Fishing has always been a social-distancing activity and, during a global pandemic, it's a great way to get outside. Cleaning and cooking what you catch, though, can be an intimidating task.

Vermont Wild Kitchen is here to help break that barrier. A partnership of the Vermont Farm to Plate Network's Rooted in Vermont program and the Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife, the coronavirus-era series of Facebook Live events helps curious Vermonters identify, process and cook wild ingredients.

"With COVID-19 raging around us, we were brainstorming ways to engage folks in the local food movement while also making sure that they were staying safe and staying healthy," Shane Rogers explained.

Rogers is the Farm to Plate communications manager and an on-screen personality in Vermont Wild Kitchen — from his own home kitchen.

The videos cover everything from wild turkey with foraged and farm-fresh sides to fish tacos and nettles. They encourage people to spend time outside experiencing nature in ways they haven't before — sustainably, of course — while celebrating how people eat local food in their own unique ways.

"Wild food carries this connotation as sometimes being scary, or perhaps dangerous," Rogers said. "It certainly can be, if you're not smart about it, but what we wanted to do with Vermont Wild Kitchen was show that if you take the time and learn about the plants and animals that you're harvesting, it can be a really fun activity to do on your own or with your friends and family. And, it's also really delicious."

The isolation of the pandemic, as well as concerns about disruptions to food supply chains, got people thinking seriously about where their food comes from, Rogers noted.

"As they dove into that topic, they not only found that Vermont has an abundance of local food — and that our farmers are working so hard to feed our communities — but also that Vermont has an abundance of wild foods," he said. "With a question here or there and a little bit of research, the forest turns into something completely different from what they've experienced before."

There's plenty to forage in the woods, but if you find the water beckoning as the weather heats up, fishing can be just as approachable. Fish & Wildlife makes it easy to get a fishing license online,  and the department's website is full of great resources for finding fishing holes around the state.

Want to cook what you catch? "We want to help people get over the hump of how easy it is to process a fish," Rogers said. "The actual cooking is as simple as salt, pepper and a hot cast-iron pan."

This video clip from Vermont Wild Kitchen, led by Fish & Wildlife's Corey Hart, demonstrates how simple it can be to process and cook trout.
It's as easy as that! Once you've processed your trout, there's a whole school of ways to cook it.

The cooking method detailed in the video calls for trout, onion salt, garlic salt and butter. To follow along, get your cast iron (or other pan) hot, and throw in a chunk of butter. Sprinkle the onion and garlic salts on both sides and inside the processed trout. Once the butter is bubbling, place the trout skin side down in the pan and cook on each side for 3 to 4 minutes, until the skin is nice and crispy.


If you've had a successful fishing trip (or trip to the grocery store's fish department) and are looking for another recipe, Seven Days writer Melissa Pasanen has your back.

In her recently released The Little Local Vermont Cookbook: Recipes for Classic Dishes, Pasanen heads to the state's "fresh, cold-running streams" for one of spring's "natural pairings": wild watercress and brook trout.

"There's nothing quite like the thrill of finding your own food in nature (just make sure you do so with knowledge and a fishing license!)," Pasanen writes.

If you're in a store rather than a stream, she suggests looking for small butterflied trout and purchasing them "gutted and boned, without the head, and with the two fillets still attached along the back." If you're in the stream, you'll have to take what you can catch.

Grilled Trout With Watercress Butter

Makes 4 servings

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 whole butterflied brook or rainbow trout (6 to 9 ounces each)
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 2 cups watercress, coarsely chopped
• 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 2 tablespoons minced ramps or scallions, white and green parts
• 1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
• Garnish: fresh watercress sprigs and lemon slices

Directions:

1. Heat a grill to medium-high. Cut two pieces of foil about 12 by 18 inches and drizzle half the olive oil in the center of each. Pat dry the skin of each trout and season the outside of each with 1/4 teaspoon of the salt and generous grinds of the black pepper.
2. Open each trout like a book, flesh side up. Place two on each piece of foil.
3. In a medium bowl, mash together the watercress, butter, ramps, lemon zest, the remaining 1 teaspoon salt, and a few more grinds of black pepper. Divide the butter mixture roughly in fourths and, using your hands, shape each portion into a small log. Place one log in the center of each open trout and fold each trout closed.
4. Bring the sides of each foil packet together in the center around the two trout, lying side by side. Fold the foil over and seal each packet well.
5. Grill the trout in packets, turning once, about 5 minutes per side. The fish is done when it flakes easily with a fork. Remove from grill.
6. Serve on a bed of fresh watercress with the lemon slices.

Source: The Little Local Vermont Cookbook: Recipes for Classic Dishes, by Melissa Pasanen. Published by the Countryman Press.

Pastry chefs and bakers around Vermont are joining what might be the biggest and most impactful bake sale ever: Bakers Against Racism.

Organized by high-profile Washington, D.C., pastry chefs Paola Velez , Willa Pelini and Rob Rubba, Bakers Against Racism is raising money for organizations working to end systemic and structural racism — via an international, old-fashioned (albeit virtual) bake sale on Saturday, June 20.

This easy, speedy meal has been a staple in my cooking repertoire for longer  than I can recall. Thanks to quick-thawing frozen shrimp, canned diced tomatoes and white beans, and the Vermont feta I almost always have in my cheese drawer, it takes fewer than 45 minutes and one pan.

Occasionally, I plan ahead and even cook my own white beans, which are definitely more delicious than canned. But usually I'm just proud of myself if I can remember to thaw the shrimp in the fridge overnight. That shaves total dinner prep time down to about 30 minutes.

I make the recipe through every season. In the cooler months, I toss it with pasta, mound it on quinoa, or spoon it warm over baby kale that wilts just enough from the heat of the shrimp's garlicky-lemony juices.

In warmer weather, I often use fresh tomatoes in place of canned and serve it at room temperature over a green salad with crusty bread.

Normally, I try to search out wild-caught American shrimp from the Gulf.  An unexpected pandemic development is that reduced restaurant demand has made farm-raised Vermont shrimp from Sweet Sound Aquaculture currently available direct to consumers for pickup at the Charlotte operation. 

In April, I drove to Charlotte and picked up a couple pounds of sweet, juicy, shell-on locavore shrimp. When I used some in my standby recipe, I left the shells and heads on to save time and get it on the table fast.

A few nights ago, I made it again with shelled Gulf shrimp.

Both were delicious, though the latter was a bit neater to eat.

Shrimp With Tomatoes and White Beans

Serves 3 to 4

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice, divided
  
• 2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
  
• 2 fat cloves garlic, minced
  
• 1 teaspoon coarse salt, divided, plus more to taste
  
• Good pinch crushed red pepper or Aleppo pepper flakes
  
• 1 pound small to medium shrimp, preferably shelled (see thawing tip below if frozen)
  
• About ¾ cup sliced leeks (sub: sliced scallions, diced onion, sliced shallots)
  
• 1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes, halved (sub: 1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes)
  
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano (sub: 1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano leaves, plus. more to garnish if desired)
  
• 1 (15.5-ounce) can white beans, drained and rinsed (sub: Cook beans from scratch; it's worth it, but takes planning.)
  

Directions

1. In a medium bowl, stir together 1 tablespoon lemon juice, 1 tablespoon olive oil, minced garlic, ½ teaspoon salt and crushed red pepper. Add shrimp and stir to coat well.
   
2. In a medium sauté pan or skillet set over medium heat, heat remaining tablespoon olive oil and add leeks. Cook, stirring once, until softened, about 3 to 5 minutes.
   
3. Stir in cherry tomatoes, oregano and remaining ½ teaspoon salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until tomatoes have collapsed and given up some of their juices, about 5 to 7 minutes. Gently fold in white beans and cook for a couple minutes just until warmed through. Taste and add salt as desired. Scrape tomato and bean mixture into a serving bowl.
   
4. Put sauté pan back on stove over medium-high heat. When a drop of water skitters on the surface of the pan, add shrimp with all the marinade and spread evenly around pan's surface. Cook, tossing once, just until shrimp is cooked through, about 4 to 7 minutes depending on size.
   
5. Pour shrimp and cooking juices over white bean mixture. Sprinkle with remaining teaspoon lemon juice and serve over greens, pasta or quinoa as desired.
   

Tip: To speedily thaw frozen shrimp, take them out of the bag and submerge them in a bowl of cold water set in the sink and keep the faucet running. Depending on size, they should thaw in about 15 minutes. Dry them as well as you can with paper towel before proceeding with the recipe.

Growing radishes has given me a false sense of confidence in my gardening skills. I was one of those Vermonters outside in mid-April, bundled up and digging in the dirt. Most good advice was telling me to stay inside while the ground warmed up, but instead of listening, I planted an entire seed packet of French breakfast radishes on April freaking 19th.

Radishes were my most successful crop last summer, too. Those didn't make it into the ground until mid-July, when I was finally settled back in Vermont after six years of failing to grow anything but mint on fire escapes in Brooklyn.

Between these two questionably timed plantings, the spicy early risers have my thumbs feeling rather green (as long as I don't look too closely at whatever's going on with my beets).

To keep up with the radishes as they poke their pink shoulders out of the soil, I've been eating lots of salads and buying butter in bulk. One of the raddest things about radishes, though, is that their green tops are edible, too. And, yikes, do I have a lot of greens.

When I have an overwhelming bounty of any semi-sturdy green, I tend to ask myself, Will it pesto? In the case of radish tops, the answer is "It sure will."

I like to keep my radish-top pesto light and lemony. The result has a vegetal greenness that pairs nicely with other delicate spring flavors. I've used it as a base for an ad-hoc asparagus-radish tart (see serving suggestion, below), as a spread for sandwiches, and as a topping on an experimental pizza with grilled asparagus from Pomykala Farm and squeaky cheese curds from Sweet Rowen Farmstead.

This is a flexible — and storable — recipe. It would work as a pasta sauce or in a potato salad. The ingredients, too, can be dealer's choice. No sunflower seeds? Try pine nuts, walnuts or almonds. Want to make it vegan? Leave out the parmesan. Feeling wild? Add garlic or ramps. It keeps well in the fridge for a couple weeks, and can be frozen if you want to revisit the taste of spring throughout the year.

And, much like growing radishes, throwing pesto ingredients in a blender and whizzing them all together is easy, satisfying, and a real confidence booster.

Radish-Top Pesto

Ingredients

• 3 to 4 cups of radish tops, broken off from radishes, rinsed and dried
• About a handful of shredded parmesan (to taste)
• About a handful of sunflower seeds (sub: pine nuts, walnuts, almonds)
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• Lemon juice (to taste, between half and a whole lemon)
• Salt and pepper to taste
  

Directions

1. Place all ingredients in a blender or food processor
2. Blend until smooth (note: blending in batches works if it doesn't fit all at once)
   

Serving suggestion: To prepare an asparagus-radish tart, roll out pie dough into a rough rectangle. Spread radish-top pesto in an even layer over the dough, stopping an inch from the edge. Place asparagus stalks and halved radishes in alternating rows (pretty!) on top of the pesto and drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Fold the edges of the dough over, brush with egg wash and bake in a preheated 400-degree oven until the crust is golden brown, about 30 to 40 minutes. Serve with a crumble of goat cheese on top.

On upper Loomis Street in Burlington, in front of a big, pink-flowering rhododendron, is a little food pantry stocked with spaghetti sauce, soup, pasta, canned chili, baby food, peanut butter, chocolate almond milk, and other nonperishable items.

A sign on the front-yard food stand reads: "Little Free Pantry / Take what you need. Share when you can."

The Vermont Retail & Grocers Association has launched a social media campaign to encourage customers to wear masks when shopping inside retail businesses.

Vermonters who post a photo of themselves on social media wearing a mask outside a local retailer with the tag #maskforthewin will be entered in a weekly prize giveaway.  The organization represents about 800 retailers in Vermont, as well as another 250 suppliers to the industry.

Two area eateries have closed over the last 12 days: Outback Steakhouse in South Burlington and Vermont Sandwich Company in Williston.

Vermont's sole Outback Steakhouse closed permanently on Sunday, May 24, confirmed the location's managing partner, Tonisha Farrell, over the phone. She said that the restaurant's 40 to 50 part- and full-time employees were all receiving severance.

Three Vermonters originally from Nepal were finally able to open their Indian and Himalayan restaurant in Burlington last week.

Its name, GBG Indian Kitchen, combines the surname initials of co-owners Prashant Gharti, Dal B. Bhujel and Binod Gurung. The trio rented the building at 471 Riverside Avenue in Burlington on January 1, but the pandemic held up permits and renovation of the former Dunkin' Donuts, Gharti said.

The three owners, who are related, have all worked in the hospitality field.  "We are family together, and we have experience in the kitchen, in food and beverage management and in marketing," Gharti said.

"When we analyzed what was here, we saw that [the] Indian restaurants are outdated," he continued. The restaurateurs plan to distinguish themselves by preparing "every recipe we know well" fresh from scratch, Gharti said. 

The wide-ranging menu includes familiar Indian restaurant staples such as biryani, kebabs, curries and breads. Gharti noted that the biryani rice is steamed with a traditional technique, and the breads and kebabs are made in a clay tandoor oven. Himalayan offerings include momos, squat dumplings filled with vegetables, chicken or beef.

The restaurant will be open for lunch and dinner for takeout and delivery only, until regulations allow dining in. The building has no outdoor dining space.

Information: GBG Indian Kitchen, 448-3653.

A Burlington builder flashed a V sign out the window of his Ram 2500 as he steered his pickup under an overpass on the Beltline on Tuesday morning. His victory was being No. 1 in a long  line of cars at a food distribution site in Burlington’s New North End.

The man, who declined to give his name, arrived at 4:30 in the morning, before the sun came up. Three lanes of cars fanned out behind him, filled with Vermonters waiting in the sunshine to receive cases of government-supplied food.

“There’s uncertainty, and we don’t know how long this will go on,” said the man, a father of four, adding that his work is slow. “I’m here for basic needs.”
The food giveaway in Burlington, the first in Vermont’s largest city, was one of several such events that have been held around the state in the past month.

Organized by the Vermont Foodbank in collaboration with the Vermont National Guard and the state’s Emergency Operations Center, the distributions aim to address a steep rise in food insecurity due to job losses and the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Feeding America, a national hunger-relief group, estimates the number of food-insecure people in Vermont is up by 46 percent, and the number of food-insecure children is up 60 percent, according to the Vermont Foodbank.

In Burlington, roughly 550 cars moved through the line at a rate of about 120 cars an hour, according to organizers. Some people got food for themselves and family members. Others came to assist people who don’t have cars or were otherwise unable to access the food.

A Colchester woman who lost her job in the registration department at the University of Vermont Medical Center said it was the first time she has needed help getting food.

“I don’t get any other assistance,” the 56-year-old said. “So this helps.”

Patricia Mallette, 66, traveled from North Clarendon with her 16-week-old puppy, Molly. The 70-mile trip was minor compared with the 1,475 miles she drove each way, two weeks ago, to pick up her dog.

“We are food short,” Mallette said. “My stepdaughter hasn’t gotten unemployment [benefits] in eight weeks, and they are starving.”

A Shelburne mother of three, driving a Volvo station wagon, arrived at the thoroughfare at 5 a.m. Her family is in the construction business and is experiencing “lack of work and lack of income,” said the woman, who declined to give her name.

The help with food is "huge" and necessary, she said, but the time spent waiting in line could be used to look for work.

Samuel Dingba, 25, youth program coordinator for AALV, drove the New Farms for New Americans van to the Beltline site. Originally from Cameroon, Dingba said he was picking up food for 20 families that don’t have cars.

“It makes me happy to be able to help other families,” Dingba said.
Also collecting on behalf of other people was Steve Hamlin, president of the board of North Avenue Co-op. Hamlin, 62, said he hoped to get food for nine families but wasn’t certain he’d be allotted that much.

“There’s a lot of people in there that are struggling to make their bills, including lot rent,” Hamlin said of residents at the mobile home park.  “As the president, I go out and do everything I can to help them."

He’s a security guard who’d been working 60 to 80 hours a week, but, with events canceled, his work is down to about 30 hours a week, Hamlin said.

The food distributed Tuesday included 1,000 Farmers to Families kits, according to Nicole Whalen, spokesperson for the Vermont Foodbank. Paid for by the USDA and put together by the Abbey Group of Enosburg  Falls, each box contains 15 to 25 pounds of produce, 20 pounds of chicken and 7.5 pounds of dairy products, according to Whalen.

In addition, 1,930 boxes of nonperishable food, supplied by FEMA and totaling about 28,800 meals, were distributed.

One man who came for food, Fred Jackson of Burlington, rode in a pickup truck with a U.S. flag sticking up from the hood.  A onetime airplane mechanic, Jackson said he sometimes gets groceries at Feeding Chittenden in Burlington.

“I heard about this, and I’m needy for food,” Jackson, 62, said. “I think they’re doing the best they can do.”