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REVIEW
At Home, At Sea: Recipes from the Maine Windjammer, J. & E. Riggin
by Anne Mahle
Reviewed by SANDY OLIVER
Baggywrinkle Publishing, 2004
Schooner Cooking Worth Taking Ashore
It was nice meeting Anne Mahle, a friendly, helpful and conscientious soul,
and clearly a good cook and storyteller. I ran into her in At Home, At Sea,
a book of recipes you can use in your galley or kitchen. Other people run into
her as the cook aboard the schooner J. & E. RIGGIN, which she and her
husband, Capt. Jon Finger, own and operate out of Rockland, and on which they
live with their two children from May to October.
Anne’s training in cookery came from a summer as a mess cook on the STEPHEN
TABER and head cook on VICTORY CHIMES, and a stint at Jessica’s Bistro in
Rockland. A period of time spent in the Caribbean as she and Jon worked on
yachts exposed her to ingredients she’d never have encountered in her native
Midwest. All the years of cooking have built into her an instinct for good
combinations and freehanded techniques, and she encourages us to use the recipes
as a starting point for our own cooking. Baking, on the other hand, she points
out, requires more attention to detail and instruction-following, something she
claims she has a hard time doing. Still she has managed to write down detailed
recipes not just for baked goods, but soups, salsas and even salads, so the
precise among us can follow the directions to the letter and come up with the
same thing twice.
At the heart of Anne’s cooking is as much fresh locally grown produce and
meat as she can gather. This meets two principles she and Jon hold: one is to
use really fine ingredients and the other is to be a socially responsible
business. It is important to them to support local agriculture. Plus, they run
as “green” a ship as they can, recycling whatever they can, and composting
garbage from the trips, and avoiding toxic cleaning supplies.
Some of the recipes Anne developed for particular vendors: a “Lamb-sagna”
for instance, made with ground lamb from Agricola Farms, and summer squash
sliced lengthwise, layered up lasagna-like. She tells you how to make muffins
and quick breads in one bowl, no lumps, in case you are not fond of washing
dishes. There are recipes for bread with sidebars telling you how to make them
in a bread machine, though Anne bakes her bread in the Riggins’ wood-burning
cook stove. She doesn’t spare the butter, or feta cheese or cream. But in the
back she lists all the recipes in categories like vegetarian, low-carb or
low-fat so if you are adhering to a regime, you can spot the right recipes for
you.
The book contains over 150 recipes, in every category - beef, pork, poultry,
seafood, soups, salads, appetizers, and sweets. Clearly, the next time a RIGGIN
passenger asks for a recipe, Anne will hand them a book. It is said that a great
many people like to read cookbooks even if they don’t actually cook from them.
This is good cookbook for reading. We can all enjoy reading about Anne and Jon’s
courtship and early years on boats. Those who have sailed on the schooner will
find the “A Week at Sea” with menus and pictures, a pleasant reminder of
their trip and the rest of us can fantasize about it. But I think it would be
shame to let all those good recipes go to waste. So take this book off your
nightstand, and get it into your kitchen.
A Working Waterfront regular, Sandy Oliver cooks and writes on Islesboro.
-- September 2004
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