Author: John Fladd

It’s a New England thing

By John Fladd

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According to James Malik, the first thing you need to know about corned beef is that it’s not particularly Irish.

“[Corning beef] was a traditional means of preservation,” he said. “We associate it with St. Patrick’s Day here. It is an Irish-American thing, an Irish New England thing. But corned beef is not what’s traditionally eaten on St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland. This is very much Irish-American and very, very popular here in New England. It’s a boiled dinner, usually served with cabbage, carrots, rutabaga and onion.”

Malik, who describes himself as “an old-school butcher,” has been working with premium meat for more than 21 years. He is one of the managers and butchers at Wicked Good Butchah in Bedford. And he takes his corned beef very seriously.

“So corned beef, typically,” he said, “when we’re talking about corned beef for a boiled dinner, it is a brisket, and it is corned or brined in a salt solution. Now there’s two styles. There’s the famous red style that everybody gets in the grocery store. And then there’s the gray style, which is a very traditional New England style — the real corned beef. The difference is they’re both brined in a salt water solution, but the gray has just salt and water, where the red uses sodium nitrate or something called Instacure No. 1, which contains sodium nitrate. It keeps the red color on the external layer of the meat as well as the interior. But the gray is the traditional New England style. That’s what we do here in-house.”

One reason why corned beef is associated with Irish and Jewish immigrants is that it usually is made with brisket, a very tough and therefore traditionally inexpensive cut of beef. How tender or tough a cut of meat is is largely determined by how much work those muscles had to do during an animal’s lifetime. More exercise results in more connective tissue, which has to be broken down with long, slow cooking.

“The brisket is from the chest,” said Rick Lemay from Lemay & Sons in Goffstown, a beef processing house and butcher shop. “It’s right front-and-center. It’s what we call the front plate, and right behind that ends up being your short ribs.” He said that corned short ribs are delicious. “You don’t hear about it very often,” he said, “but it’s a pretty neat item. I’ve actually tried it with a chuck roast too.The corning process really is just a curing method.”

Because a brisket has so much connective tissue holding it together, the corning process involves soaking it in brine for anywhere from 10 to 21 days.

“We take the full 21 days,” James Malik said. “After that 21 days, we then take out the briskets from that brining solution and then we soak them for 24 hours in clean cold water to draw out any excess salt. And you’re still left with a wonderfully brined piece of meat that has that nice traditional corned beef flavor. The biggest step in all this is when you’re brining. To know that your salt solution is the correct amount of salt, you put a potato in your bucket, and when the potato floats, you have the correct amount of salt to begin brining your corned beef.”

Jay Beland is in charge of brining the corned beef at Lemay and Sons. He adds spices to the salt in his brining solution. “For a 10- to 15-pound brisket,” he said, “I’ll use two gallons of water, two tablespoons of pink curing salt, and a cup of whole black peppercorns.” He adds an additonal cup of cracked — but not powdered — peppercorns, two cups of coriander seeds — one whole and one cracked, and the same with yellow mustard seeds, and a cup of pickling spice. “That’s my water,” he said. “That is my brine.

Beland brines his brisket for about 10 days, then smokes it at 225 degrees, until it reaches an internal temperature of 180 degrees. James Malik, on the other hand, is a great believer in braising his corned beef.

“When people hear ‘boiled dinner’,” Malik said, “their first thought is to go ahead and put it in a pot of water and boil the ever-loving Jesus out of it. I would tell you that the best way to do this is to do more of like a braise in the oven. Believe it or not, you can dry it out by over-boiling it for too long. I put it in my big lobster pot and I time it out. You’ll find you get a much better piece of meat that way, much more enjoyable.”

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

News from the local food scene

By John Fladd

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• New head of NH Food Bank: New Hampshire Food Bank (700 E. Industrial Park Drive, Manchester, 669-9725, nhfoodbank.org) has appointed a new Executive Director. Formerly the head of New Generation, Elsy Cipriani began her new role at New Hampshire Food Bank on March 3. Cipriani has worked in organizations helping vulnerable people in California, New Jersey, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

• Steel Chef: Tickets are still available for theNew Hampshire Food Bank’s 9th Annual Steel Chef Challenge, to be held Saturday, March 15, at the Doubletree Expo Center (700 Elm St., Manchester, 625-1000). Approximately 680 guests will watch a live, timed cooking competition featuring some of New Hampshire’s best chefs. As the competition heats up, guests will enjoy a fabulous dinner curated by celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson. Proceeds will benefit the New Hampshire Food Bank. Tickets are $150 each at nhfoodbank.org/steelchef.

• Mystery dinner: Averill House Vineyard (21 Averill Road, Brookline, 244-3165, averillhousevineyard.com) will host “The Leprechaun’s Secret,” a four-course mystery food and wine pairing, Saturday, March 15, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Dress in your finest Irish attire and prepare for an evening of sipping, sleuthing and savoring. Enjoy Averill House Vineyard wines alongside an Irish-inspired secret menu. Tickets start at $59 through exploretock.com.

• Crafts and corned beef: The Capital City Fine Spring Craft & Artisan Show will take place at the Capital City Sports Complex (10 Garvins Falls Road, exit 13 of I-93, in Concord) on Saturday, March 15, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday, March 16, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The event will feature 100 exhibitors including craftsmen, artists, authors and specialty food makers, according to a press release. The event will also feature green beer and corned beef to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day as well as eats from Sidelines Cafe, the release said. Admission costs $5 (valid both days) and is free for ages 14 and under. See GNECraftArtisanShows.com.

• Celebrating whiskeys: Kick off St. Patrick’s Day weekend with a whiskey dinner at Unwined (1 Nashua St., Milford, 213-6703, unwinednh.com) on Thursday, March 13, at 6 p.m. The four-course dinner will feature some of Unwined’s favorite whiskey picks. Doors will open at 5:30 p.m. with a welcome cocktail, and each course will feature its own pairing of whiskey or whiskey cocktails. Tickets are $125.

• Chili cook-off: St. Peter’s Episcopal Church (Mammoth Road at 3 Peabody Row Londonderry; stpeterslondonerry.org) will hold its 8th annual Chili and Chowder Cook-Off on Saturday, March 22, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. To compete with a chili or chowder, register at 4:15 p.m.; kids can compete in a Kids’ Dessert Competition. Admission for attendees is a $15 donation ($7 for children 10 and under).

By John Fladd

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This recipe came from what most of us call an “Old Church Lady Cookbook.” “Old” in this case refers to the cookbook. For a few decades in the mid-1900s, many small organizations made up mostly of women would raise money by publishing cookbooks with recipes contributed by the women themselves. These recipes often give less-than-precise instructions, like “cook until done” or “add a lump of bacon fat about the size of a hen’s egg.”

This particular recipe came from Mrs. Ralph E. Parmentier of Exeter. It is in her own handwriting, which is an adventure to decipher. “Pints,” “lumps” and “pinches” have been converted to more contemporary measurements of cups, grams and blobs.

Corn Fritters

2 cups (240 g) all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

1 Tablespoon sour cream – the original recipe calls for sour milk. You find this in many old recipes; it’s there to add acidity to react with the baking soda and help fluff up the fritters as they fry. Sour cream, buttermilk, or plain Greek yogurt will work just as well.

2 teaspoons sugar

1 cup (135 g) corn kernels

1 medium-spicy chili pepper – a serrano or Fresno – seeded and finely chopped

1⅓ cup (300 g) whole milk

Heat 2 to 3 inches of oil in a pot to 350°F.

Whisk the dry ingredients and sugar together in a medium-sized bowl. Stir in the corn, chili and milk, until it is the consistency of thick pancake batter.

Use a one-tablespoon scoop to measure the batter for frying. If you don’t have one, use two spoons to drop blobs, each “the size of a walnut,” according to the original recipe.

Drop the blobs of batter into the hot oil, being careful not to crowd the pot. You hear this a lot in recipes. What it means is that each blob of dough that you drop into the hot oil will reduce its temperature. You want to keep the oil as close to 350 degrees as possible. That’s hot enough to cook the fritters all the way through, but not hot enough to burn them easily. If the oil is hot enough, the fritters will bubble in the hot oil. That is caused by steam forcing its way out of the cooking batter. As long as the steam is pushing itself out, very little oil can make its way into the fritter, which would make it greasy.

Fry each fritter until it is deeply golden brown on both sides. If you managed to drop fairly round blobs into the oil, weirdly, the fritters are likely to flip themselves over in the oil, as first one side becomes slightly lighter from losing water in the form of steam, then the other, as the top-heavy blob flops over, like a fat man standing up in a canoe. “They can’t order me around, Martha,” you can imagine the fritter saying belligerently to one of its fellows. “I’m a full-grown fritter and I’ll make my own decisions, than-you-very-much! Whoa!” Flip. Gurgle.

This process will take eight minutes or so. This is an excellent opportunity to listen to an audiobook. I would suggest Alfred Molina reading Treasure Island.

Drain the fritters on a paper towel or a brown paper grocery bag. Like most fried foods, they are best straight out of the oil, hot and crispy. Mrs. Parmentier suggests serving them with maple syrup, which is an excellent idea. I’d also add a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

If you get distracted from the fritters by a shocking confession from a family member or something, and they cool off and lose their crispness, they can be restored easily in your air fryer.

Featured photo: Corn Fritters. Photo by John Fladd.

The challenge of putting less in a cookie

By John Fladd

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It’s probably fair to say that Jill Robbins’ cookie journey started largely because of classroom snacks.

“My son has food allergies,” Robbins said, “and I started my company so that kids like him could join in socially when treats are served. I wanted to make it easier for anybody who serves [food] to include people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to join in. And pretty much every social occasion revolves around baked treats, which are pretty much always made with allergens like milk and wheat and eggs and butter.” Add to that any ingredients that might have been made or processed in a facility with foods like peanuts or tree nuts, and snacking can quickly get complicated and problematic.

Robbins’ company, Homefree (homefreetreats.com), in Windham, makes cookies that as many people on restricted diets as possible can enjoy.

“[Our cookies] are free of the top 14 food allergens. The top nine are the ones you have to put on a label, and those are peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, dairy, wheat, soy, fish, shellfish, and more recently sesame,” she said. Additionally they are vegan, certified gluten-free, and kosher pareve, meaning that they have been approved for someone following kosher dietary guidelines.

Homefree makes packaged cookies for retail sales and food service, including chocolate chip, double chocolate chip, vanilla, lemon, chocolate mint and ginger snap.

“We now have large, soft, chocolate chip cookies and brownies that we’ve just started offering to food service,” Robbins said. “So people could request it from food service if there’s, say somebody works somewhere that has a break room where they provide snacks or a cafeteria or if there’s a hotel or a hospital or a cafe or a school or a camp, they can all get the large soft cookies and the brownies.”

Starting a business, particularly a food business, can be complicated, but meeting Robbins’ goals gave her an extra layer of difficulty.

“There’s something called Safe Quality Food, or SQF,” she said, “that’s a very high-level food quality and safety certification. Just the annual audit is three days long. It’s on everything related to food quality and safety, documentation and traceability”

Sourcing reliably pure ingredients has been another challenge. Because it is a common allergen, Homefree can’t use wheat flour.

“We use gluten-free whole oat flour,” Robbins said. “Our oat flour comes from a place that does gluten-free oats.”

Ultimately, one of Homefree’s biggest objectives is making a good cookie.

“There was a company that did a survey,” Robbins said. “They took our single-serve bags of chocolate chip mini cookies and bags of Chips Ahoy, and sent them to over 400 women and asked all kinds of questions. Basically, 73 percent preferred Homefree. So it’s a regular, good cookie, but one that essentially everybody can eat.”

“When I think about what we sell,” Robbins said, “it’s not cookies. It’s inclusiveness in the form of cookies.”

Homefree

See homefreetreats.com for more information including a list of stores selling the cookies.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.