Weekends with Yankee

NARRATOR: Coming up on Weekends with Yankee... AMY TRAVERSO: So, you sold everything in Boston.

Yeah.

TRAVERSO: And made the move.

Two tractor-trailer trucks full of stuff.

NARRATOR: Amy visits with two of her favorite restaurateurs who've just moved up to the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Here, we find a unique dish.

TRAVERSO: This really looks like a bowl of salmon or marinated chicken.

It's not that at all.

No, it's watermelon.

TRAVERSO: All right, so let's see how this watermelon magic happens.

RICHARD WIESE: I'd like to walk among the animals.

Let's do it.

NARRATOR: Then Richard is on the southern coast of Rhode Island.

In South Kingstown, they're showing the world how seafood can be farmed.

There are 16 million oysters in the farm.

WIESE: 16 million?

16 million.

WIESE: That's more than people in Rhode Island.

The idea is, we sell oyster seed to other farmers, and then we grow some out for our own use, as well.

The last thing I thought in my life that I would be making hooch.

NARRATOR: And Amy is in York, Maine, at the Wiggly Bridge Distillery.

If you want, you can hit the on button.

NARRATOR: Where she learns firsthand how to make bourbon.

TRAVERSO: And it's done!

I made bourbon.

It's aged two-and-a-half years.

It's going to have a nice nose to it.

TRAVERSO: Cheers.

Cheers.

NARRATOR: So come along for a once-in-a-lifetime journey through New England as you've never experienced it before, a true insider's guide from the editors of Yankee magazine.

Join explorer and adventurer Richard Wiese and his co-host, Yankee senior food editor Amy Traverso, for behind-the-scenes access to the unique attractions that define this region.

It's the ultimate travel guide from the people who know it best.

Weekends With Yankee.

Major funding provided by: ♪ ♪ Massachusetts is home to a lot of firsts-- the first public park in America; the first fried clams; the first university in America; the first basketball game.

What's first for you?

♪ ♪ Grady-White, crafting offshore sport fishing boats for over 60 years.

The Barn Yard, builders of timber-frame barns and garages.

And by American Cruise Lines, exploring the historic shores of New England.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: On a beautiful autumn day, Amy travels to the Mount Washington Valley of New Hampshire.

Here, in the town of Jackson, she's checking in with two of her favorite people.

TRAVERSO: Kate and Jeff Fournier are two young restaurateurs who left a really busy, thriving business in the city, in Boston, and moved up here to the White Mountains, where Kate grew up, to run the kind of restaurant they'd always dreamed about.

♪ ♪ They're bringing a style of dining that is the destination country restaurant, where you go out and you drive a few hours to have an amazing meal, and you know that the meal is going to be great because the chef is talented, and you're that much closer to the ingredients that you're going to be eating that night.

So, I always make a point of coming here when I'm up in New Hampshire.

So, you sold everything in Boston.

Yeah.

TRAVERSO: And made the move.

Two tractor-trailer trucks full of stuff.

I grew up here.

So this is home for me.

TRAVERSO: Oh!

My parents are one mile up the hill.

I kind of forgot what a joy it was to live here and to get to raise our family and our kids in a community like this.

TRAVERSO: This restaurant existed before you came along, right?

Yes, so it was a really wonderful kind of iconic place in the community for 37 years, and we were really fortunate that they allowed us to carry that tradition and history forward.

The goal of being together, I think, was the motivator, and the idea that we were going to live and work and farm all kind of within one parcel of land, and the beauty of Jeff getting to cook with the kind of passion and tenacity that he's really motivated by, but then to be totally present to our kids.

And we operate four days a week for eight-and-a-half months of the year.

We do five or six days a week during the summer.

But that allows us to really create the right amount of revenue that we need, but also have the balance with the kids.

For me, after 30 years of doing this, I want to do it really intentionally.

And make sure that we're having a great impact for the community.

We're keeping our staff fully employed year-round.

TRAVERSO: Well, I'm looking at this beautiful garden, and I think I see some brussels sprouts there.

So, should we go harvest?

We're going to do that right now.

TRAVERSO: Okay, good.

Oh, gorgeous.

Yup, so the daikons are coming.

TRAVERSO: This is beautiful.

All different varietals.

So, a lot of beautiful large kale.

TRAVERSO: And with the morning dew on it, it's so beautiful.

Yeah, it's really pretty.

TRAVERSO: Oh, now, these look like brussels sprouts here.

Yup.

TRAVERSO: So you're using a knife?

I probably could have brought a bigger knife, but yeah.

(Traverso laughs) TRAVERSO: That's a gorgeous plant.

Look at that.

It's pretty solid.

TRAVERSO: Typically, we only eat this little bit here.

Yeah, so we're going to work on not just using the actual brussels sprouts, but to use the whole plant.

TRAVERSO: It really looks like a tree that Dr. Seuss would have designed.

Yes.

(laughing) ♪ ♪ NARRATOR: And now back to the Thompson House Eatery.

Dinner for two?

Absolutely.

NARRATOR: And while Kate prepares for this evening's guests, Jeff prepares a most unique dish.

TRAVERSO: This really looks like a bowl of salmon, or maybe some, like, marinated chicken.

So the big reveal is that it's not that at all.

No, it's watermelon.

This is something that I came up with probably about 15 years ago.

That is a braised and then pan-seared watermelon.

TRAVERSO: How did you come up with it?

I was doing a tasting menu with a watermelon flan in it, and by reducing watermelon for a few hours, I realized it didn't disappear.

TRAVERSO: Right-- right.

And then I just started experimenting with cooking down other watermelon and then searing it or grilling it and doing other things.

TRAVERSO: When you started serving this, how did people react?

People straight-out would not believe me.

TRAVERSO: Yeah.

They said, "This is not watermelon.

This doesn't taste like watermelon."

But overall, it's been a really successful dish.

You look at the structure of the watermelon itself.

It has this kind of web of white filament, so when you look at it really closely, so those stay in place.

TRAVERSO: Right.

And then it just leaches out the water.

TRAVERSO: These pieces already braised.

How large were they when you started out with them?

These came from a watermelon about a foot and a half long, and then put into a hotel pan.

TRAVERSO: Mm-hmm.

And then pour cream sherry over it.

Put butter on, salt, pepper, add your parchment paper and foil, and in the oven.

TRAVERSO: So one difference between you cooking here and back in Boston is, you grew this watermelon.

That is an excellent benefit of having five acres instead of having a 6,000-square-foot roof garden.

TRAVERSO: All right, so let's see how this watermelon magic happens.

So, I'm just going to start with a little grapeseed oil in the pan.

Salt, a little pepper, coriander, and fennel.

♪ ♪ (sizzling) TRAVERSO: That's really pretty.

And that combination of that residual sweetness from the watermelon and the fat crust and caramelization is really nice.

Yeah, it's looking really nice.

♪ ♪ TRAVERSO: Beautiful, it really looks like a gorgeous piece of fish right now.

It does.

♪ ♪ TRAVERSO: I love that.

And so this is a-- what kind of purée is this?

A butternut squash purée.

So they're very small butternut squash.

They have a lot of nice residual sweetness to them, and then we just made a simple purée with some onions from the garden and a little bit of allspice.

TRAVERSO: This changes, I imagine, through the season, what you're sort of pairing the watermelon.

It does, and we can also put some feta down on the plate.

TRAVERSO: Oh, right.

So we can have that together.

TRAVERSO: This is really beautiful.

What is this?

We have some amaranth, which is kind of in the, in the spinach family.

Instead of buying all these garnishes... TRAVERSO: Right.

...we get to pick what we're going to put with each dish and do special things, so... TRAVERSO: That's cool.

All right, so we're going to prove it once and for all that this really is watermelon.

It cuts like meat, it's so cool.

It cuts like a beautiful kind of sashimi-grade fish.

So get a little feta and a little bit of the butternut squash.

Mmm, it's so good.

Thank you.

TRAVERSO: The texture is really cool.

It's, like, sweet and nutty, and salty and briny, and...

It's got so much going on.

And then the spices, like the really warm spices, that's incredible.

So we're going to be doing umami brussels sprouts.

TRAVERSO: Ooh!

Which is kind of a little basic thing that I like to play with.

All right, so we have our pan really hot.

Sear the brussels sprouts.

(sizzling) Salt.

Pepper.

Pink peppercorn.

A little nora chile.

A little bit of Tabasco and fish sauce.

(sizzling) TRAVERSO: Beautiful, look at that.

Going to be the best actual batch of brussels sprouts ever.

TRAVERSO: This is so gorgeous.

(sniffs): Oh, a lot going on.

This looks amazing.

And, you know, brussels sprouts are one of those things that I think a lot of people think they don't like.

But it's just because they haven't had them prepared well.

They get a bad name.

TRAVERSO: All right, let's try this.

Mmm.

There's a spice and lots of nuttiness and sort of layers of, like, umami.

The mushroom that... There's a lot going on in there.

TRAVERSO: Mm-hmm I really salute you guys.

You've sort of followed your dream up here.

You're doing what I think a lot of people dream of, but never do, and watching it grow and watching your garden grow, and watching the restaurant develop is just super-exciting.

And I'm really glad I got to come up here and see.

Thank you.

TRAVERSO: And thanks for the yummy food.

You're welcome.

(Traverso chuckles) ♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Matunuck village is located in the town of South Kingstown, on the southern coast of Rhode Island.

Here, on a salt pond protected by barrier beaches, a bold experiment is taking place.

An oyster farm is showing the world how seafood can be farmed using sustainable and ecologically sound practices.

Perry Raso, the owner-operator of Matunuck Oyster Farm, grew up in South Kingstown.

He also owns the Matunuck Oyster Bar, where Richard joins him to learn about the history of the farm and his passion for aquaculture.

WIESE: How did a guy like you get into the oyster business?

Well, I started digging littleneck clams with a bull rake when I was around 12 years old.

I started doing it after school and on weekends, 30, 40 bucks every time I went out.

You know, the gratification of pulling that rake up with essentially money.

And it was, you know, it was incentive to keep pulling on the rake, you know.

WIESE: Tell me what it's like growing up in this area.

It's a really unique little corner of the world.

For me, the coastal ponds, the saltwater estuaries, really make it special.

As a kid growing up and playing and, you know, exploring the ponds, just as part of your everyday activities, really, I think, shapes people around here.

NARRATOR: After graduating from the University of Rhode Island with a degree in aquaculture, Perry got a grant to open a one-acre oyster farm in his home state.

As part of the grant, he worked to educate the world about the benefits of aquaculture.

Aquaculture is the fastest-growing food-producing business in the world, and in the next 50 years, we are going to have to grow more seafood than we've grown in the existence of mankind.

NARRATOR: Matunuck Farm has now grown to seven acres and its sustainable practices have not gone unnoticed.

In 2019, Perry was nominated for a New England Leopold Conservation Award.

WIESE: Why is aquaculture important?

Throughout history, more and more people have gone fishing and caught more fish.

Until about the 1980s, it started to plateau.

So now we have this plateauing supply and this increasing demand, this widening gap.

So aquaculture is the only way to fill the widening gap between the supply from the wild and the demand from the population.

WIESE: When I picture in my mind farmers growing things, I think of seeds.

Do you start with seeds?

So we do start with seeds-- the seeds are tiny animals.

WIESE: Wow.

And we put them in a nursery system in the estuary, the salt pond, where water's pumped by them at an increased rate, boosting their growth from, like, one millimeter-- the size of a grain of sand-- to around 15 millimeters.

And that's what you're going to see out at the farm is oysters between 15 millimeters-- the size of a dime-- and market size, everything in between.

NARRATOR: The farm is located on Potter Pond, a shallow salt pond created by glaciers.

It's just a short boat ride from the restaurant.

Now it's time for Richard to get to work.

♪ ♪ So this Matunuck Oyster Farm.

Started as a one-acre farm down here, expanded to three acres and then seven acres.

Each of these 60 floating lines have 27 cages, with six bags of oysters in each cage.

In between each floating line is the submerged lines.

Our older and larger animals go in these submerged lines with submerged trays or cages, and the oysters sit in the cages on the sea floor.

WIESE: It's interesting terminology, using "animals."

Yeah, people always bring that up.

I don't know why, it's just, I started calling them animals and they're animals, and... Yeah, it's livestock.

It's livestock.

WIESE: Livestock.

And you say you do this year-round?

All year, yup.

Big part of the process is separating the different size classes of oysters, the big oysters from the small oysters from the medium oysters.

That's a constant process, and then rebagging the oysters.

The bags get fouled up with seaweed, and so we have to swap the bags out.

That's what the farmers are doing today, is separating the different size classes of oysters and then putting them into fresh bags.

WIESE: This is a farm.

This is what I think of when I think of a farm, yeah.

WIESE: Well, I'd like to walk among the animals.

Let's do it.

WIESE: All right.

♪ ♪ There are 16 million oysters in the farm.

WIESE: 16 million?

16 million.

WIESE: That's more than people in Rhode Island.

(laughing): For sure.

But they're at all different size classes.

Most of them are not market size yet.

But you know, the idea is, we sell oyster seed to other farmers when it's about the size of a quarter or a half-dollar, and then we grow some out for our own use, as well.

WIESE: You spend a lot of time out here.

Sure.

WIESE: Is it meditative?

Yeah, I mean, out here, it's, it's more meditative and, you know, the grass is always greener.

When I'm at the restaurant, I'm, like, "Man, I wish was at the oyster farm."

WIESE: Yeah, right.

When I'm at the oyster farm, when it's really windy, I'm, like, "Man, I can't wait to get back to the restaurant."

WIESE: I've often heard oysters compared to wine, where people really do taste almost the environment they grew in.

So what would be in the environment that these oysters grow in?

Uh, the, uh...

The characteristics of the water, really.

Phytoplankton, what kind of algaes they're eating, which will lend to their different flavor and appearance and texture.

Salinity is probably the most notable difference-- the brininess of the oyster.

The open ocean here's 32 parts per thousand, and the salt ponds are less than that.

Some are 30 parts per thousand, like this pond, and that will lend to their brininess.

Seasonality has some impact, too.

They'll also get sweeter due to glycogen stores that they build to get them through the winter.

♪ ♪ WIESE: There's a lot of life in these trays.

Yeah, there's definitely-- studies show there's ten to 10,000 times more biodiversity within an oyster farm than there is in adjacent water bodies, so it's... Definitely increases the amount of living things in the area.

Let's bring it up on the dock so we can take a better look at it.

♪ ♪ WIESE: All right, here we go.

On the dock.

Wow, that's a good haul of oysters, huh?

Yeah, a few hundred in here.

Some of them are market size.

WIESE: Yeah.

You look for the nice, consistent, symmetrical teardrop look, you know, a nice deep cup.

If it's thin, we don't want to sell it.

WIESE: And how fast will these now be served?

We'll harvest these and bring them in the fridge, and then the shuckers will grab them after they're done with what's on their raw bar, and try to run it as tight as we can in the restaurant, so we're always having fresh product.

WIESE: You must be a good shucker, because I see all, you have all your fingers and no major scars.

(laughs): Yeah.

Yeah, well, I definitely had some accidents in the, with the shucking knife before, so... NARRATOR: After a tough day of farming, Richard is ready to enjoy the fruits of his labor.

So they head back to the restaurant, where they serve upwards of 6,000 oysters per day-- Matunuck oysters, as well as other varieties.

Thank you.

WIESE: Wow, look at that.

All right, so we have a variety of four different oysters here.

This first one is a West Coast oyster.

It's the only one that's a different species than the other oysters on the plate.

This is a Salt Pond oyster.

It's grown in Point Judith Pond on the sea floor.

And then we have the Matunuck oyster, which we grow out here.

So there's three obviously different oysters.

And then over here we have a Moonstone oyster.

All these different farms and all these different methods and different unique water bodies, bays, and estuaries lend to the different appearance and flavor.

To open the oyster, we have to pop that adductor muscle.

It's always two-thirds of the way up the oyster to the right.

And then slicing it off the bottom shell.

WIESE: There we go.

♪ ♪ All right, so this is yours.

And what kind of taste should I be looking for in this?

It's crisp, briny, with a sweet finish.

WIESE: Mmm.

Mmm!

That is so nice.

That is nature's candy.

What is it that you love about your farm environment?

I love that I'm able to make a living on, you know, the pond where I grew up.

You know, I appreciate, you know, South Kingstown, Rhode Island, as one of the most special places I've been.

So, being able to you know, not just live but also make a living here is pretty good.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Amy is in York, Maine, to visit the Wiggly Bridge Distillery.

But first, owner and York resident David Woods shows her the distillery's namesake.

Wiggly Bridge was built in the early '30s by Hussey Manufacturing in Berwick.

The name was coined in, I think, the early '40s by a Girl Scout troop that said it wiggled when they walked across it.

So it got coined Wiggly Bridge, and the name stuck ever since.

TRAVERSO: Did you used to come here?

Yeah, yeah.

We used to have a couple of parties out here.

TRAVERSO: So you grew up to then start a distillery called Wiggly Bridge, so I'm wondering if there's a connection between the high school parties that were happening out here and the distillery.

That was part of... probably in my subconscious.

TRAVERSO: Right.

It was a shower moment.

We got to the point where we had to come up with the name to finish our federal permitting, and the name just popped in my head.

Wiggly Bridge Distillery-- put a wiggle in your walk.

And one thing led to another and been doing it now for seven years.

TRAVERSO: Oh, it really is wiggly, I'm feeling it.

(laughing) That was the last thing I thought in my life that I would be making hooch.

NARRATOR: Just down the road is the Wiggly Bridge Distillery, which David runs with his son David.

TRAVERSO: This is the distillery.

Yeah.

It is.

TRAVERSO: The actual belly of the beast, so to speak.

So tell me about these two stills.

Uh, so this is the first one we end up using.

This is a 250-gallon still.

This strips all the alcohol out of the ferment.

So out of the 275 gallons, we'll fill this 80-gallon tote.

Tomorrow, we'll pump today's work into the spirit still, or some people call it a finishing still.

This time, we're really focused on the quality of the spirit.

TRAVERSO: So different flavors will be expressed at different temperatures, right?

Absolutely, so right in the beginning, you'll get almost like a sour apple notes and stuff like that.

But as it progresses, you'll get cinnamon sections.

You'll get some really nasty-smelling stuff that smells like wet newspaper.

TRAVERSO: Whoo!

(laughs) That's what we're focused on getting out of everything.

TRAVERSO: You get a little contact high.

♪ ♪ TRAVERSO: And you built these?

Yeah.

I make a paper pattern.

It's like making a dress.

You lay the paper on the copper, trace it out, cut it.

We actually used a 12-inch... Sewer pipe.

...piece of sewer pipe on the front forks of our backhoe and started hand-forming it on that.

TRAVERSO: It's Yankee ingenuity at work, right?

A little bit, a little bit.

I was brought up to be self-sufficient.

TRAVERSO: So there's a saying that we sometimes refer back to that has run in Yankee many times over 85 years, and it's, "Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without."

Yes.

TRAVERSO: It sounds like how you guys do things.

Absolutely.

So this tote is filled with... TRAVERSO: Good stuff?

White whiskey, pretty much.

So we're going to pump it into the barrel.

We're actually going to fill it to the rule of thumb.

So you fill it up until your thumb tip touches the spirit.

TRAVERSO: Okay.

And that has the right amount of air space left in the barrel to start the aging process.

If you want, you can hit the on button.

TRAVERSO: I love the remote control.

The other on button, yeah.

TRAVERSO: Oh.

(laughs) So... TRAVERSO: Okay, I can see... And now you're going to start getting the... TRAVERSO: Yeah.

...the smell of the bourbon, or what will be bourbon.

Actually, now that this has been in a barrel, this is now classified as bourbon.

TRAVERSO: Really?

Because it touched... TRAVERSO: It's like transubstantiation.

It's been... who?

(Traverso laughs) So now if you want to stick your thumb in there.

TRAVERSO: Okay.

Is that where the term rule of thumb comes from?

Yeah, yeah.

TRAVERSO: Wow.

Of course, I might have shorter thumbs than you do.

And when you feel it, you let me know.

TRAVERSO: Okay.

Oh, got it.

♪ ♪ Okay.

Is that good enough?

That's good.

TRAVERSO: Okay.

And it's done!

I made bourbon.

NARRATOR: And now for the good part: the tasting.

TRAVERSO: This is what I made, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's going to have a nice nose to it.

It's going to have a nice dry cinnamon.

It's bottled at 86 proof.

TRAVERSO: Mm.

Should be very smooth.

TRAVERSO: Really smooth.

Should not have a bite to it at all.

TRAVERSO: Yes.

Boy, that's really nice.

Thanks.

TRAVERSO: Yeah, that's beautiful.

Okay, now... Oops, there wasn't much in there.

(Traverso laughs) So the next one up is...

It's my pride and joy.

We've been doing this seven years, and it's taken us a long time to get to a four-year product.

And it, this happened to be our barrel 100, or the 100th barrel that we ever filled.

TRAVERSO: Oh, wow.

It isn't as spicy.

It's more of a dry cinnamon, because the ethanol in the barrel has oxidized more.

So a lot of lighter alcohol's... TRAVERSO: Mmm, oh, my gosh.

And it's also 100 proof.

TRAVERSO: You have every reason to be proud of this.

Well, thank you.

TRAVERSO: It's just a real treat to kind of see a product go from, you know, start-- well, I didn't see it from start to finish.

It's a much longer process.

But to get a sense of the origins and the final product is, is just a treat.

So thank you for having me.

Thanks for coming.

Thanks for stopping by.

TRAVERSO: And cheers.

Cheers.

♪ ♪ NARRATOR: For exclusive videos, recipes, travel ideas, tips from the editors, and access to the Weekends With Yankee digital magazine, go to weekendswithyankee.com and follow us on social media, @yankeemagazine.

Yankee magazine, the inspiration for the television series, provides recipes, feature articles, and the best of New England from the people who know it best.

One year for $20.

Call 1-800-221-8154. Credit cards accepted.

Major funding provided by... ♪ ♪ Massachusetts is home to a lot of firsts-- the first public park in America; the first fried clams; the first university in America; the first basketball game.

What's first for you?

♪ ♪ Grady-White, crafting offshore sportfishing boats for over 60 years.

The Barn Yard, builders of timber-frame barns and garages.

And by American Cruise Lines, exploring the historic shores of New England.

♪ ♪