Season’s Greetings: Featured Recipes from Season Nine of “Weekends with Yankee”

In early July, I was rowing a dory in Maine’s Belfast Harbor with Nicolle Littrell just as the bright disk of the sun began to penetrate the upper layers of fog. As we reached the outer harbor, Nicolle, a Registered Maine Guide who leads excursions through her company DoryWoman Rowing, pulled out a thermos of tea and fluffy biscuits seasoned with finely chopped seaweed. While we snacked, a harbor seal swam over to say hello. If mermaids or selkies were real, that would’ve been my cue to roll overboard and find my pod. Instead, we picked up our oars and made sure the camera crew in the chase boat had gotten enough good shots of the moment that everyone watching Weekends with Yankee, the public television show we produce with WGBH, could enjoy it, too.

The ninth season of the show, which premieres in early April and rolls out over the course of 13 weeks, is full of memorable moments like that one. We comb Connecticut’s coastline with chef and forager Chrissy Tracey as she sources a meal from the small miracles growing all around her. At Newport’s Castle Hill Inn, we enjoy a lobster bake on top of a bluff so gorgeously lit by nature’s golden hour you might think our camera crew used filters. We meet the Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage, who patrol nearly 1,000 ponds on Cape Cod to clean these beloved waters with humor and spirit. We experience the beauty of a New Hampshire lavender farm in full flower, a cozy afternoon on a Maine houseboat, a bike trip to find the best fried clams on Boston’s North Shore, and a maple farm in Vermont where a “happy” (aka group) of golden retrievers welcomes guests for playtime and snuggles. And we visit Mashpee Wampanoag tribal lands in Massachusetts to cook squash stew in a traditional hut called a wetu with James Beard Award–winning chef Sherry Pocknett.

It’s our best season yet, and we hope you’ll tune in. In the meantime, here are five recipes that we prepare on the show, along with the stories that inspired them.

“Weekends with Yankee” Recipes

Sherry Pocknett’s Butternut-Cranberry Soup

After decades spent in restaurant kitchens, Sherry Pocknett came to national attention when she won the 2023 James Beard Award for the Northeast’s best chef. Her food reflects both Wampanoag and European influences, emphasizing the former, and we were honored to cook with her in the Mashpee, Massachusetts, wetu where her tribe still conducts official business. You can visit her restaurant, Sly Fox Den Too (it’s named after her father, tribal leader Vernon “Sly Fox” Pocknett), in Charlestown, Rhode Island—but until then, here’s a recipe to make at home.

The method Sherry used (“the Wampanoag way,” she called it) was new to me. By long-simmering the squash until the cooking water was reduced by about half, you end up with a very concentrated squash-enriched base; from there, you incorporate additional flavors. As much as possible, Sherry uses ingredients indigenous to the Northeast, like sunflower oil instead of butter. While shallots are not native to this region, they are far easier to source than wild onions. The cream is optional (but delicious).

Dos Gatos’s Seared Scallop Tacos

After a morning of rowing in Belfast, I headed to one of the town’s newest and best restaurants: Dos Gatos Gastropub, where tequila and mezcal reign supreme and where the tacos are inspired by co-owner Jesse Soto’s memories of growing up in Texas. Using modern Tex-Mex as a culinary framework, chef Gary Cooper works wonders in dishes like this one: scallop tacos topped with crunchy pico de gallo flavored with cucumber, lime, tomatillo, and cilantro. We recommend using natural or “dry” sea scallops, which are not treated with phosphates and have a pale tan color. These not only taste better, but also let you achieve that delicious caramelized crust. The recipe also works beautifully with sautéedshrimp and seared salmon.

Little Whale’s Linguine with Clams

We spent a sunny day with chef Michael Serpa biking along the coast of Ipswich and Essex, Massachusetts, where excellent littleneck clams grow in the nutrient-rich mud flats and estuaries of the Great Marsh. Michael is an avid cyclist, and when he opened his Boston restaurant, Little Whale, as an ode to New England clam shacks, he found inspiration for his recipes while riding his bike on the North Shore, home to the Clam Box in Ipswich and Woodman’s in Essex.

Castle Hill Inn’s Skillet Cornbread

To pull off the kind of clambake that chef Jennifer Backman and her team prepared for us at Newport’s Castle Hill Inn, you need a fire pit, mounds of lobsters, clams, chouriço, potatoes, corn, and seaweed—plus a team of waitstaff trained in silver service, myriad side dishes, wine pairings, and a sunset to backlight the parade of sailboats drifting past Castle Hill Cove. If you don’t happen to have any of that on hand, you can enjoy the experience for yourself at the occasional clambakes that the inn offers to the general public each summer (call for reservations). Short of that, keep an eye out for the Castle Hill Inn segment on season 9, and make yourself a pan of chef Backman’s fantastic cornbread to go with it.

Gould Hill Farm’s Apple Crisp

At Gould Hill Farm in Contoocook, New Hampshire, the apple crisp is made in such massive batches that I had to scale the recipe back by a factor of ten to make it suitable for the home kitchen. That’s because this farm boasts the most dramatic views of any apple orchard in New England, as well as more than 100 apple varieties, and draws large crowds throughout the season. Between the views, the fruit, the bakery (and cider doughnuts), and the on-site Contoocook Cider Company, this is a fall experience for anyone’s bucket list.

On With the Show!

Want to know where to watch the brand-new season of Weekends with Yankee? Go to weekendswithyankee.com, where you’ll also find full episodes from past seasons and 200-plus snackable segments — many of which are available on the Yankee Magazine YouTube channel, too.