On May 11 at the Ramscale penthouse in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, Arrows Restaurant Chefs Mark Gaier and Clark Frasier rolled out their new cookbook "Maine Classics."The Chefs, who took home the James Beard Award for Best Chefs of the Northeast last year, were in town to introduce New York’s food writers to the book and more importantly, to the food, which we tasted while looking out over the skyline with great views of the south tip of Manhattan, Hoboken, and Jersey City, with Lady Liberty and Staten Island off in the distance. I believe we were, in fact, looking out over the Hudson at the spot where “Sully” Sullenberger brought US Airways flight 1549 to a stop, saving his own and 154 other lives.Anyway, it was a perfect evening. Paired in my case with Four Vines Naked Chardonnay (unoaked), guests enjoyed more than a dozen treats from the cookbook including lobster mac n’ cheese, grilled flank steak with mom’s sauce, poached oysters with creme and chervil, spicy lamb sausage, lobster salad with miner’s lettuce and chive mayonnaise, crab chowder with corn and celery, yukon gold potato and wild mushroom gratin, all finished off with apple-rhubarb crisp, whoopie pies, and honey-thyme and real mint (and I mean real) chocolate chip ice creams.You can buy the book at Amazon and a whole lotta other places. Better yet, just hop in your car to Ogunquit, Maine and visit Arrows or their other signature restaurant, MC Perkins Cove, and taste some of the treats for yourself.
