Lindsay Sterling

Latest Articles

A Congolese feast

Beans and rice, with African flair
I met Constance Kabaziga at the checkout at Mittapheap World Market. She was buying frozen cassava root and dried beans, and I really wanted to know what she was going to do them.
By LINDSAY STERLING | June 30, 2010

Making Uzbek lamb and rice

Cooking tips: exercise free speech, eat osh, and take a walk
A friend told me I had to cook with her friend, Momen Abdullayof. He’s from Uzbekistan, a country I would have been really lucky to fill in correctly on a geography test.
By LINDSAY STERLING | May 05, 2010

For richer, for poorer

Romanian polenta with sheep’s milk feta
Laura Coroi saw my “Immigrant Kitchens” poster at the YMCA and introduced herself.
By LINDSAY STERLING | April 08, 2010

'Herring in a fur coat'

Tasting a Russian party dish
This time of year I look at myself in the mirror and shrink. My face looks like it belongs on the canning shelf with the beans, asparagus, and cukes.
By LINDSAY STERLING | March 10, 2010

A painting, a letter, upside-down peppers

It all goes into making Vietnamese papaya salad
"While I wait, I beat the peanuts," says Hop Nguyen, a custom clothes designer in her home kitchen in Yarmouth, Maine. She's teaching me how to make green papaya salad from Bac Ninh province in northern Vietnam. She's waiting for the spaghetti-like strips of unripe papaya and carrot to lose their stiffness as they soak in salt water.
By LINDSAY STERLING | February 10, 2010

Adventures in pot stickers

Exploring new worlds of flavor
My friend from Thailand taught me how to make real pot stickers and pad Thai.
By LINDSAY STERLING | January 13, 2010

Epic Albanian foodstory

A mother never made it to America, but her chicken pie did.
Portland resident Bill Dilios taught me how to make his favorite dish from Albania, kotopita.
By LINDSAY STERLING | November 18, 2009

A decade gone by

Where Portland has come since 1999, and why we can't really even imagine what's coming in 2019
This week, we at the Portland Phoenix celebrate 10 years of serving Portland and Maine as your news, arts, and entertainment authority.
By JEFF INGLIS | September 16, 2009

In 10 years

From a handful of restaurants to a restaurant town
It wasn't always that Portland was "America's foodiest small town."
By LINDSAY STERLING | September 16, 2009

Hot exotic adventure tonight!

Shave cabbage, rub pork ribs, peel yuca, and more
Unless you're a vegetarian or fried-pigskin-intolerant, I have an adventure for you. It requires about three hours. It's exotic, but does not require calling the phone numbers on the next few pages. Depending on who you are, it requires little or a lot of bravery. It's called cooking.
By LINDSAY STERLING | August 26, 2009

A long-ago farm

Exploring the origins of great food
Last week while you were reading here about Portland chef Krista Desjarlais's efforts at Bresca, I was cooking with her mother, Maili Kern, who lives in the West End. She taught me how to make rosolje, an incredible roast beef and root-vegetable salad from Estonia (recipe at immigrantkitchens.blogspot.com ).
By LINDSAY STERLING | July 29, 2009

Finding a way

Making Nicaraguan gallo pinto
If it weren't for Nicaragua, Jenny Sanchez and her favorite dish, gallo pinto, wouldn't be here. She's a 75-year-old grandmother. She's short, has wavy dark hair, black eyes. She leans over slightly even when she's standing upright and has a stiff, belabored walk. She lives alone in a neighborhood of single-floor apartments.
By LINDSAY STERLING | July 01, 2009

Spring roll work area

American people under construction
In America, you can make your way through life without cooking. My friend is a Warmer Upper. Her meals are hot dogs and other frozen, jarred, or packaged things you heat up. And yet, she was at my house one afternoon for lessons on how to make fresh spring rolls.
By LINDSAY STERLING | June 03, 2009

Buns, buns, buns

A Dominican fried treat whomps health-nut-ism
The sunshine yellow trim of the La Bodega Latina, a corner store and deli geared toward Spanish-speaking immigrants, peeks out above the eight-foot-high pile of dirty snow along Congress Street.
By LINDSAY STERLING | February 11, 2009

Let the alligators come to you

And, Portland, they're on the way
I'll be back next month with recipes, know-how, and cultural background on Dominican bollos de yuca, a fried meat-filled snack that's crispy outside and soft inside.
By LINDSAY STERLING | January 14, 2009

Transcendence through pasta

The artistry of Fabiana De Savino
I've just added to the list of Things Humans Don't Completely Understand.
By LINDSAY STERLING | December 17, 2008

The borscht I kissed once...

...in an underground hallway — and rediscovered at home
When I was working at the Harraseeket Inn in Freeport, two housekeepers who didn't speak English but giggled a lot brought in a pot of their family's borscht for the employee meal. In the dark basement hall where the employees ate, I tasted serious family-secret-cooking.
By LINDSAY STERLING | November 19, 2008

Persian pleasantries

Making Iranian eggplant stew
I went to the Kismet Inn a couple blocks from the water in downtown Bath to learn how to cook the innkeeper’s Iranian eggplant stew.
By LINDSAY STERLING | October 23, 2008

If you’re not sweating...

...something’s wrong with you
A sculpture on display at Filament Gallery this summer memorialized one of Jamaica’s great cooks. Her likeness is carved out of wood, sanded and polished with butcher’s wax.
By LINDSAY STERLING | September 24, 2008

Laymoon is lemon

How a Lebanese woman makes tabouleh
El-taha’s house in Falmouth is populated with an easy Lebanese-American combo-culture.
By LINDSAY STERLING | August 27, 2008

What to eat in a bikini

Brazilian fried chicken + potato salad + rice
Brazil isn’t all about major wax jobs and itsy-bitsy bikinis.
By LINDSAY STERLING | July 02, 2008

Origami appetizers

Otherwise known as Somalian samboosas
Welcome to a tasty morsel of Somalian life.
By LINDSAY STERLING | June 04, 2008

Heirloom Ukrainian recipes

Written in English for the first time
In a wind-bound seaside cottage rental where she’s been living this year, Sasha Prygoniuk, a 25-year old Ukrainian, has volunteered to teach me (and you) how to “kook,” (as she so charmingly pronounces it).
By LINDSAY STERLING | May 07, 2008