Bringing The Harvest Home

Allie Hagerty, creator of Seasoned & Salted, food photographer (including many photos for Clandestine Kitchen menus), wife, mom to 1 1/2 year old daughter, Charlotte,  local resident, and Farmer’s Market ambassador, is one of my favorite resources for cool, unique products, and simple & creative recipes that don’t require a degree from Johnson & Wales or a pantry full of thousands of ingredients.

With the warmer weather, longer, lighter days, and outdoor Farmers Markets on the horizon, I thought a chat with Allie would be the perfect glimpse into what I want my Endless Summer to look like this year – full of flavor, lazy evening meals at home, and a patio Aperol Spritz or two around town (like the one at Salty Days in Cohasset made with herbal, non-alcoholic Aperol + Prosecco). With cool, unique recipes like Lobster Bisque Pasta, Heirloom Tomato Galette, Italian Lemon & Ricotta Cake, and New England Lobster Pasta Salad, here is the scoop on what to make, where to shop, where to dine, and how to make life a little more seasoned (and salted).

Seasoned & Salted, born in September 2020, was created to inspire and encourage the at-home cook to set fear aside and jump into the creative process of planning, shopping for, and preparing meals in your own kitchen. With simple recipes that are easy to follow, even the most intimidating & expensive ingredients seem approachable and fun to prepare. Taking inspiration from your favorite “date night” spots like Contessa –with locations in Boston and Miami – you can recreate iconic dishes like their Lobster Capellini by following Allie’s Spicy Lobster Pasta recipe.

With over 200 recipes, many celebrating Italian Coastal cuisine, you will be whipping up Fusilli alla Vodka (with shrimp sourced from Allie’s favorite Rocky Neck Fish Co.), Italian Linguine Vongole, and Pasta Pomodorro e Mozzarella, by the time the opening bell for your town’s Farmers Market Spring season rings.

This year, Allie launched her second recipe blog, One Bowl Bakery, making the art of baking at home a little simpler with less clean-up and more “kid friendly” without requiring the use of mixers and equipment. Everything can literally just go right into one bowl and can be mixed with a wooden spoon (or tiny hands).

So far, 3 of the most popular recipes in the One Bowl Bakery rolodex are the Brown Butter Brownies, Brown Butter + Vanilla Rice Krispies, and the Chocolate Chip Cookies, made without brown sugar.

More recipes are coming to One Bowl Bakery this summer so, bookmark the OBB website as your reference for quick, delicious treats you can whip up anytime. Pro Tip: make extra cookie dough, shape it into individual balls, and freeze it so you can have a warm, fresh cookie anytime with zero work required (as you can imagine, this is also very dangerous!).

One of Allie’s favorite places to source the best local ingredients is the Hingham Farmers Market. Market vendor, Aeonian Farm, is always loaded with the best organic produce including spring asparagus and hard-to-find zucchini blossoms. Allie’s Cold Asparagus Salad w/Lemon Dijon Vinaigrette is the perfect way to showcase tender, spring asparagus and we will be on the lookout for her new Zucchini Risotto recipe with a lightly fried zucchini blossom garnish (yes, you can do this at home!), coming this summer.

Copicut Farms (eggs, chicken, pork, beef), McGuires Mushrooms (perfect for Allie’s Creamy Truffled Mushroom Gnocchi), and the Pucker Up Lemonade Company, are among Allie’s go-to Hingham Farmers Market favorites.

This summer, Seasoned & Salted will be focusing adding more fresh tomato recipes and recipes featuring various herbs that you can grow at home with ease. Many farms, such as Holly Hill Farm in Cohasset, have a robust selection of fresh herbs at a great price (without the plastic packaging) but, you can also create your own herb garden with your own curated selection based on your family’s favorites, too.

Another favorite Farmers Market vendor is Mei Mei Dumplings. With a brick-and-mortar cafe & classroom (check out the class schedule and learn how to make your own dumplings) in South Boston, and stocked in many local specialty food stores including Captain Mardens (Wellesley, MA) and Board143 (Scituate, MA), Mei Mei Dumplings exemplify the fierce combination of a woman-owned family business celebrating culture, and growing authentically from their beginnings as a food truck in 2012. Just take Seasoned & Salted’s Easy Chicken & Escarole Soup recipe and replace the tortellini with Mei Mei Dumplings for a comforting, farm-to-table soup that is both light and satisfying. While discussing Mei Mei Dumplings, Allie and I agreed that we must go to Bottomless Dumplings (coming up April 3rd and 24th) – you literally get a wristband and can eat all the dumplings your heart desires – and see just how many dumplings we can eat (hint: the over-under on this is “a lot”!).

Not only is Allie preparing meals for her family at home, primarily using her own Seasoned & Salted and One Bowl Bakery recipes, but, she loves getting out and supporting her favorite local restaurants, too. We met at Salty Days in Cohasset recently and it was fun to hear all about the Salty Days menu through her eyes, as a Recipe Content Creator (as the Owner and Creative Director at Clandestine Kitchen, I also understand the excitement and appreciation for tasting other chef’s dishes while discovering new flavor profiles and combinations).

One of Allie, and her husband Eric’s, favorite items on the Salty Days menu is the Crispy Rice Tuna Tartare. Perhaps inspired by a similar dish at Nobu, Allie gives the nod to the team at Salty Days for their interpretation of this famous dish.  In addition to the seafood dishes on the menu, Allie also joins the popular sentiment that the “best burger I have ever had” was right here at Salty Days.

The Red Lion Tavern (Cohasset, MA), and  Locales Tacos y Tequila (Hingham, MA) rank among Allie’s top local spots and she can be found at Knead Bakery (Scituate, MA) with her daughter, Charlotte, almost every single Saturday for a fresh croissant. Part of her weekend routine also includes a trip to her favorite local grocery store, The Fruit Center (Hingham, MA), to shop the beautiful produce, assortment of local products, and find new, unique items with which to be inspired.

So, grab your reusable bags, bookmark your favorite Seasoned & Salted recipes, and head into the Spring season with a fresh outlook on cooking at home, sourcing and supporting local food purveyors and farmers, and go find your perfect patio cocktail at your favorite neighborhood spot.