B O O K   R E V I E W

Notes From a Desserted Island

Reviewed by J.J. Oldham

Desserted: Recipes and Tales from an Island Chocolatier

by Kate Shaffer
Downeast Books 2011
128 pages. Hardcover $29.95

There are cookbooks and then there are cookbooks.

The introduction to this one begins, “I first came to the island as a cook. I knew no one, had never had an interest in Isle Au Haut beyond a cool job, working for nice folks. Cooking was my way of moving though this new world 3,000 miles away from my life time home of California.” It’s a clue to the Tales part of the title.

Some people rely on cookbooks whenever they cook more than hamburgers. Some people rely on one cookbook until they get a feel for cooking and then wing it with a mix of memory, curiosity, invention and enthusiasm.

Desserted is a stand out for a few reasons. It is a dessert cookbook. It is about chocolate desserts and written by a chocolatier. The recipes are straight forward with most all of the ingredients accessible.

Island life is different, some think difficult, and many romantics who try it don’t last long. Making a living is difficult. That Shaffer has made a living here is worthy of note. But Shaffer makes exceptional chocolates. These are not found in deep stacks at big box stores. Hand made in small batches with select ingredients they are edible art. It is this level of perfection that got her noticed.

Noticed for her has been recognition by national media that include TV, Gourmet magazine, Martha Stewart and a tall stack of publications. She has also been successful in opening a seasonal café on the island.

Shaffer’s tales of life on the island are as good as the desserts look in the great photographs by Stacy Cramp. She writes of neighbors who traded something like a used truck for land on the other even less inhabited side of the island and hand built a house themselves years ago. A location she describes as awe inspiring. In these tales her reverence for the island, her life there and the lives of her neighbors is apparent.

But there are also the recipes. Following a recipe for Pumpkin Cheesecake with Elderberry Glaze and Chocolate Walnut Crumb Crust, a whopper of a round dessert that in the photo looks a bit like and island in a red sunset, Shaffer describes coming home to a silent henhouse and finding a hawk with a hen pinned in the mud by the henhouse ramp. She then discovers the silent rooster who “lay in a magnificent pillow of glittering feathers, his body still warm and bleeding into the mud.” Gourmet meets rural reality.

These tales are placed throughout the book. The seven chapters include Chocolate. Which describes what chocolate is, where it comes from, what kind to buy, how to prepare it and how to use it. Another is “Chocolate For Breakfast”.

Fellow island resident, fishing captain, novelist and author Linda Greenlaw says of “Kate’s well deserved success,” in the foreword – “Black Dinah is the answer to what happens when dreams are pursued. Black Dinah is what results when hard work, perseverance, passion, and raw talent come together.”

Readers who don’t cook would enjoy reading the tales and then perhaps give book to someone who does cook. Being sure to invite them to whatever pot luck dinner they can get themselves invited to.