Author: John Fladd

CodeX B.A.R. finds a new (secret) spot

“You should have seen this place when we walked in the door,” MaryBeth Carcellino said. “It was full of old appliances, and it looked like an old retail store.” Actually, it was a former plumbing supply store.

Carcellino is one of the owners of popular speakeasy CodeX B.A.R. which recently relocated from Elm Street in Nashua to Main Street.

“Our lease was up at the other location,” she said, “and we had debated for a long time whether this was something that we wanted to do. We really, really, really wanted to be on Main Street; It’s been very important to us, and we saw an opportunity. The owner of Local Street Eats [Nashua restaurateur Eliza Drift] approached my partner and told him that she really liked that location, so it all fell together. We found this location and when we came in here for the first time, my partner looked at the space and he said, ‘Oh, I’ve got a vision!’ I looked at the space and saw a bunch of dead washing machines.”

The partners spent the next 11 months renovating the space into their vision of a speakeasy — a “secret” bar that depends on word of mouth to build a clientele.

There is no sign outside CodeX announcing where it is. It is disguised as a dusty antique bookshop from the outside, though if you look carefully you’ll see a small arrow labeled “Speakeasy” that points to the door — the locked door. To get inside guests need to pick up the receiver of an old-fashioned pay phone next to the door, which will ring a matching one inside. “We try to keep everything on the DL a little bit,” Carcellino said. “You pick up the phone when you get to the door, and you have to say, ‘I have business with the Duke.’ The Duke is our resident bouncer. It’s kind of tongue-in-cheek — he’s actually my husband. He’s not really a bouncer. But he’ll get to that door, and he’s like, ‘What do you want? What’s your business with me?’ And people love that.

Inside, the bar is filled with comfortable chairs and sofas. In one corner there is a viewing area facing a big-screen television that only plays old black-and-white movies. There are seats at the bar, but the total capacity for the bar is 35 to 40 people.

“If you come in here on any given night, Carcellino said, “we have two fabulous mixologists, Stretch and Rusty. They can pretty much make you anything that you would like, but our most popular drink here is called a Whim. You might come in and say, ‘I feel like gin, maybe something floral, and I’d like something a little tart, too.’ And they’re going to create something that doesn’t even exist. They just make something especially for you. That’s our specialty. We love our food, but our focus is most definitely the cocktails. We have Tiki Wednesdays. Our mixologist Andy [Stretch] is a big tiki guy, so the guys dress in tiki attire and boy oh boy those cocktails are absolutely fabulous.”

CodeX B.A.R.
29 Main St., Nashua
Open Tuesday through Saturday, beginning at 5 p.m.
Phone number – It’s a secret.
Web page – It’s a secret.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

• The Moka Pot moves — a little: Popular coffee and sandwich shop The Moka Pot in downtown Manchester (854-5921, facebook.com/TheMokaPotNH) has relocated. By about 50 feet. Relocating from the corner of Elm and Hanover Streets in Manchester, it has moved to the space next door on Hanover Street, the former City Hall Pub space. The Moka Pot’s new address is 8 Hanover St.

• New Hampshire’s official doughnut? Students from Bicentennial Elementary School in Nashua have proposed a bill to designate the apple cider doughnut as New Hampshire’s state doughnut. Rep. Laura Telerski, who represents Nashua in Concord, is the sponsor of the bill, HB1390. As reported in a Feb. 9 online story by Nashua InkLink, “three students, now in the fifth grade, testified in front of committee members to argue that highlighting the apple cider doughnut would boost the local economy during the fall.”

• The first meeting of a Supper Club: On its website, Arts Alley (20 S. Main St., Concord, 406-5666, artsalleyconcordnh.com) has described the inaugural meeting of its Supper Club at Rose and Rye on Friday, Feb. 20, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. as,“an intimate, four-course dinner reimaging classic diner comfort with modern flavor.” Tickets for this dinner, titled Modern Diner, Old Soul, are $97.88 each. Visit artsalleyconcordnh.com/event/modern-diner-old-soul-supper-club.

• Clay and cabernet: There will be a snack plate hand-building workshop at Wine on Main (9 N. Main St., Concord, 897-5828, wineonmainnh.com) with Black Olive Pottery on Thursday, Feb. 19, from 6 to 8 p.m. Tickets are $81.88.

• The magic of martinis: There will be a hands-on martini-making workshop at the Tuscan Market (Tuscan Village, 9 Via Toscana, Salem, 912-5467, tuscanbrands.com) on Saturday, Feb. 21, from 6 to 8 p.m. Explore classic and modern martinis using premium spirits and house-made mixers. Tickets are $64.74.

• “Oil have some of that, please”: Sweet Hill Farm (82 Newton Road, Plaistow, 974-7279, sweethillfarm.com) will hold an EVOO, Dark Balsamic, White and Rose Vinegar Tasting on Saturday, Feb. 21, from 5 to 8 p.m. Tickets are $7.18; see the farm’s Facebook page

• 8 Tablespoons (1 stick) butter, browned
• 3/4 cup (150 g) sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup (120 g) all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon citric acid (optional) – I have discovered that citric acid and browned butter complement each other very well. On the other hand, you might not have a bag of the stuff on hand. It’s one of those ingredients that you rarely need but keep finding uses for if you have it around.
• 3 ounces (85 g) chocolate or white chocolate chips
• 1 cup (150 g) frozen fruit – Most frozen fruit from a supermarket will work well for this. I particularly like the idea of a “tropical fruit blend” that you often find, with frozen pieces of mango, banana, pineapple and for some reason strawberries. My particular preference is that I’m not crazy about raspberries or blackberries because of the seeds, but that’s a personal thing.

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

Grease and line a 9×13” baking pan with parchment paper.

You can absolutely use an electric mixer to combine all these ingredients, but this is actually a pretty easy throw-together recipe that you can old-school your way through in a mixing bowl with a wooden spoon. Mix the browned butter and sugar together. If you are using an electric mixer, beat them together for a couple of minutes, until they get thoroughly combined.

Mix in an egg and the vanilla, then the dry ingredients. If you’re being super-conscientious, you might want to whisk the flour, baking powder, salt and citric acid together separately. If you don’t feel up to it, don’t worry. Betty Crocker and a team of commandos in Kevlar aprons will not come crashing through your window on zip-lines to arrest you on charges of baking laziness. You can just put the mixing bowl on a kitchen scale and add the amount of each by weight. If you do that, just make certain that you stir in the salt and citric acid first, so you can stir the mixture thoroughly and make sure they are evenly distributed.

Stir the chocolate chips in by hand, then transfer everything to the baking pan. Smooth the mixture out with your spoon, making sure you push it into all four corners. Finally, push the pieces of frozen fruit into the top surface of the batter. It should just about take up all the available surface area.

Pop the pan into the oven, and bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until it isn’t jiggly anymore and has browned a bit. Remove from oven, and set aside to cool.

When you’re ready to serve these bad boys, lift everything out by the parchment paper, then lay it out flat on your kitchen counter and cut it into brownie-sized pieces. If you have good self-control, this might be 12 or even 15 pieces. If you’ve had a particularly challenging day, it might be six unreasonably large pieces.

If you are in the mood to eat these with ice cream, bless you. However, hard-won experience has taught me that the cold ice cream will toughen the blondies up to the point where they are difficult to cut through with a spoon. You’d be better off dicing your blondie — reasonably sized or not — into small pieces, and sprinkling them on top of the ice cream.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Valentine’s Day leftovers — sweet!

Liz Ryan is a reference librarian and the adult programming coordinator at the Derry Public Library. Part of her job is to come up with activities for the Library to sponsor that will resonate with adults. She said that can be tough in the middle of the winter.

Her solution? A Post-Valentine’s Day Candy Taste Test.

“Food is something that gets people in,” Ryan said. She “had this idea of a Valentine’s candy taste test, and it was initially going to be before Valentine’s Day.” Unfortunately, the scheduling didn’t work out, and she had to move it to after Valentine’s Day. “We’re actually going to host it on the 18th,” she said, “which is actually better, because then we can go get all the discounted Valentine’s Day candy. That was exciting, because now it will be even more low-cost, because we can get it at half price.”

“We’re going to hold [this tasting] in our meeting room,” Ryan said. “We’re going to have stations that have a number of different types of candies at them — probably the really well-known ones like Reese’s, the Queen Anne’s chocolates, Cherry Cordials — I love those; I know they’re terrible — and maybe have some Skittles and stuff. We will try to take into account that people have dairy allergies or peanut allergies, so we’re going to put the bags out for people to look at, rather than writing everything out. And then at the end we’re going to have a vote for people’s favorites. There will be a ballot box and we’ll ask everyone, ‘Of everything you tried, what was your favorite?’”

Ryan is confident she will be able to find candies that will appeal to a wide range of tastes.

Because she will get to choose the candies, chocolate will almost certainly play a big part in lineup, Ryan said.

“Chocolate is always something I love. I will say that I’m not a big fan of coconut. And, well, as much as I like peanut butter, and I like almonds, and cashews and a lot of nuts, I don’t like chocolate-covered nuts that much, and I don’t really like, you know, peanuts and almonds and whatnot in my bars. If I had to pick my favorite chocolate, Lindt chocolates, hands down.” She said she hopes to find a good deal on them.

“In the end,” she said, “I’m a milk chocolate person. I have a sweet tooth. I think I get that from my grandmother. She lived to almost 103. Apparently, she had a sweet tooth and ate candy every day, almost up until the end.”

Candy
The Post-Valentine’s Candy Taste-Test will take place at the Derry Public Library (64 E. Broadway, Derry, 432-6140, derrypl.org) Wednesday, Feb.18, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. This event is free and open to the public, but participants are asked to register for it through the Library’s website, to determine how many people will be there and how much candy the staff should buy.