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An enchanting bed and breakfast in the heart of Camden village that Fodor’s considers “An elegant and sophisticated retreat and culinary destination,” this Mansard style Victorian built in 1835 offers a unique experience in pampered luxury.
Archive for the ‘Chef Michael Salmon’ Category
Thursday, July 29th, 2010
I have always loved raspberries-all kinds. When we purchased the house on Free St, I mentioned to Mary Jo that I would finally have the space to plant some. One day, to my surprise, Mary Jo returned from the nursery with one small black raspberry plant. Three years later, the plant has spread and taken over much of the back yard!
I feature the berries in the restaurant during July and they appear in everything from salad dressings and sorbet to breakfast trifles and muffins. Perhaps the most popular recipe is our Black Raspberry Mojito, perfect on a hot summer evening and equally popular during our evening cocktail hour. I have included the recipe below. If you don’t have your own black raspberry bush growing in your back yard, you can substitute either red raspberries, boysenberries or blackberries.
 
Black Raspberry Mojito
1/2 cup of fresh mint leaves
4 teaspoons granulated sugar (or 2 packets Splenda)
2 limes
1/4 cup fresh black raspberries (or red )
3/4 cup light rum
1 cup club soda
2 sprigs of fresh mint for garnish
1. Place the mint and sugar in a mortar and “muddle” it with the pestle. Squeeze in the lime juice and add half of the blackberries. Lightly crush the berries.
2. Pour the mixture into a cocktail shaker and add the light rum and club soda. Shake to mix.
3. Place 4 large cubes of ice in two rocks glasses and divide the drink equally between them.
4. Garnish each glass with the remaining black raspberries and a sprig of fresh mint.
Posted in Chef Michael Salmon, Cocktails, Garden, Recipe | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
Michael and I have created a foodie adventure… we’ll be exploring the scenic Farms & Villages of Southern Tuscany this fall. If you have the desire to learn something new, would like to explore several beautiful villages in Tuscany and like to cook – or just eat, then this may be the adventure you’ve been looking for. We planned a single trip for this fall and it filled up in three days…so we added a second week and it filled in two more days. We are very excited by our guests interest in the trip. If this sounds like fun to you, we are planning to add two weeks to the same region in Italy in the spring of 2011. Once we have the dates for the spring trips established, we will include the information in our next newsletter. Please sign up for our newsletter at the top of our home page where it says email signup, and click on the Foodie Adventures and Travel checkbox. Arrivederchi.
Posted in Chef Michael Salmon, Cooking School, Fun for Foodies | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010
 Spring is here and I am busy trying to finish the restoration of my 1962 Daimler Dart SP250. I can’t wait to drive it for the first time. I bought the car in May 2009 and have stripped it down completely, repairing, cleaning, sanding and painting every part. The chassis and engine are completely restored and we fired up the engine (first time in over 29 years) in February. The body is getting it’s final coat of red paint this week. Next week I will begin putting the parts back on the car and the following week the interior leather and carpets will be installed.
I made a 10 minute video of the restoration process, up to this point, and it is available online at youtube if you are interested in car restorations, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRhxuFhp8AU
Posted in Chef Michael Salmon, Daimler SP250 | No Comments »
Saturday, March 13th, 2010
Note the cuisine changes in the remainder of our event schedule!
In the Kitchen Dinner Series 
Join Chef Michael Salmon and his crew in the kitchen at the Inn for an evening of mingling, beverage pairings and plenty of great food. Three events remain in our “In the Kitchen Dinner Series” schedule. We have made a few changes including adding an Italian Food & Wine Dinner and bringing back one more night of our popular Sushi & Japanese Beer Pairing Dinner. The price is $29.50 per person and includes several food and beverage pairings and a kitchen full of food.
Italian Food and Wine Pairing
April 11, 2010
Specialties from all over Italy will be featured this evening including a full antipasto spread, a wide array of Michael’s homemade pastas and some of his signature Italian entrees like veal saltimbocca and Shrimp Parmesan. Michael’s Hazelnut Tiramisu and Zeph’s Semi Freddo will certainly finish the night on a high note.
Dim Sum and Beer
May 19, 2010
Dim sum, which translates to “to touch your heart,” is the perfect food for a unique dinner party. Dim sum is a broad term for small individual Chinese delicacies, savory or sweet, ranging from the abundant types of filled dumplings to steamed buns and spring rolls. This evening we begin by making numerous dumpling fillings and sauces, create various dumpling forms or shapes and cook the dumpling in variuous methods—steaming, deep-fat frying and a combination steaming-pan frying method used for cooking pot-stickers. Fillings include Thai-Pork, Turkey and Shiitake, and Shrimp. Various offerings will be paired with Far East beers and there will be an endless supply of food.
 Sushi and Beer
May 30, 2010
Various Rolled Sushi including:
California Rolls, Crab and Asparagus Rolls, Spicy Shrimp Rolls,
Spicy Tuna Rolls, Tempura Shrimp Rolls and Rainbow Rolls
Flash-Fried Nori and Tuna Roll with a Ginger-Wasabi Butter Sauce
Crab and Papaya Mamenori Roll with a Sweet Chili Sauce
Chef Zeph’s Japanese Short Rib Sushi
Chef Michael’s Sushi Dushi (sweet “dessert” sushi)
“In the Kitchen” events are at 6pm and are always allot of fun. Reserve your table today!
Posted in Chef Michael Salmon, Dining at the Inn | No Comments »
Thursday, December 24th, 2009
I just received this request from Milt: …would like your recipe for rice pudding. It was in your news letter a while back. I misplaced it.
Orange-Spiced Rice Pudding yields 6 portions
1/2 cup water
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup Arborio rice
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cups heavy cream
3 Tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup chopped dried apricots
1/4 cup golden raisins
1/4 cup regular raisins
1/2 orange, zest and cubed pcs
1/2 teaspoons apple pie spice
If you have been to the Inn since this Spring, you may have had the opportunity to try my Orange-Spiced Rice Pudding. It has been one of our most requested recipes.
- Boil water in a large pan.
- Add salt and rice. Cover and simmer over low heat (stirring occasionally) for 15-20 minutes or until most of the water is absorbed.
- Add milk, cream and sugar and increase heat to medium-high heat. Bring to a simmer and reduce heat to maintain the simmer. Cook UNCOVERED, stirring frequently for 30 minutes.
- Reduce heat to low (stirring every couple of minutes) and cook for 15 minutes more. Spoon should stand upright in the pan. Stir in the remaining ingredients and serve.
Posted in Chef Michael Salmon, Recipe | No Comments »
Monday, December 21st, 2009
 Filling Spice Kits Today we are busy making spice kits for our last minute holiday shoppers. Gift certificates have been flying out the door and many items from our gift shop have been popular this year including Chef Michael’s cookbooks and his spice kits. The spice samplers include 15 small containers of Michael’s favorite spices, spice blends and salts that he uses at the Inn on a regular basis, including: cumin spice mix, fennel spice mix, herbes de Provence, Caribbean dry spice mix, Cajun spice mix, annatto seed, star anise, Chinese five spice powder, rosemary steak rub, apple pie spice mix, curry powder, crystallized ginger, Maine sea salt, Alaea Hawaiian sea salt, and Hiwa Kai black Hawaiian sea salt.
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- Chef Michael’s Favorite Spices
The kit includes a description of each of the items, recipe suggestions and references to recipes in Chef Michael’s cookbooks in which he utilizes the spices.
The Fennel spice mix is one of the most popular spices at the Inn (we also sell them individually in 1 cup jars) and is used in everything from breakfast sausage to our Maine Lobster and Scallop Terrine.
Fennel Spice Mix Recipe – Place 2 Tablespoons of whole fennel seeds in a small saute pan and toast over medium-high heat until fragrant and lightly toasted. Finely grind in a spice grinder and mix with 1 Tablespoon ground black pepper, 1 Tablespoon granulated garlic and 2 1/2 Tablespoons Kosher Salt.
Posted in Chef Michael Salmon, Holidays, Recipe | No Comments »
Saturday, November 28th, 2009
Another fun filled pasta cooking class at the Inn. This past weekend our guests learned how to make pasta in their own kitchens. Techniques included making the dough, coloring and flavoring different pastas (green from spinach, red from beets and yellow from eggs), rolling out and cutting various shapes of pasta, filling pastas such as raviolis and tortellini and cooking pasta. The dishes we made were: Spaghetti with a Creamy Prosciutto and Roasted Pepper Sauce, Pappardelle with Grilled Tiger Shrimp, Pesto and Oven Roasted Tomatoes, Sweet Potato Ravioli with a Pine Nut and Sage Butter Sauce, and Three-Cheese Tortellini with Chicken and Pesto. Thank you to all of you who participated, hopefully you went home and dusted off your pasta machines.
Posted in Chef Michael Salmon, Cooking School, Fun for Foodies | No Comments »
Monday, November 23rd, 2009
 On Saturday and Sunday, November 14th and 15th we had our first “In the Kitchen Dinner” and it was a great success. The idea behind the “In the Kitchen Dinner Series” is to open up the kitchen and allow the guests to interact with the kitchen staff and watch the food being prepared (some guests even rolled their own sushi!).
The dinner started with a sampling plate (pictured at the left) of three pieces of sushi paired with three different “Hitachino Nest” Japanese beers. At the top of the plate is a Nigiri-sushi (finger sushi) made with Zeph’s Sous-Vide“Japanese braised” short ribs which we paired with the darkest beer, Hitachino Nest Sweet Stout. The next pairing (clockwise) was the Flash-Fried Nori and Tuna Roll with a Ginger-Wasabi Butter Sauce which we paired with the Hitachino Nest Real Ginger Brew. The third pairing was the Hitachino Nest Red Rice Ale which we served with an Uramaki roll (inside out) which was filled with spicy Maine crab meat and grilled asparagus.
After the pairing plate was cleared, guests were invited into the kitchen where we had platters of different sushi made up and Zeph (my Sous Chef) and I rolled sushi as fast as we could and barely kept up with the demand. For dessert we made some “sweet sushi,” a dish I created when we lived in Aruba for a culinary competition called “sushi dushi” (dushi is Papiamento for sweetheart). Sweet rice is cooked with coconut milk and sugar and is formed and rolled like sushi with fresh fruits. It’s a fun way to end a sushi party.
The “In the Kitchen Dinner Series” continues this winter with a great variety of tastings and pairings including: Cheese and wine with hors d’oeuvres, Dim Sum and beer, Spanish Tapas and wine, and another chance to experience our Sushi. For the complete schedule click here. Hope to see you in our kitchen!
Posted in Chef Michael Salmon, Dining at the Inn, Fun for Foodies, Things to do in Camden | 1 Comment »
Sunday, September 27th, 2009
Mary Jo and I recently took a weekend trip aboard our sailboat into Penobscot Bay and did a little island and shoreline foraging. On shore we collected wild blueberries, chanterelle mushrooms and raspberries. We waded along the shoreline at low tide and collected mussels and sea urchins. Dinner that evening started with sea urchin roe, followed by steamed mussels, seared New York strip steaks with sauteed Chanterelle mushrooms and vanilla ice cream with island berries.
Posted in Chef Michael Salmon, Fun for Foodies, Mushrooms, Things to do in Camden | No Comments »
Friday, September 4th, 2009
 If I’m not in the kitchen at the Inn, then there is a pretty good chance you can find me in my garage, working diligently at restoring a 1962 Daimler SP250. I purchased the car in May of this year and have been taking it apart completely, restoring each part (or replacing it), and eventually (as of last week) I am putting it back together again. It has always been a goal of mine to restore an old red convertible and the opportunity came along this spring. Mary Jo says I bought a “car in a box” off from Ebay…not far from the truth, I guess!  This is my first try at restoring a car, actually, come to think of it, I have never even changed my own oil. I’m a quick learner! Only 2600 +/- of these babies made, so they are quite rare. My goal is to get it on the road next spring. Wish me luck.
Posted in Chef Michael Salmon, Daimler SP250 | 3 Comments »
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