, You can separate me four eggs.

I just want the yoke.

Let me get the anchovy from you.

Four or five anchovies really quick.

You don't need any salt.

You don't see no salt on the set.

Obviously, because the anchovy is salt cured.

Heavy cream.

Heavy, heavy whipping cream.

Yeah, and we whisk that up, real good.

And then we let it sit there.

Now, since I have the opportunity to use the chanterelle mushrooms, I would add them now to give them a chance to blanch a little bit and then later reduce a little bit more down.

What I'm doing with this one over here, there is a classical name in French cooking which is called a liaison, which means it binds everything together.

So basically egg yolk and cream.

The only trick is if you do this kind of cooking, you have got to do it last moment because if not, guess what you get.

scrambled eggs.

So that's the thing, but it gives tremendous amount of flavor.

It makes it very rich, obviously, with a little bit of lemon in there right now.

Dijon mustard.

The lobster meat is very delicate, so we really don't want to overcook it.

I have on the set I have nutmeg.

So now take a look I add a little bit more cream before the liaison goes in it.

And then we put the liaison in.

Remember, also, you notice there's no cornstarch, no flour being used in there.

It's basically the egg yolk and the cream that ties it all together.

[David] The other great thing about salt water is it's got natural iodine in it as the lobster does.

So it's a really good food for thyroid issues.

[Walter] That's interesting I didn't know that.

- Yeah.

[Walter] Dave, you see how it thickens up?

[David] Oh, yeah, Yeah.

See, that's the whole trick.

[Walter] You see that?

That's the whole trick.

If I would cook it now longer, then it's breakfast [Laughing] Taste a little bit now.

Wow.

Oh, gosh.

This is the 18th century.

Book written in 1745.

I mean, think about it.

You want to have time so you can wash out the shell completely because remember, this goes into the shell.

Look how beautiful, simple, elegant.

When you have fewer ingredients in there, you notice that?

What you saw me put in there That's what it is.

[David] This is also an example of what Maine is and what this farm represents.

You should have a look around.

[Upbeat music] My name is Ben Edwards.

We are on the Schoppee Farm in Machias, Maine, I'm eighth generation on the farm.

It's been in my family for 200 years.

It's a few hundred acre saltwater farm.

It was a dairy farm for almost 100 years.

And then we've converted it to a hemp farm the last few years.

My eighth great grandfather settled here.

He was a Hessian mercenary during the war for independence, nine generations later, we're still here.

We have a lot of bees on the farm and we have 12 active hives right now.

This is about as close to being to nirvana as we're going to get.

At the farm only about a third of the capacity is dedicated to annual crops.

It gives opportunity for 30 acres of nothing but wildflowers and wild forage.

So the combination of the two makes a particularly good honey.

[Music] [Ben] We have friends that are lobster fishermen and clammers, and you can clam right on the property.

The process of clamming is very physically demanding.

The mud is very heavy, very hard to walk in.

Usually the guys will look for pockets of air holes where the clams breath, dig down 4 to 6 inches into the mud with a rake, and you flip the mud over and it reveals the clams and you pick them out by hand.

Yeah.

So clamming is very hard.

I've done it like, twice in my life when I was a kid, long enough to know that I didn't want to do it anymore.

[Laughing] [Acoustic music] [Walter] So doc, another tribute to Maine and the farm!

I mean, we got the clams 50 yards down the road.

Dug up this morning.

We got the mussels from the farm up the street, and we got a forgotten grain, which is the barley.

The second dish we're going to do is a mussel and clam risotto.

[David] And all the produce is coming from a local farm that's grown totally organic.

They've been farming for over 30 years, and they use seaweed mostly as a fertilizer.

It decomposes really quickly.

It adds a lot of salt and sodium and iodine to the soil.

And this beautiful garlic.

[David] So fresh.

[Walter] You can not substitute I mean, I don't ever use granulated garlic or garlic powder.

I cook mine in white wine.

[David] Mussels have to go in first because it's going to take a little bit longer to cook than the clams.

Okay.

[Walter] Oh, beautiful.

Don't get better than that.

Now it gets the lid on there.

So the mussels steam between maybe 5 to 8 minutes and then I throw in the clams for another 5 minutes until they're all open.

Those guys picked this morning.

And very important for that, I want to get the liquor, the liquid in there because that later what makes this whole dish come together.

In the meantime help me with the leak.

[David] Okay.

[Walter] I do the fennel.

[Chopping] [Walter] The fennel gets a unique flavor in that because the anise, you know?

- Right.

[Walter] Beautiful.

I'm going to heat up my second dutchie, where we're going to make the reduction that later gets all mixed together.

[Sizzling] [Walter] And then I have some nice green onions, [Chopping] The snow peas, the leek and the green onions in this pot.

[Sizzling] So this one here, obviously, as you can tell already, I want less heat on that because I really don't want to overpower or burn it.

This is just perfect.

[Shells clacking together] [Walter] Butter.

Never can have enough butter.

I know the doctor having a heart attack behind me.

[Both laughing] [Walter] Seeing me using all this butter.

And guess what else I'm using?

- Cream.

[Walter] Look at that.

There we go.

And I put some Italian parsley, you don't have to some people do it, some people don't.

It just adds a lot of flavor.

So what I'm looking for, I'm I make a little room look at that, so I can take that liquid out, put it in there.

Look at that.

Oh, golly.

And then he's going to put the tarragon in there.

And after the tarragon is in there for a little bit, then we will put the barley into it and we can serve dinner.

The final ingredient is the barley.

Now, today I was lucky to get organic barley.

[David] We cooked this barley for 35 minutes prior, so it'd be all ready for this recipe.

And it's just lovely.

The ratio of cooking barley is one cup of barley to two cups of water or stock.

We want to give this a chance to absorb.

So let me check, Doc, let me check on the clams and mussels.

Try that.

They're beautiful.

Oh.

[David] Lovely.

[Walter] Finish this dish by putting the lemon zest in it.

So we're ready to plate it.

Oh gosh, the flavor.

[David] Oh.

Hmm.

[Walter] Simple.

Excellent.

Beautiful.

I'll give you one more secret.

This eats extremely well cold.

All you got to do is take the mussels out, mix it all up.

Little oil, little vinegar.

And you in business.

From the bottom of my heart, I cannot thank you enough to help me out today.

[David] I enjoyed it immensely.

[Walter] The only thing I would say to this dish is, one word: it's called spectacular.

[David] It is.

It's so Maine and so delicious.

[Whimsical music] [Walter] It feels fantastic to be on this farm.

Your farm, you know why?

[Ben] Why?

[Walter] It was founded by a Hessian, countryman of mine.

How do you get into the hemp production?

[Ben] My friend, he and I share an experience where both of our moms passed away from cancer and they both had a very positive experience with medical cannabis.

Hemp was federally legalized in 2018.

Federal Farm Bill.

The crop is a great fit for this climate and our soil, so we thought we would give it a try.

[Walter] Most people don't realize that George Washington even grew hemp on his estate.

[Ben] It's neat to see us come back to this crop.

It's an old crop, but a new market.

The future of that is obviously looking good.

It's a new market.

But I think I think the future is very positive.

This particular stuff is grown for flower, for the resin.

Different genetic varieties can be grown for the fiber or they can be grown for seed or I mean, there's a whole variety of things that you can use it for.

[Walter] Tell me how much time it should take from this stage to mature.

[Ben] It's five months or so end to end.

The plant will get very big very quickly and will start to mature.

By the end of September.

Most of our crop is in, the second week of October we're we're done.

We're out of the field and then we have to start the drying and curing and all the indoor stuff happens.

[Walter] And it is incredible to think that way back when it was mandated by the British Crown that all landholders set aside a certain acreage of land to help satisfy the demand for rope and sailcloth for the new Navy.

It takes a lot of footage of rope to equip one of the big frigates or schooners so you know.

[Ben] It's actually interesting that you would mention that because Machias is famous for being the site of the first naval battle of the American Revolution.

[Revolutionary drums] [Sounds of the forest] [Narrator] The Revolutionary War officially began with the battles of Lexington and Concord in April of 1775, not long after, the British would find themselves besieged in Boston, with whom they would soon find to be a worthy opponent in the war.

Known for their dealings with the town of Machias, who had a rich supply of pine trees, British authorities tasked loyalist merchant Ichabod Jones with acquiring this much needed lumber to reinforce their barracks in Boston.

On June 2nd, Jones arrived into his hometown Port of Machias with his two merchant vessels, the Unity and the Polly He was also accompanied by the armed warship the HMS Margaretta.

However, the townspeople of Machias were less than accommodating and resisted the idea of doing business with the British.

A small group conspired at the Burnham Tavern to discuss the matter.

[Jeremiah] We need to make sure they don't get back to the ship.

[Narrator] Jeremiah O'Brien argued for aggressive action and with the support of several soon to be American rebels, plans were made to capture the British warship.

on June 12th, 1775.

The townspeople armed themselves with whatever they could find and seized Ichabod Jones's merchant vessel, The unity.

This ragtag band of Machias residents were able to surround and overwhelm the fleeing HMS Margaretta, fatally wounding its captain in the scuffle.

The remaining crew would shortly surrender the vessel to the colonists.

The Battle of Machias Bay is recognized as the first naval engagement of the American Revolutionary War and was an early sign the American rebellion could prevail.

[Acoustic guitar] [Fire crackling] [Rick] Welcome Chef Staib to Machias, Maine and this location right out here is where the actual battle of the Margaretta took place.

The recipe that we've got today is a moose stew.

It's sometimes called in the old books, ragout.

This is a fairly rich stew going to be using the moose.

[Walter] And Rose here is the one that shot it!

[Rick] Yeah.

[Walter] So be careful there.

[Rick] Yeah.

Yeah.

Don't mess with her.

[Laughing] [Rick] For years they were hunted kind of generally mercilessly that their numbers came down, and in order to speed their recovery and help, they actually have a lottery.

We just had it here just a few weeks back.

[Sizzling] And like in any ragout, or any stew you're going to start off by sauteing the meat to get some caramelization going.

[Rick] Yep.

The moose is, as with all your game meats, doesn't have a lot of fat in it, which is why it will be used in something like a stew.

You would not ever put a moose on a spitter or try baking it unless you could really put the tallow to it because it would be very dry.

[Walter] Oh yeah.

[Rick] And the longer you cook this, the better it gets.

[Walter] It's perfect temperature because, as you know, game is dry to begin with So you want to close up the meat there we go.

My first bite of moose!

It's delicious.

Beautiful.

[Rick] We have the vegetables here and these are the local root vegetables that we would all have here at the time.

[Walter] Starting off with the with the onion, because they'll take a little longer.

I have a hard time envisioning what happened here in 1775.

You know?

[Rick] You have to consider, at that time period Machias is a small town.

The only way in and out of Machias is that body of water.

You couldn't walk from here to Boston, Falmouth, or anything It was strictly by boat.

This was a small settlement built because of that waterfall in the middle of town there.

Made it so that they could cut up lumber.

[Rose] There's a saying here that "The sun comes up first in Downeast Maine."

[Rick] Yep.

And that's true.

Just a ways up the coast is the first place that the sun strikes in the United States.

[Walter] Rutabaga.

[Rick] This is really, really looking good.

[Chopping] [Walter] Quality control.

[Laughing] Celery, potato, and carrot, I'll bring them right over.

[Rick] Okay, I'm going to mix this up a little bit and I've got to add our water.

The moose is so tender that it wouldn't take long at all.

The indication for this dish to be ready is the rutabaga which takes the longest, anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes.

You made a little sachet.

[Rick] Yes.

Of fresh sage and tarragon.

[Walter] Look at that.

Look at that.

Look at that.

Oh, Golly.

[Rick] A little bit of nutmeg I'm putting in here.

[Cast Iron lid closing] [Acoustic music] [Rick] Nate here, is doing salmon on a plank.

This is actually a cedar plank.

And he had it out here while we were doing all our other work, soaking in the the salt water, the ocean.

It moistens the board up so it doesn't burn on you, for starters.

And it helps flavor things.

And this is a slice of salmon.

And then he has pegs to hold it down, hold it flat and hold it taut on there.

You don't want it to get loose or anything else like this will lay down there.

Then you're going to put a glaze on top of it and then using the radiated heat from the fire and the smoke.

And that will cook right here while our other food is cooking together in the pot.

[Walter] So this is what we call in the industry a "hot smoke."

Now, what's unique about it is, is the glaze that he made because obviously this glaze will penetrate the salmon as it cooks.

and that glaze is really, really, really good.

[Rick] And this basically is a fried white bread and all this nice butter.

You can put a bucket of butter in there and it'll sop it up but you don't want it too buttery.

Yeah, that's looking real good.

I'm going to pull- this is my spice bouquet out.

[Piano music] [Rick] I hope there's a whole lot of people in this army that are hungry because we got a lot of it.

Grab a piece of bread.

There you go.

[Walter] Alright.

Let me try your handiwork.

Oh.

Oh.

Oh, good.

Thank you, God.

For Rose to shoot it, for you to cook it, And you Nate, to make a beautiful salmon.

Mmmhmm.

Your salmon, fantastic.

The glaze is just superb.

All that for a spectacular Taste of History from Maine.

[Narrator] This program is made possible by Pasture-raised Australian beef and lamb, adding variety into your weekly meals or unique touch for your next celebration.

Widely available at your local market.

For recipes and more, we're at aussiebeefandlamb.com Viewers can find DVD's and cookbooks at atasteofhistory.org including the all new A Taste of History Cookbook, complete with step by step instructions of recipes seen on the show.

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