Vacation Chowder

By Lori Powell

All this week, Special Fork bloggers will be sharing recipes for vacation cooking. And to celebrate summer vacations, Special Fork is giving away a beautiful, English-style picnic basket fitted with service for four by Picnic Time. It’s easy to enter the sweepstakes.

Lucky me, I get to spend a couple of weeks each year in Mid-Coast Maine at a house on a cove that I have rented now for the past six years. It is my Northeast Oasis where I fatten myself up with all that Maine has to offer, including all the seafood, berries and great produce that I can consume in that short period of time.

Of course, all of that cooking (yes, I love to cook on vacation with the indigenous ingredients that surround me), eating and then reading need to be combined with a lot of hiking so that I can do more of the first two things.

Maine, to me, screams seafood and Seafood Chowder in all its glorious forms… whether it is lobster, scallops, shrimp or even clams. To me it generally involves some shellfish, vegetables, herbs, sometimes pork and a creamy, slightly thickened base.

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Salmon en Papillote

By Zoe McLoughlin

This is my go-to recipe at least once a week. The term "en papillote" is French for cooked in parchment paper. It's simple, yet elegant, and this dish is packed with flavor. All the ingredients cook together in the same amount of time and the parchment paper locks in the flavor. It’s super-fast, super-easy and leaves you with virtually no clean up.

I have made this dish countless times, changing the ingredients, depending on what I have on hand. This version is Mediterranean in its inspiration, but I often make it with Asian flavors using shiitake mushrooms, scallions, ginger and soy sauce. I used salmon fillets for this recipe but any type of fish such as halibut, sea bass, sole or snapper are great alternatives.

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Melon and Prosciutto Salad

By Marilyn Hunter

I love this time of year when young spring days become warmer and longer than their older winter siblings. Now is the time to bring the outdoors inside with great seasonal fruits and veggies on the kitchen table. Melons of all varieties peak in the hot summer months, but they’re catching their stride now with respectable sweet, juicy flesh.

Cantaloupe and honeydew melons are surprisingly compatible with the sweet acidity of balsamic vinegar and cured prosciutto ham, which makes this salad perfect for any occasion, fancy or casual. It’s also great to make with kids because they love scooping melon balls, and you can set them to their task without worrying about cut fingers. They love making them and eating them so much that I now buy twice what I need to account for ravenous appetites.

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Kitchen Yoga

By Lori Powell

Cooking for one is highly underrated and might seem to some a tad lonely. My day job is to create recipes to serve at least four or more people and sometimes involves working in the company of others. So I embrace MY time alone in the kitchen where the only sounds I hear are from my knife chopping and slicing or something sizzling and speaking to me from the pot on the stove.

Being alone in the kitchen is when I can truly lose myself in the ingredients and smells of conjuring up a nourishing meal. Everything else that happened that day gets drowned out by the current task at hand. It’s not unlike a runner who gets in the zone on the track and their single focus is to move forward.

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Turn Veggies into “Cream” Soups

By Sandy Hu

With the bounty of fresh vegetables now coming to market, it’s easy to overbuy. When I find my enthusiasm has overtaken my cooking capacity, I turn the extra vegetables into “cream” soups. There’s no actual cream in these soups but the soup turns wonderfully thick and satiny when the veggies and potato are pureed.

This recipe is a formula: You can use 3 cups of any vegetable you’d normally cook, such as broccoli, carrots, asparagus or cauliflower. Just don’t combine vegetables in one soup because you could end up with an unattractive, muddy-looking broth. And don’t skip the potato. It provides the body and creamy quality to the soup.

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