Annette Grant wishes she had a dollar for every ploye she watched her mother make.
Like so many of her generation in the St. John Valley, the 67-year-old retiree grew up eating the ubiquitous buckwheat flour staple with every meal. A cross between a crepe and a pancake, ployes are the eggless flatbread of the Acadians and go as well with baked beans as they do with maple syrup.
“Growing up, we did not know what ‘sandwich’ bread was,” Grant said. “My father grew buckwheat and took it to the mill in Frenchville. There was no such thing as a meal without a ploye.”
Grant grew up on a St. Francis farm, where her mother — like mothers across the St. John Valley — would stand at the kitchen stove making ploye after ploye for her husband and seven children, and she would only sit down to her own meal after everyone else had finished theirs. Ployes, Grant said, were as abundant on their dining room as were locally picked, seasonal fiddlehead ferns; homemade “creton,” a sort of pork and spice pate; and tourtiere, a meat pie also often made of pork.
“We never lacked for food,” she said. “We raised or picked so much of what we ate.”
These days, the staples of Grant’s youth have become the staples of menus and farmers markets far beyond the St. John Valley.
“It’s pretty ironic,” she said. “Sometimes people look at northern Maine like we are almost rednecks, and now food that was considered ‘poor man’s food’ is now a delicacy.”
This spring, fresh fiddleheads were popping up in markets around New York City, including one in Chelsea, where they were selling for $16.99 per pound, far above the average $2.50 per pound price in northern Maine.
“Every time a see a batch of fiddleheads for [that price] I kick myself for not developing the idea of bringing them down here first,” Allagash native and current New York City resident Earnie Gardner said. “Those were Maine things left behind, and I missed a chance to exploit my roots for cash.”
Luckily, Gardner said, he has plenty of friends and family in northern Maine who supply him with fiddleheads — and his beloved red hot dog, which he says go for $6.99 apiece in the city. He has not had to pay New York city prices yet.
“I’m stunned every time I see [fiddleheads] in the city,” he said. “It’s like a childhood friend returning to say hello.”
In Maine, fiddleheads are relatively common on menus in the spring, when they are season from late April to mid-May, but recently chefs from Fort Kent to Portland are putting their own spin on what some people have called “a swamp weed.” At Sushi Maine, chef Matt Howe incorporated the delicate ferns into a specialty sushi roll at his South Portland restaurant.
This spring and summer The Moose Shack Restaurant in Fort Kent has featured fiddlehead chowder and fiddlehead calzones among their rotating daily specials. Melvin Hafford, who works at the Moose Shack, grew up in the St. John Valley, where he said he collected more than his fair share growing up.
“Us kids would get sent down to the river to pick them, and then we’d have to come home and rinse and clean them,” Hafford said. “I guess you could say I picked so many I hated them.”
Never, Hafford said, did he ever think he’s see them used in either chowders or calzones.
“Who would have guessed?” he said, with a laugh.
This spring the humble ploye was featured in a full color spread in high-end foodie magazine “Saveur,” where its history and evolution as a staple bread-based carbohydrate was explored.
National Geographic also hopped on the St. John Valley food cart with a May article on creton, “a savory spread made of ground pork, onions and spices that’s typically smoothed onto toast and eaten as a breakfast food [and is] one of the many aspects of life in this corner of Maine that’s steeped in generations of Acadian French culture.”
For Lise Pelletier, director of the Acadian Archives at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, it’s really no mystery why local northern Maine food is gaining more attention outside the area.
“So much of what is happening with food now is all about getting back to nature,” she said. “Local products are more popular than ever. Things we ate growing up and [what] people from away considered ‘weeds’ are now becoming more popular.”
Pelletier, who grew up in Clair, New Brunswick, just across the border from Fort Kent, said there is no escaping the irony that food that was once thought of as only for the poor, now commands high prices in stores and restaurants.
“Two or three generations ago, everything from dandelion greens to ‘pigweed’ to fiddleheads and even rhubarb was seen as weeds by the people who had plenty of money,” Pelletier said. “But the poor people saw it as accessible food and used every part of those plants to make the best use of it.”
Using the roots and stems of common plants was something quite foreign to people who bought all their food in stores, she said.
“I grew up eating all of these things, and we used every part of the plant or animal. We did not believe in throwing anything away,” Pelletier said. “Rich people did not believe in food that grew alongside the road or in their yards.”
Today, “rich people” are paying up to $20 per pound for those “weeds” like fiddleheads or $17 for a slice of the meat pie tourtiere. Grant said she is amazed the local foods are commanding such high prices these days, but she did say she’s been known to add her own “high-end” touches to her favorite edibles.
“Have you ever spread creton on a cracker and had that with a glass of wine?” she said. “It is the very best.”
As for Gardner, when it comes to traditional foods, the old ways can’t be beat.
“Fiddleheads are for cooking with potatoes in a big pot with butter,” he said. “Call it the Irish in me, but fiddleheads on pizza, in calzones or sushi? No, if you are not wiping fiddlehead juice off of your chin, then you are eating them wrong.”
