Year: 2024

Thomas Babington Macaulay lived in a time when politicians were expected to be, or at least were comfortable being, intellectuals. Macaulay was England’s Secretary of War and Queen Victoria’s Paymaster General. He also served as the Rector of the University of Glasgow, wrote what was considered at the time to be the authoritative history of England, and published a large volume of epic poetry set in early Rome.

He is best remembered today for a passage in his 1842 Lays of Ancient Rome, in a poem called “Horatius”: “Then out spake brave Horatius/ The Captain of the Gate:/ “To every man upon this earth/ Death cometh soon or late./ And how can man die better/
Than facing fearful odds,/ For the ashes of his fathers,/ And the temples of his gods?”

Man, that’s good! It’s enough to make you want to unsheathe a sword and frighten some barbarians.

By contrast, I am not so civilized. A few years ago, while developing a recipe using cucumbers, inspired by Macaulay, I wrote the following:

Then up spake brave Cucumber

The Captain of the Crisper;

“To every vegetable upon this Earth

Death cometh with a shout or in a whisper.

And how can a cucumber die better

Than facing cutting boards;

For the peelings of his fathers

And the temples of his gourds?”

I bring this up only because I am stupidly proud of my little poem, and today’s cocktail has cucumbers in it.

The Irish Maid

2 ounces Irish whiskey – I like Paddy’s

¾ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice

½ ounce simple syrup

½ ounce elderflower liqueur

2 slices of cucumber

garnish – 2 more slices of cucumber

Drop two slices of cucumber into the bottom of a cocktail shaker. (This is a personal preference, but I like to do little high-pitched voices as I do this — “No, no! I’ll tell you what you want to know! Aaaaaahhh!” **Thud**)

Thoroughly muddle the cucumber in the bottom of the shaker, then add the whiskey. Dry shake it — this means without ice — and set it aside for 20 minutes or so. This is to allow the alcohol in the whiskey to strip out volatile flavor compounds from the cucumber. As if it hasn’t been through enough.

After waiting a respectful length of time, add the lemon juice, simple syrup and elderflower liqueur, and ice, then shake thoroughly, until your hands get cold and you start to hear the ice breaking up inside the shaker.

Fine-strain it over fresh ice in a rocks glass. I have a mesh drain screen that I save for jobs like this.

Garnish with the remaining two slices of cucumber, then sip, listening to Etta James singing, “At Last.”

The bridge that ties the ingredients of this cocktail together is the simple syrup. Surprisingly, both whiskey and cucumber are enhanced by sugar. The acid from the lemon keeps everything from getting too sugary, and the elderberry gives a faint background taste of sophistication. The alcohol is definitely there but for once has decided to take a back seat to the other flavors. You can imagine it smiling and gesturing to the other ingredients on the stage, whispering, “Shh. It’s their big night.”

Something about holding a substantial rocks glass with a cold, good cocktail in it seems — civilized.

Repeat with the remainder of the dough, for a total of two dozen cookies.

Your convenience store banana’s Last Grand Gesture was not in vain. These are solidly banana-y cookies, crispy along the edges and chewy in the middle, with random crunchiness from the Nilla Wafers, and random pops of salt. They are outstanding with vanilla ice cream.

Featured Photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Salsa music meets Somali food at this year’s Concord Multicultural Festival

By John Fladd
[email protected]

This weekend’s Concord Multicultural Festival will have participants from more than 70 countries. According to Jessica Livingston, the Festival’s Director, restaurants, food trucks and individual community members from the Concord area will share food from almost every corner of the world.

“The food is everyone’s favorite part [of the Festival],” she said. “It’s the hardest part of organizing the festival, but it’s so worth it.”

Livingston credited Concord’s Multicultural Festival with bringing the community closer together. “It’s probably the most impactful part of the festival,” she said. “When we started out, years ago, there were just a couple of food vendors who were actually just neighbors in the community who were newer here and they were sharing their food.”

Now the Festival’s website lists 12 community members and nine professional food vendors at this year’s celebration. Special care is taken to help community members prepare and sell their food.

“We have to follow obviously, the City of Concord’s food health safety rules for food,” Livingston said. “So having all of these non-commercial food vendors cook is a challenge. We are grateful to be able to work with the New Hampshire Food Bank, who has a beautiful state-of-the-art kitchen down in Manchester. They work with us and help the food vendors — the non-commercial food vendors — develop their menus and their pricing. And then the day before the festival, all of the cooking happens down at the food bank. There’s so many people there, probably 15 different food vendors and their helpers and then the other kitchen helpers, and it’s like it’s a really beautiful multicultural production of food, which is a lot of fun.”

Livingston said she’s heard that the Saturday prep session is the most fun part of the Festival. “I actually had somebody a couple years ago, after volunteering at the Food Bank that day, come back and say, ‘That was the funnest thing I’ve ever done; you should charge people for that experience.’ I was like, ‘You want me to charge people to volunteer in a kitchen?’” she said.

According to Livingston some participants find selling food at the Festival empowering.

“It’s a great universal way to bring people together,” she said, “because everybody loves food and especially like different types of food. But the great thing about the food production here is that it’s led to actual businesses like food businesses. … we have a food vendor who’s been with us almost since the beginning; this will be her 12th year. Her name is Batulo [Batulo Mohamed, last year’s Capitol Center for the Arts’ Culinary Artist in Residence, and owner of Batulo’s Kitchen, a Concord food truck], and she started as a food vendor. She makes Somali meat pies, and she’s so popular. Her food is so popular that every year people would be like, where can we get these throughout the year?”

Concord Multicultural Festival
When: Sunday, Sept. 22, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: Keach Park in Concord Heights.
The Festival is free and open to the public. Free parking is available at 70 Pembroke Road (formerly Community Bridges).

The food
Food served at this year’s Multicultural Festival by community vendors includes Empanadas (Argentina) by Roy, Aloo Dam (Nepal) by Bhagi, Kunaffeh (Egypt) by Abeer Shabaka, Fried Rice and Chicken (Sierra Leone) by Agnes, Rice with Kofta Meatballs (Afghanistan) by Asif, Man’ouche and Rose Lemonade (Lebanon) by Christy, and Ivorian Rice (Côte d’Ivoire) by Tina.

Restaurants and food trucks at the Festival will include Batulo’s Kitchen (Somalia), Bubble Bee Milk Tea (China), Katmandu (Nepal), Sue’s Kimbap House (South Korea), the Cannoli Stop (Italy) and Don Quijote (Caribbean).

Featured Photo: Courtesy Photo.

Animal shelter is this year’s charity

By John Fladd
[email protected]

The Manchester Brewfest will return to Arms Park (10 Arms St., Manchester) this weekend. For the past 10 years breweries and local businesses have pitched in to drink beer, have fun, and raise money for a local cause. This year proceeds will go to the Friends of the Manchester Animal Shelter.

Peter Telge, from Stark Brewing Co., is the organizer. He said that aside from promoting local brewing, the Manchester Brewfest has raised money and awareness for many good causes.

“Every year has been a different charity,” Telge said.

He has been juggling a lot of different elements for this year’s festival, some of them surprising. There will be representatives from more than 20 breweries, of course, and a beer pong tournament with a cash prize to be split with the Animal Shelter, but many activities are completely unrelated to beer.

“There’s a lot of events happening which are very, very cool,” Telge said. “We have ax throwing with The Rugged Axe and we have the Humble Warrior doing a yoga class, which should be very cool for a brew festival.”

There will be live music — country-rock group the Shawna Jackson Band will play throughout the afternoon, which will be a contrast to a half-hour performance by the New Hampshire Police Association Pipe and Drum Corps. Food vendors will include Congos Empanadas and The Potato Concept.

Because this year’s proceeds will go to supporting the Manchester Animal Shelter, several of the activities will be dog-themed.

“We have some dog trainers doing some dog training exhibitions,” Telge said. “603 Diesel’s gathering food for dogs and cats and trying to fill up a truck with food. We have Dave & Buster’s doing some games of chance for prizes and donating it to the animal shelter, and Big Dog Sauce is doing some sauce tastings and donating purchases to the Manchester Animal Shelter. We are kid-friendly and it’s going to be dog-friendly, too”

Manchester Brewfest
When: Saturday, Sept. 21, noon to 4 p.m.
Where: Arms Park, 10 Arms St., Manchester
Tickets: General admission $50, VIP tickets $60, and designated driver tickets $20
More: manchesterbrewfest.com

Featured Photo: Courtesy Photo.

NH Highland Games return for another year of Scottish food and fun

By John Fladd
[email protected]

This weekend marks the return of the Highland Games to Loon Mountain in Lincoln. When most people think of Scottish festivals, several images come to mind — red-faced bagpipers, grinning, bearded men in kilts throwing cabers [log-sized timbers], lifting stones or maybe running sheep dogs through their paces. Most people forget about the Scotch eggs.

“Lots and lots of Scotch eggs,” said Terri Wiltse, the Director of the Highland Games. “One of the most popular things we do every year is Scotch eggs, which is a hard-boiled egg with sausage around the outside and then they fry it. People love that, and I know that there’s always a buzz around the grounds like, ‘Oh, the Scotch eggs are out!’; they can’t always keep those in stock.”

The Scotch eggs are popular, but they don’t come close to inspiring the kind of passion that Scotland’s most iconic dish does.

“We do have haggis,” Wiltse said, “which is one of those love it or hate it items … and if you look up how they’re made in Scotland, they’re made with innards. There are rules in the U.S. because it has heart and some organs that you’re not allowed to import. We have a U.S. version and as I said people either love it or they hate it, but most are willing to try it. I think that that’s a great thing.”

Other Scottish foods on hand at the Games include cullen skink, which Wiltse described as “the Scottish version of clam chowder,” fish and chips, lamb stew, and shepherd’s pie, which is called “cottage pie” in Scotland.

Scottish food enthusiasts are excited about two special guests at this year’s Highland Games: Gary Maclean, the National Chef of Scotland, and Coinneach MacLeod, “The Hebridean Baker,” a celebrity baker, cookbook author, storyteller and singer.

Maclean was the winner of the 2016 series of MasterChef: The Professionals, has starred in several cooking competition shows, and is the author of seven cookbooks. In a video interview he said that the people at the Highland Games are very accepting of Scottish cuisine.

“The reality is the guests at the Highland Games are very accustomed to Scottish foods,” he said. “For a lot of people it’s a chance to share their own experiences. Every time I do a demo [at NHHG], somebody will raise their hand and say, ‘That’s how my gran always made it!’”

The Highland Games are largely about celebrating Scottish traditions, and Chef Maclean said food traditions tell us a lot about a culture’s history.

“Most of our traditional foods, regardless of where you are in the world, are probably four or five ingredients, because our ancestors not so long ago didn’t have the same options of an availability of food that we’ve got,” he said. “So I try and get back to basics a little bit, through Scottish food. I write books on Scottish food, so there’s a historical element to it, and I also try and theme each demonstration to have a bit of fun. I’ve done things like food from William Wallace and that sort of thing. I’ve done things like Outlander-themed food, and talk about the sort of history of that. This year I’m doing Still Game. I’m doing one of my demonstrations of Still Game. And Still Game is a really, really, really well-known comedy show about old men in Glasgow. And because of wonderful things like Netflix, Still Game’s on TV, so anybody with a bit of a Scottish connection will probably know about it. But if not, I can put some [clips of the show] up on the screen and have it really sort of interactive.”

Maclean has been to New Hampshire’s Highland Games several times, but this will be Coinneach MacLeod’s first time. He is Scotland’s best-selling cookbook author and has been named Scotland’s Food & Drink Influencer of the Year, at the Unicorn Awards. This weekend’s Highland Games are one stop on his current 31-city tour for his latest cookbook, The Hebridean Baker at Home. Like Maclean, he has been overwhelmed by how much resonance there is in the U.S. with Scottish cuisine, which he had assumed might be threatening to U.S. palates.

“It makes us very proud, to be honest,” MacLeod said in a telephone interview.

Because baking doesn’t lend itself easily to a festival demonstration, MacLeod will host a cèilidh, a Scottish gathering where stories are told and songs are sung. He will talk about the Outer Hebrides, where he is from. “I’ll talk about the language of Gallic and maybe even sing a song or two for the guests.”

2024 New Hampshire Highland Games
When: Loon Mountain Resort, 60 Loon Mountain Road, Lincoln, 745-8111, loonmtn.com
Where: Friday, Sept. 20 through Sunday, Sept. 22.
Tickets: $40 per day for adults, with weekend packages and children’s tickets available.
More: nhscot.org/highland-games-nh

Important Scottish terms to know
Caber toss – A traditional Scottish athletic event in which competitors toss a large tapered pole called a caber. In Scotland the caber is usually made from a larch tree, and it can be between 16 and 20 feet tall and weigh 90 to 150 pounds.

Cèilidh – A social event at which there is Scottish or Irish folk music and singing, traditional dancing, and storytelling.

Cullen skink – A thick Scottish soup made of smoked haddock, potatoes and onions.

Haggis – A Scottish dish made from the windpipe, lungs, heart and liver of a sheep, which are boiled, then minced, then mixed with oatmeal and beef fat. It is stuffed into the stomach of the sheep, then sewn up and boiled for up to three hours.

Outlander– A historical time-travel drama about a World War II nurse who is transported back in time to 1743 and becomes embroiled in Scotland’s Jacobite rising. It is a wildly popular television series and a wildly popular series of novels.

William Wallace– A Scottish warrior who became one of the main leaders during the First War of Scottish Independence (1296-1328). Mel Gibson played him in Braveheart.

Featured Photo: Coinneach MacLeod. Courtesy Photo.