‘Haut cuisine’ Linda Greenlaw draws from fishing family customs for second compilation of stick-to-your-ribs meals

Linda Greenlaw, the fisherman-turned-writer, made her literary debut in 1999 with the book “The Hungry Ocean.” But if you think the ocean was a hungry character, try reading her newest offering, “Recipes From a Very Small Island,” a cookbook of Down East fare that she wrote with her mother, Martha. Crab Madeleines, Wicked Good Lobster and Black Bean Chili, Spicy Swordfish Steaks with Cool Cucumber-Cumin Concoction, Island Apple Pie – all washed down with Whiskey Fruit Punch.

Who’s hungry now?

Surely not anyone in the Greenlaw clan. Martha Greenlaw, a woman of ready smiles and gentle tones, grew up on a dairy farm in Windsor. Food preparation has always been a time for family and for creativity. She passed on her kitchen practices to her four children. It didn’t take long for Linda’s editor, who visited his client on Isle au Haut, where Martha lives with her husband Jim – just down the way from Linda’s house – to pitch the idea of a Maine cookbook.

“He loved my mother’s cooking,” said Linda.

At a recent breakfast in Blue Hill, while Martha ate a breakfast burrito and Linda ate a blueberry muffin, the women talked about the fun they’ve always had preparing food. They subscribe to all the food magazines and use their off-island time to pick up items they can’t buy at their local island market. They are both trim, but they like to eat, and mealtime, writes Linda in her introduction, is a time of sanctity.

It is not, according to the cookbook, however, a particularly low-cal event. In their recipes, they don’t spare the mayonnaise, eggs, meat or butter. Some of the recipes offer lean options, but this is Yankee food, meant to fill the family, sustain the fisherman, stick to the ribs.

“It’s the food I’ve been cooking for my family all these years,” said Martha. “You can eat all this food. You just can’t eat it every day.”

“There are a lot of healthy choices in the book, too,” added Linda, referring to grilled salmon, swordfish and halibut recipes. An expert griller, she contributed 20 recipes and wrote the book’s essays about island and family life. Martha wrote the rest of the recipes. “Mom’s lobster casserole is decadent. But how many times can you serve it?”

Linda, who graduated from Colby College with an English degree, has written three semiautobiographical books and is working on a novel. “All writing for me is work,” said Linda, who is no longer fishing. Her father hauls her lobster traps these days. “I don’t enjoy any of it. But I did have some fun writing these essays. When you’re writing an essay, the end is in sight.”

For Martha, becoming a writer was daunting for other reasons.

“I’m 71 years old. I didn’t think I was going to start a new phase of my life. I now say: Life begins at 71,” she said.

Still, Martha had to readjust her thinking about her cooking to relay her style to others: “It was kind of mind-boggling: Things I’ve been doing automatically all my life, I had to put down on paper. Anything I make, I just know the right measurements. But I was able to accomplish more than I thought I could. I’ve learned I’m strong. I have to be to keep up with Linda.”

And she does keep up. Back on the island, she goes to Linda’s house to work out on a rowing machine that has a view of the Camden Hills. She’s so busy with her island life that she says it’s rare for her to “sit down for 15 minutes to eat lunch.”

And things are only getting busier. Mother and daughter are currently on a three-month-plus book tour. It began at L.L. Bean’s annual festival, stopped at the “Today” show and the New York Institute of Culinary Education, and began working its way from Down East to Rehoboth Beach, Del., and back again to Maine by September.

Martha has become accustomed to watching her daughter take the spotlight, but now she, too, is being feted by reporters and home cooks. She’s proud of her daughter and pleased to be on the circuit herself. She cried when the first hardcover copy of the cookbook arrived in her kitchen. These days, however, she’s all smiles.

Both women said writing the book made a great relationship greater, and, at least at the beginning of the tour, they were looking forward to spending travel time together. Linda is notorious for her vigorous book tours. In fact, one of the reasons she stopped fishing was that she has been on book tour for essentially the last six years. And book tours are, as she says, “always at the same time as lobster season. Do I miss it? All the time.”

For Linda and Martha Greenlaw’s book tour schedule, visit www.fishingwithlinda.net/content/tour.asp. Alicia Anstead can be reached at 990-8266 and aanstead@bangordailynews.net.