Maine Blueberry Muffins

Since Maine is a big producer of blueberries, several of the Maine recipes I came across included blueberries. So, naturally, we had to have some blueberry muffins on our Food Tour while in Maine.

This recipe came from the Swan House Bed and Breakfast in Camden, Maine.

They were super easy and super tasty!

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup milk
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 cups fresh blueberries
cinnamon/sugar for topping

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

With electric mixer, cream butter and sugar

beat in eggs, vanilla, and milk.

The wet stage of this recipe came out kind of strange for me. I almost tossed it and started over because I thought I messed up a step or something. I didn't have enough eggs to start over, so I just kept going and they turned out wonderful. So, if the wet ingredients don't seem right to you, if you followed these directions, it'll turn out great.

In a separate mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon.

Stir wet ingredients into dry ingredients by hand (not mixer). Stir until all ingredients are incorporated. Fold in blueberries.

Fill lined muffin tins to the top. Sprinkle tops with 1/3 tsp. cinnamon/sugar mixture (the original recipe says to bake, then brush tops with butter and sprinkle with cinnamon/sugar. I just did it before baking instead). Bake for 27 min until tops are lightly browned.

If you can stand it, wait until cool before stuffing in your face. And, if you're like my son, you'll think these are great dunked in milk.

Be sure to check out our other Maine recipe on our Food Tour USA stop in Maine.

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Maine Lobster Linguine

Our first stop on our U.S. Food tour is Maine. So, of course, we made Lobster! This was a first for our family. We bought live lobsters from our local asian market (I'm certain these lobsters came straight from Maine, though). Thanks to my husband who had the task of purchasing the lobsters, bringing them home and putting them in the sink, then into the boiling water. All of that was just way too scary for me.

Between screams, I managed to snap a picture of the lobsters as they were splashing all around in the sink:

Bring a large pot of water to a rapid boil, drop in the lobster, cover and boil for 15min. We cooked our lobsters individually because we didn't have a large enough pot for both. Our lobsters were about 1.5 lbs. A 1 lb lobster should cook for about 12-15min, a larger lobster (1.5-2 lbs) should cook for 15-20min.

Here they are cooked:

Then, I followed these directions for getting the meat from the cooked lobster:



The recipe for Lobster Linguine came from the Maine Lobster Council's website.

It's under campfire classic and some of the directions include cooking the lobster at camp. I don't know what kind of cooking equipment people in Maine take camping with them, but I'm pretty sure this is not a recipe I'd ever try to make at a campfire.

So, I just followed the recipe almost exactly as written, minus that campfire part. And we LOVED it! Here are the ingredients and instructions as I did them, which are only very slightly different than the original recipe.

Ingredients:

1 lb linguine
2-3 Tbsp olive oil
10 cloves garlic, chopped
4 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 cup chardonnay
1 Tbsp anchovy paste
4 scallions, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
10 large basil leaves, torn
1 lb lobster meat, cooked and chopped into bite sized pieces (I don't know if this was a pound of meat, it was 2 lobsters, more than enough meat for this amount of pasta)
salt and pepper to taste
cayenne pepper to taste
1 cup parmesan cheese, grated
1/2 cup pine nuts

Directions:

1. Cook linguine al dente, strain and toss with 2-3 Tbsp olive oil Cook lobster and shell as in video above
2. Heat 4Tbsp butter and 2Tbsp olive oil (you can substitute some or all of the butter with more olive oil, but lobster connoisseur's insist lobster is eaten with butter)
3. Add garlic, keep on medium heat and lower if garlic starts to brown
4. Add chardonnay, then anchovy paste (let reduce about 5-7min)

(the original recipe called for 2-3Tbsp of anchovy paste, I only used 1 because I had never used it before and it scared me a bit)

5. Add scallions and red pepper, cook 5min.

6. Add basil, lobster pieces, linguine, salt, pepper, and cayenne, toss to coat in sauce

7. Add parmesan cheese and pine nuts, remove from heat and serve

It was soooo good! I'll definitely be using this recipe in the future with shrimp or even just add more veggies. It's a great sauce! And homemade lobster was definitely worth the effort and expense (and freak out).

And while in Maine, we had blueberry muffins for dessert, so check those out too - YUM!

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Next stop: New Hampshire






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