Author: John Fladd

The Pot Pie Bar takes being flaky very seriously

Like many recent food businesses, The Pot Pie Bar (132 Bedford Center Road, Bedford, 432-1927, thepotpiebar.com) got its start during the Covid-19 lockdown. Caroline Arend, owner of the Pot Pie Bar as well as Caroline’s Fine Food (132 Bedford Center Road, Bedford, 637-1615, carolinesfood.com), a well-established catering company, explained, “I found that some very loyal patrons of Caroline’s wanted to help us because we were basically shut down because we couldn’t cater. So they started purchasing meals for first responders. We found ourselves making a lot of pot pies and in fact it became just insanity. We kind of made a joke out of it and said, ‘Oh, I bet we can make anything into a pot pie.’ And we started just developing recipes. That was the birth of it, I guess. And then we opened up the pot pie bar.”

The original thought was to take orders online and ship frozen pies throughout the Northeast, but that turned out to be impractical. “Our shipping carriers were not reliable,” Arend said, “and the cost of shipping was prohibitive. I had no control over those costs because we’re a small company. So we switched gears and we sell all of our pies frozen out of our storefront.” Now customers place orders, either online or over the phone, and pick up their pies in person.

Although pot pies are a classic comfort food, Arend said a lot of work is involved to make them to her standard.

“Everything in the pies is made from scratch,” she said. “For example, for our braised short ribs [pot pie], we take the ribs, we put them in a rondeau [a short, wide pan similar to a Dutch oven], we sear them, we take them out, then we put the mirepoix [a mixture of chopped onion, celery and carrots] in, we deglaze with red wine, bring that down, and then put the bones back in, and braise it in the oven for three hours. Then we pull the meat off the bones, we reduce the braising liquid, and we mix it in with the filling. The only thing we don’t make from scratch is the puff pastry. And each pie has a different little puff pastry logo on it. So, for example, the chicken pie has a cutout of a chicken. The beef stroganoff has a cutout of a cow. The veggie [pie] is a carrot. So they’re all different.”

Arend is a classically trained chef, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), and a veteran of fine dining restaurants in the Boston area. She eventually branched off into high-end catering.

“And then I moved to New Hampshire,” she said. “I didn’t do it for a while and then I missed it.”

As of now, The Pot Pie Bar offers 14 different pies, from classic chicken or vegetable pot pies to more innovative choices such as a bratwurst, beer and cheddar pie, or a lobster pie made with whole lobster claws.

“We did a beef Wellington for the holidays,” Arend said. “It was delicious. It’s a duxelle [a French paste made from mushrooms, herbs and onions] in a thick layer on top of the beef. You have the puff pastry, then you have the duxelles, and you have the grainy mustard and the beef.” Arend said she and her team kept the beef from overcooking by just searing it before putting it in the pie. “And since it’s tenderloin, it’s not going to get too tough. It’s a center cut, muscle that’s not really exercised. It’s not like a shoulder.”

The Pot Pie Bar’s customer base has been surprising to Arend.

“I thought it was going to be primarily men because it’s like comfort food,” she said. “But it’s an older crowd. A bunch of people take them to dinner parties, which I didn’t even think of, but it makes sense. And one woman came in last week and she ordered four of them, [so she could have] people over for dinner at four different times.”

Arend has just purchased an existing restaurant in Goffstown and is hoping to move into it soon. “We’re currently looking into building out a USDA kitchen so that we can wholesale the pies,” she said.

The Pot Pie Bar
Orders for pot pies can be placed online at thepotpiebar.com or at 432-1927. Walk-in customers are welcome, but are advised to call ahead to find out what pies are in stock, as they sell out daily.

News from the local food scene

• Sue’s is open: Sue’s Kimbap House (Bank of NH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord, 731-9085, Sueskimbaphouse.com) is officially open. Owner and chef Susan Chung will be Capitol Center for the Arts’ Culinary Artist in Residence for the next year. The new Korean street food-inspired restaurant will be open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays. The Kimbap House website will be up soon.

• Chocolate factory tour: Van Otis Chocolates (341 Elm St., Manchester, 627-1611, vanotis.com) will host a tour of its chocolate factory Thursday, Sept. 5, from 11 a.m. to noon. Tours are approximately 45 minutes long and are recommended for ages 6+. All children must be accompanied by an adult. Tickets are $15 through eventbrite.com.

• Herbal tea class: Herbalist Maria Noël Groves will lead a class called “Make Your Own Herbal Teas for Flavor, Immunity and Digestion” at Bedrock Gardens (19 High Road, Lee, 659-2993, bedrockgardens.org) on Friday, Sept. 6, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 for members, $35 for non-members. The cass includes a day pass to Bedrock Gardens that day. Visit eventbrite.com.

• Dinner in a barn: Sanborn Mills Farm (7097 Sanborn Road, Loudon, 435-7314, sanbornmills.org) will host a Farm to Table Dinner on Saturday, Sept. 7, from 5 to 8:30 p.m. The evening will include a cocktail hour on the terrace followed by dinner and dessert in Sanborn Barn. Email info@sanbornmills.org.

Planteray Rum, rebranded from Plantation Rum and owned by Cognac Ferrand, makes an excellent rum. One of its most recent releases has been something called “Stiggins’ Fancy” Pineapple Rum, named after a Charles Dickens character who liked to drink a pineapple rum or three. Although this rum has been infused with pineapple in a couple different ways, it does not taste too fruity. It is sweet but not syrupy, and very smooth.

It goes very well with watermelon.

Watermelon Punch

• 2 ounces rum of your choice — I recommend Planteray’s “Stiggins’ Fancy” Pineapple Rum (see above)
• 3 ounces fresh watermelon juice (see below)
• 3 ounces fresh squeezed lemon juice
• 1 ounce simple syrup

Juicing a watermelon

Choose a small, ripe, flavorful watermelon. It should have a pronounced pale spot where it used to rest on the ground when it was growing in the field. Try to find one with stripes spaced the width of two fingers across.

Cut the melon in half, and scoop its flesh into a blender with an ice cream scoop. Blend the melon thoroughly — slowly at first, then really put the spurs to it during the last few seconds. Watermelons are 92 percent water, so it should liquify beautifully. Strain it with a fine mesh strainer, and discard the small amount of pink pulp and seeds. It should last for about a week in your refrigerator.

Making the punch

Fill a mason jar halfway with ice, then add the rum, juices and syrup.

Screw the top on the jar, and shake thoroughly. Remove the lid, fill the jar the rest of the way up with ice, and add a straw.

How sweet and flavorful this punch is will depend largely on the quality of your watermelon. At worst this will be a refreshing take on pink lemonade, but at its best the lemon will take the lead in the front end, followed by a deep fruitiness from the melon.

Featured Photo: Photo by John Fladd.

News from the local food scene

• Another Friendly Toast: On Monday, Aug. 26, there was a grand opening of the newest branch of the Friendly Toast, at 18 Via Toscana in Salem. The new Salem location spans approximately 4,500 square feet and seats up to 170. The Friendly Toast has 13 locations across New England, including, in New Hampshire, Portsmouth (its original location), Bedford, Nashua and Salem.

• Pumpkin martini and cupcake: September’s martini and cupcake pairing at the Copper Door (15 Leavy Drive, Bedford, 488-2677; 41 S. Broadway, Salem, 458-2033; copperdoor.com) will feature a pumpkin martini made with vanilla vodka, rumchata, pumpkin liqueur and cream, with a caramel and cinnamon sugar rim, for $14. It can be paired with a pumpkin streusel cupcake made with pumpkin spice cake, a streusel crunch topping, cinnamon cream cheese frosting and caramel sauce for $11.

• Try this cooking challenge: The Nashua Public Library (2 Court St., Nashua, 589-4600, nashualibrary.org) will host Cooking with Kendra on Thursday, Aug. 29, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Meet at Soel Sistas, where Chef Kendra Smith will coach you as you prepare a meal from low-cost mystery ingredients. Park in the lot at 30 Temple St. No registration is necessary. Open to ages 18+.

• Make a charcuterie board: Wine on Main (9 N. Main St., Concord, 897-5828, wineonmainnh.com) will host a Charcuterie Board Making Workshop & Wine Tasting Wednesday, Sept. 4, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. This workshop is $65 and includes all materials; register online.

If you’ve ever gotten ambitious with your cooking or baking and have tried to share something new that you’ve made with friends or acquaintances, you’ve probably seen a visible reluctance on their faces to take the food you’ve offered.

“It’s OK, I’m fine,” they’ll say.

“I didn’t ask if you are fine,” you might say, if you weren’t restrained by politeness. “I asked you to accept this gift of food that I made myself, as a symbol of how much I like and value you.” But you don’t, and at the end of the day you end up bringing your miso brownies back home with you.

The frustrating fact is that most people don’t want interesting food. They want comforting food.

Here is a really interesting food that — assuming you can get them to try it — will become their new comfort food:

Charcoal-Grilled Corn Ice Cream

• 6 leftover corn cobs from eating fresh sweet corn
• 1 quart (946 ml) half & half
• 1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk

As ice creams go, this one is remarkably straightforward. You don’t have to worry about tempering egg yolks, or melting chocolate in a double boiler, or ordering Bolivian bee pollen, or anything. There are three ingredients, and four or five steps, and the level of technical knowledge involved is about the same as in making a grilled cheese sandwich. The most daunting part of making this ice cream is deciding to do it.

Whisk the cream and condensed milk together and pour it into a medium-sized airtight container. Snap the lid on, and store this in the refrigerator.

Set up your grill, light the charcoal, and get your grilling equipment — a plate, tongs and a beer — ready. Wait until the coals are roughly half gray, half black, then grill your corn cobs. Treat them like you would sausages; turn them from time to time, until they are consistently grilled — golden brown, with just a little bit of char. This should take just about long enough to drink your beer. If you are a fan of grilled foods with a heavy char, leave the cobs on the grill a few minutes longer. Remove them to the plate, and take them back into your kitchen.

(It would be a shame to waste the still perfectly good coals, so you might want to grill some actual sausages or Almost Burgers at this point.)

Put the grilled corn cobs in your cream mixture. Completely cover them with liquid, if possible. If not, put the top back on, and swirl to completely cover the cobs. Return the container to the refrigerator to rest for 24 to 48 hours, swirling occasionally. The fat in the cream is really good at absorbing flavors. Remember that time the butter tasted funny after your brother-in-law left mackerel in the fridge after his fishing trip? Same concept. The corn and smoke flavors of your grilled corn cobs will infuse into the cream. Because this is going on in your refrigerator, you don’t have to worry about gently heating the cream or anything. Shake it and leave it.

After the cream mixture has infused for a couple of days, remove the cobs from the container. There will be suspiciously less cream left than you think there should be. Everything delicious comes at a price. In this case, the corn cobs have absorbed some of the cream as a sort of souvenir. If there are any distressing bits of char in the cream, strain it through a fine-mesh strainer.

Churn the mixture in your ice cream maker until it has pulled together into a stiff, soft-serve consistency, then transfer it to freezing containers, and harden it off for a day or so in your freezer.

While this looks like vanilla ice cream, it is very much its own thing. It is sweet and slightly smoky, with a rich, corny aftertaste. You wouldn’t think that sweet and smoky would go together, but grilled peaches or pineapples are delicious, to say nothing of barbecue sauce, so it shouldn’t be surprising how delicious this is. If you wanted to complicate things, you could top it with a spoonful of lime marmalade (lime goes extremely well with smoke and corn) but one of this ice cream’s biggest assets is its delicious simplicity.

And , of course, how interesting it is.

Featured Photo: Photo by John Fladd.