Author: John Fladd

The Taste of Hope

It’s easy to be overwhelmed sometimes, weighed down with dread, but spring is coming.

Of course, in this part of the world that means Mud Season, but there is a smell in the air, carrying the slightest hint of hope. What we need — OK, I’m projecting. What I need is a cocktail infused with hope, or in this case, peas.

Peas de Resistance

  • 2 ounces pea-infused gin (see below)
  • 1 ounces fresh squeezed lemon juice
  • ¾ ounce simple syrup

This is a simple riff on a gin sour; the only difference is the addition of the peas — an important distinction, as it turns out.

Combine all ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker, shake thoroughly, and strain into a coupé or Nick and Nora glass. Drink blisteringly cold, with a sigh of relief.

On first sip, the taste that hits you is the peas. That doesn’t sound very enticing, but the natural sweetness of the pea pods plays well with the lemon juice. This is a mouth-watering cocktail, and one sip invites another, until you realize that you should have made two. Which might prompt a quick phone call to a friend and an impromptu cocktail hour on your front steps.

Pea-Infused Gin

A quick science lesson: Surface Area-to-Mass Ratio

This is a jargony way of saying that the more surface area a substance has, the more room it has to interact with chemicals — alcohol, acid, water, oxygen or, in cooking, even smoke.

Imagine an object — let’s say a cucumber. Think of the surface area it presents to the world, modestly wrapped in a dark green wrapper. Now, imagine cutting it in half, lengthwise. Suddenly, there are two large surfaces exposed to the World. All the original surface is still there, plus these two new ones, which probably doubles the amount of exposed surface area.

Now chop those in half, crosswise. You’ve exposed four new surfaces. They aren’t as large as you got with the first set of cuts, but there’s four of them. Now chop up the cucumber. Each time you cut it you increase the amount of surface exposed to — er — the Universe or something.

Which brings us to the pea-infused gin.

Pour a couple of cups of dry gin — I like Gordon’s for this — into your blender. Add a couple handfuls of sugar snap peas, shell and all, into the gin. Blend them for 30 seconds or so. Your blender (mine is named Steve) will chop them into smaller, then almost microscopic, pieces, greatly increasing their surface area.

Turn off the blender and walk away for an hour or two to let the gin and the peas get to know each other. The alcohol in the gin will strip away a lot of the color and much of the flavor of the peas. If you’re distracted by something actually important — your family, a Bob Hope/Bing Crosby marathon on TCM, whatever — you can leave the blender jar sitting on your counter for an almost indefinite amount of time. Remember: This pea sludge is at least half alcohol.

When you’ve got a bit of time, strain it. I like to strain it twice — once with a mesh strainer and then again through a coffee filter, which will take longer. Don’t stand around watching it; it will drive you crazy. Walk away and do something else for a while. Maybe go for a walk, recognizing that this might attract some sort of alcoholic Goldilocks.

When you’re satisfied, bottle it and set it aside until you’re ready to use it.

Featured Photo: Peas de Resistance. Photo by John Fladd.

The juice of the week

Small batch drinks at an evolving shop

If it lasts long enough, every business evolves and goes through changes. For Audrey Bowden, that has meant going in some unexpected directions.

“About 15 years ago,” Bowden said, “we started a massage therapy business. It’s been traditionally what we do from its conception. Rally and Revive is the name of our massage therapy business. We offer body work and skincare and [foot care]. We offer foot soaks for people who suffer from arthritis or anything going on in their feet that make it difficult for them.” This has included neuropathy and related conditions.

Eventually, Bowden said, this led, somewhat unexpectedly, to opening a juice bar. “The concept behind Come Into Fruition was the goal to marry together internal wellness with external wellness and bring really healthy options to the city. This part of Elm Street [to the north of Manchester’s city center] seems to be a little bit isolated and forgotten in comparison to [the area around] City Hall. If you look around you will find tons of residents but you won’t necessarily find coffee shops or restaurants, so I really wanted to just offer good, nourishing things to people.”

This led to expanding the massage and skincare business to include a juice bar that serves fresh-squeezed juices, coffee drinks and smoothies. Bowden called that part of the business Come Into Fruition. This allowed her to help advocate for healthy lifestyles for her wellness customers and guests from off the street.

“Pretty much everything is as close to organic as we can get,” she said. “A lot of the times when I find juice … it’s filled with bananas. It’s pasteurized. I’m actually in love with all of our juices.”

She pointed to her Red Juice as an example.

“That’s beets, raspberries, strawberries and apples,” she said. “Sometimes we add pomegranate to it as well, just to give it a little bit more tartness and balance out that earthy flavor from the beets. Seasonally — and this is kind of a secret — but seasonally, if we have rhubarb, we’ll add that, too.”

Eventually, though, Bowden had to rethink the juice bar’s business model. Too few customers were coming through the door to support the juice-and-smoothie end of the business.

“We just never really got super busy,” she said. “So we went ‘private’ and now we just offer juices and smoothies to our clients and anybody who happens to come in off the street and catch us when we’re here. We scaled back and we make one or two juice flavors a week and we try to rotate it. Last week we made red juice, and so next week we’ll probably make green juice. But we try to rotate whatever we have on hand and just keep things simple.”

Interestingly, by focusing on just a few items each week, Bowden has found that the quality of each menu item has remained consistently high.

“I think it all started with one of our smoothies,” Bowden said, “which is the Revival, and that one has a really cool flavor profile. That’s got, among other things, pineapple, blueberries, spinach and fresh ginger. We make our sauces and so our vanilla pods have been steeping for quite some time. You can see that right here. So that’s aging. We make our own caramel sauce using organic cream and organic sugar. And it’s just, I mean it’s fun. The creativity aspect of it is really fun.”

“We’re focusing,” Bowden said, “and it’s nice that we’re able to offer things to people that are small batch. It’s not mass-manufactured. And it’s OK if we don’t make it the same every time, if something’s not in season. Like for our orange juice, the peaches are not always in season. Sometimes we have to omit them. Sometimes we switch it out for mango. But it always tastes good. It’s always good because it’s always fresh and it’s always small-batch.”

Come Into Fruition
To find out what hours Come Into Fruition is open, contact Rally and Revive (1358 Elm St, Manchester, 622-5380, rallyandrevive.com).

Featured photo: Revival Smoothie. Photo by John Fladd.

A little sweet, a little more spice

A look at the chai latte

Emmett Soldati is very thoughtful about chai lattes.

“It’s spiced, flaky, typically pretty strong and then with some kind of either foamed or steamed milk if it’s hot or milk if it’s over ice, and sometimes a little sweet,” said Soldati, owner of Totally Tea + Coffee in Concord and Dover.

“We have a tagline at the cafe that says ‘Everyone’s a Little Chai-Curious,’” he said. “We sell several different chai blends. But, for our cafe bar, we have a specific blend we make with black tea, cinnamon, clove, cardamom, star anise and black pepper; we use that to make a concentrated tea base. And then with that base we can make hot or iced chais, which allows us to control pretty much every aspect of it. We can control how sweet it is. We usually put a pump or two of brown sugar syrup in it. We can control what milk goes in it, whether it’s a non-dairy oat milk or just a regular cow’s milk. And that allows us to control the flavor and make sure that it’s a nice strong sort of deep amber brown chai latte.”

The color of Soldati’s chai lattes is important to him.

“There’s only a handful of chai companies that sell packaged chai to restaurants and cafes and they tend to be fairly diluted and sugary so by the time you add in milk it basically just looks like tinted milk. To me it’s really important that it’s a nice deep amber and then of course you get a dusting of cinnamon on top,” he said.

According to Soldati, one reason Totally Tea+Coffee’s chai lattes are distinctive is that they came to the development process almost backward.

“We’re basically a tea and coffee company,” he said, “but I think a lot of coffee houses and cafes lead with coffee and then their tea and chai becomes like a secondary afterthought. We started from the other way. We started as a tea company and then expanded our espresso drinks so that we can do like a dirty chai [a chai latte with a shot of espresso], but people know us because of our specific house chai blend.”

Tiana Sargent is the manager of Flight Coffee Co. in Bedford. She is proud that Flight brews its own chai concentrate.

“We [make] a really strong brew using a masala chai from Mem Tea,” Sargent said. “They’re out of Cambridge, Mass. Awesome tea company. But yeah, we make a really strong brew using that, we lightly sweeten it with sugar, and cut it with milk and serve it. You can steam it to serve it hot or you can mix it in a cup.”

“I am very proud of our chai,” Sargent said. “It’s a great balance of sweet and spicy. We don’t overly sweeten it and we go heavier on the chai so you really get the flavor, the spices, the tea. A lot of places will use a really small amount and so it gets really diluted in the milk. And a lot of places will sweeten it too much as well. So you end up with a sweet drink that’s lacking depth. So we try to not put it there. We really want the tea to be tea-forward, spice-forward, and have just the right amount of sweetness [so] that it’s great on its own but if you’re somebody who likes the flavor of chai you can add a syrup and it won’t overdo the sweetness.”

Danielle Beaudette is the owner of The Cozy Tea Cart (104A Rte 13, Brookline, 249-9111, thecozyteacart.com) and a Specialty Tea Institute, (STI) Certified Tea Specialist. She said that chai and chai lattes have been popular in India for decades, but vary from one region to another, depending on the variety of teas and spices grown in a given area.

“The South grows different ones than the North,” she explained. “So depending on where you are, you’re going to get different spices in your chai latte. Some use ginger, some do not. There’s all different spices Some use peppercorns.”

She said that the quality of a chai latte depends on the quality of the tea used.

“We are very proud of the teas that we bring into the country here,” she said. “We only use loose leaf tea, so we never want to hide the flavor of the tea. It would complement the flavor. So it really depends on the place that’s blending it, on how they blend it. If they’re using tea bag tea, [the quality of the tea] probably doesn’t matter to them,” she said.

Brit McCullouch, the Supervisor for Waterworks Cafe in Manchester, said chai lattes have become a fixture on her menu.

“They’ve become very popular,” she said. “We’ve put a twist on the one that we have. We carry an organic and gluten-free honey vanilla chai latte, and we serve that either iced or hot, but we also put a spin on it [to make] a specialty drink. We add flavors to it. So last season we did pistachio and now with spring coming we add coconut syrup to it. It’s fine on its own, but I think always putting a spin on something grabs people’s attention. It’s just a nice alternative to having coffee. It’s a black tea concentrate with the honey and spices, and you pick your milk, and it goes so well with non-dairy milks, dairy, it really is just a very versatile product.”

Roo Hasty at William & Sons Coffee Co. in Concord and Manchester pointed out that the type of milk a chai latte is made with is an important and underappreciated aspect of the enterprise.

“A lot of people who are in their 20s like it with oat milk,” she said, “because it’s creamier. Whenever I have oat milk, it just tastes way creamier. We have oat milk, we have regular [dairy milk], we have coconut milk, we have almond milk. We’ve got all the milks.”

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

The Weekly Dish 25/03/27

News from the local food scene

• Maple mixology: There will be a Maple Season Hands-On Mixology Class at LaBelle Winery Amherst (345 Route 101, Amherst, 672-9898, labellewinery.com) Thursday, March 27, from 6 to 7 p.m. Learn how to make three different recipes used to craft a Maple Whiskey Sour cocktail. Enjoy a small cheese plate while you learn and receive a recipe card for each class recipe to recreate at home. Tickets are $54.25 through eventbrite.com.

• Fancy dinner: Chef Table Dinners at Flag Hill Winery (297 N. River Road, Lee, 659-2949, flaghill.com) for April will take place at 7 p.m. on Saturdays, April 5 and April 12. They will be four-course dinners featuring a wine, spirit, or cocktail pairing with each course. Tickets are $75 each through eventbrite.com.

• Daiquiri contest: Tickets are available forThe Great Daiq-Off of 2025 at 815 Cocktails & Provisions (815 Elm St, Manchester, 782-8086, 815nh.com), to be held Thursday, April 13, from 3 to 7 p.m. The contest will be based on speed, Daiquracy, and taste. The theme will, of course, be tiki. Tickets are $20 through eventbrite.com. See the 815 website for details or to register.

• Coffee fest: Passes are on sale now for the Northeast Coffee Festival Friday, May 2, and Saturday, May 3, in Concord. Passes cost $75 (plus fees) and include acces to two days of hands on workshops, panels and discussions as well as the welcome party on Friday and the Latte Art Throwdown on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. Or, you can just check out the community market (admission is free) featuring vendors, demonstrations and live music will run 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday and 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday. See northeastcoffeefestival.com.

• Drunken cupcakes: The theme of the martini/cupcake pairing at Copper Door (15 Leavy Drive, Bedford, 488-2677, or 41 S Broadway, Salem, 458-2033, copperdoor.com) in April is cannoli. There will be a “Cannoli-tini” made with Faretti Biscotti Italian liqueur, vanilla vodka, dark creme de cacao, Bailey’s Irish Cream, and a chocolate chip rim for $14.75. It will be paired with a cannoli cupcake featuring an orange-zested vanilla cupcake, cinnamon-ricotta filling, a semi-sweet white chocolate swirl, and a mini-cannoli garnish for $11.

Chocolate Sorbet with Girl Scout Cookies

I have a rule in life — well, maybe more of a guideline. Anytime somebody says that a low-fat or gluten-free or vegan version of something is “just as good as the real thing” I become deeply suspicious. That is almost never true. If it were true, that version would be our default for that thing.

But then—

The difference between ice cream and sorbet is that sorbet is made without any dairy. We usually think of sorbets as being fruit-based, but that isn’t always the case. I make a lot of experimental sorbets, because a couple of the friends I use as guinea pigs for my recipes are vegan. On top of that, it is Girl Scout cookie season, and you might not have noticed but Thin Mints are dairy-free and vegan.

This chocolate sorbet might become your default “ice cream,” and the Girl Scout cookies only intensify its awesomeness.

The base of this sorbet is adapted from a recipe from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz.

  • 1½ cups (375 g) water
  • 1 cup (200 g) sugar
  • ¾ cup (75 g) cocoa powder, preferably Dutch-process cocoa, which has a slightly different pH than average civilian cocoa.
  • Pinch of coarse sea salt
  • 6 ounces (170 g) dark chocolate – preferably Trader Joe’s chocolate chips, which have a fairly high cocoa percentage (about 53%) and are also dairy-free
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • Another ¾ cup (180 g) water
  • ½ sleeve of Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies, broken roughly into quarters

In a medium saucepan, combine the first 1½ cups of water, sugar, cocoa powder and salt. Cocoa is hydrophobic, which means that it doesn’t like to mix with water, so you will probably have to force the issue with a whisk.

Heat the cocoa mixture until it comes to a boil, then let it boil for one minute before removing it from the heat. Stir the chocolate chips into the hot mixture until they melt completely, before stirring in the other ¾ cup of water, then the vanilla. Most vanilla extracts use an alcohol base. Alcohol evaporates at a lower temperature than water boils, and by bringing the temperature of the mixture down with the chocolate chips, and then the water, you will keep more of the vanilla’s flavor in your sorbet.

Leave the mixture on your stovetop or counter to cool.

If you have an ice cream maker:

Chill the mixture for several hours, or overnight, then churn in your machine, according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

If you do not have an ice cream maker:

Transfer the sorbet base into a large sealable plastic bag. (Because I get nervous, I double-bag it to make extra-certain that there aren’t any leaks.) Lay the bag in your freezer, as flat as possible. This might require some reorganization. When the sorbet base has frozen solid, remove it from the freezer and break it into chunks. Blend the sorbet chunks in your blender until it comes together into a soft-serve consistency.

With either method, layer the sorbet and cookie pieces in one large container or three or four smaller containers. Return to the freezer to harden up.

This might be the most intensely chocolatey “ice cream” you’ve ever had. You might suddenly re-examine your preconceptions of what chocolate ice cream is supposed to be. This might lead you to re-examine some of your major life decisions. It’s that chocolatey. Despite not having any dairy in it, this sorbet has an extremely rich taste and a fudgy consistency. You might think the chunks of Girl Scout cookies will be overpowered and are just there for texture, but much like an actual Girl Scout they are not to be underestimated. They do the dessert equivalent of locking eyes with you and staring you down.

This sorbet is not kidding around.

Featured Photo: Chocolate Sorbet with Girl Scout Cookies. Photo by John Fladd.

Taste wine, raise food funds

United Way helps Food Bank

According to the New Hampshire Food Bank, one out of every 10 New Hampshire residents struggle to find a dependable source of food. The number for children is one in seven. Michael Apfelberg finds those numbers unacceptable.

Apfelberg is the President of the United Way of Greater Nashua, an independent nonprofit organization controlled by local donors to address problems in southern New Hampshire. Each year it focuses on addressing a particular set of persistent problems. This year the focus is on hunger and food insecurity.

Apfelberg said that in recent years more and more people in southern New Hampshire have started to go hungry.

“In our community,” he said, “we see a lot of people that we hear from all the time who are just struggling with basic needs. Inflation over the past couple of years has made a real impact on people’s bottom lines, but also, you know, things like child care and the cost of child care have really affected people. Wages have been sometimes a little stagnant at the lower end of the scale, so people do struggle with food and we see that in a lot of different ways, whether it be the need for increased access to free and reduced lunch programs, or the ability of people to actually get the food that they need.”

In order to help fund its anti-hunger programs, the Greater Nashua United Way has had to get creative in its fundraising. With the focus on food insecurity this year, many of the fundraisers have had themes tied to food and drink. For instance, this Saturday, March 22, the United Way will host a comedy-themed wine tasting at Fulchino Vineyard, with wine and performances by comedians. Apfelberg said that this is a recurring event that has evolved over the years.

“This is our third year working with Fulchino Vineyard,” he said. “The first year, it was a wine and food pairing event with a sommelier who taught everybody about wine and its properties. The second year it was a little bit more about the history of wine and winemaking and wine culture with a sort of a lecture by the owner of the vineyard, who’s an aficionado. This year we decided to evolve it again to make it a comedy night. [There will still be] wine at the vineyard with food — in this case more pizza and hors d’oeuvres and a little buffet — but with a comedy night spin to it. We have a lot of the same people who come back year after year, and we want to give them a little something different this year.”

One of last year’s most successful fundraisers for the United Way was a poker hand pub crawl, where teams of participants would travel from tavern to tavern in downtown Nashua, collecting a playing card at each bar, trying to build a winning poker hand. “It was very popular,” Apfelberg said. “People loved the poker hand pub crawl theme, so we’re going to do a repeat on that.” One of the best aspects of the event, he said, was the involvement of local businesses: “That was really our biggest involvement with restaurants and bars.” Because all the money the United Way raises stays in the community, Apfelberg explained, it is especially fitting when businesses in that community can play such an active role.

Other dramatic fundraisers this year will include the United Way’s “Over the Edge” event in June, where more than 100 participants will rappel down 24 stories of the Brady Sullivan Building in Manchester, and two separate skydiving events.

“Our first one,” Apfelberg said, “which is May 17, is raising money to support our food initiatives, food security-related initiatives that I’ve talked about. The second one in the fall is actually designed to raise funds [for] our educational supports. Our first event will be when families face going into the summer months. Summer is a time of year when food pantries typically struggle to get food.” It’s also a time when kids can’t access lunch programs at school, he said.

The second skydiving event takes place in the fall to address needs brought up by students returning to school.

Cheers to the Community Night of Wine and Comedy
When: Saturday, March 22, from 6 to 9 p.m.
Where: Fulchino Vineyards, 187 Pine Hill Road, Hollis, 438-5984, fulchinovineyard.com.
Tickets: $100 each through the United Way of Greater Nashua’s website, unitedwaynashua.org

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

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