May 2019

My favorite potato, available during the winter at farmers’ market, has been the pinto potato-red-skinned with blushes of beige and golden flesh within. It bakes, boils, sautés well yielding an ultra-creamy texture. Alas they’ve disappeared as a storage potato early last month at farmers’ markets. Locally Goranson and Dandelion farms sold the potatoes until their winter stash was depleted. They’ll be back in the markets by mid-summer.

By the end of May winter storage crops like potatoes, onions and carrots are truly getting long in the tooth. The famous spring dug parsnip moreover is still not available at farmers’ markets. Farmers say that the ground is still too tough to dig them up.

“New” (?) potatoes from Hannaford

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According to Marjorie Standish, the one-time doyenne of Maine cooking as food columnist for the Maine Sunday Telegram for 25 years, I was intrigued by her proclamation in her 1973 book “Keep Cooking—The Maine Way”—that she had the absolute original recipe for the famous Toll House Chocolate Chip cookie, which she included in her book. She wrote:

“These cookies were originated at the celebrated Toll House in Whitman, Massachusetts by Ruth Wakefield…

“Although you will find the recipe for these cookies on the package of chocolate bits, stating that it’s the original recipe, it is not this recipe. This is the one that was printed on a long-ago package and is the original recipe —really.”

Fresh out of the oven, allow these to cool for a few minutes in the pan before removing to a wrack to cool completely

I immediately set out to make these cookies. The recipe wasn’t too different from the one I knew. I’ve always made the Toll House recipe found on the back of the 6-ounce package of Nestle’s chocolate chips (today they’re called morsels). The larger package yielded more cookies than I wanted for a quick batch of cookies.

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