Taste Maine’s Future dinner features under-used seafood

Sun, 06/17/2018 - 8:00am

The first Damariscotta Oyster Celebration continued into the second day with tours of local oyster growers and the Ira C. Darling Center. The day ended with a multi-course dinner featuring Maine harvested seafood. 

The Taste of Maine’s Future dinner attracted 160 adventuresome diners to the Darrows Barn at Round Top Farm in Damariscotta.

One of the four courses featured a green crab rangoon. Green crabs are Considered an invasive species putting clams, mussels, and young lobsters in danger. Executive chef Ali Waks Adams of the Brunswick Inn took the pesky crustaceans as a culinary challenge.

“If we can’t eliminate them, we might as well monetize them and eat them,” said Waks Adams.

Other recipes used mackerel fillets, smoked eels and Maine-raised lamb.

Organizer Rory Strunk of the Market Expansion, Coastal Region, said the Boothbay-Damariscotta region was a natural candidate for market development focusing on oyster farming.

“You have the farming. You have the science. You have the culture,” said Strunk.