“When I see goats out in the field,” said Donna-Lee Woods, “I just cry for those goats inside barns because they don’t have Christmas trees. Right over there,” she said, pointing to a pile of pine and fir trees that had clearly seen better days, “there’s over 300 Christmas trees. They get dropped off from Newmarket and some of the other towns around here. People keep dropping them off all winter.”
“But the point is,” Woods continued, “the goats love them; it’s their forage. That’s what makes that healthy, alkaline [goat] milk. Every day, we give them three, four, five trees and they will eat everything right down to the white core of the trees. They use [the cores] as scratching posts all summer, and then in the fall time, we have a big bonfire.”
And in the meantime, there is cheese.
Wood and her husband, both former architects, manage a small herd of dairy goats at Hickory Nut Farm in Lee and use raw goat’s milk to make cheese, yogurt and soap, which they sell at area farmers markets.
“We also make a fudge,” Wood said, “which is a 1910 recipe. There’s no high-fructose corn syrup, so it’s not as smooth as most people expect. It’s crystal-y. The raw milk yogurt is very good, and the raw milk itself. Our soap is made with edible oils, not industrialized oils, so there are no chemicals. And you can use it as shampoo, and then you can lather it up and use it as a moisturizer. They use this sort of soap on babies with eczema because it’s so pure.”
But for the Woodses, it’s mostly about the cheese.
“Our cheeses are raw,” she said, explaining that heating goat milk during the pasteurization process breaks down some important nutrients and flavor compounds. “We don’t pasteurize. But our cheeses age for a minimum of two months at a certain temperature and a certain humidity, 54 degrees temperature and 84 percent humidity.” Maintaining those conditions can be particularly tricky in the winter, she said.
Hickory Nut Farm produces three main varieties of goat cheese: Lacey White, a firm, cheddar-like cheese with a distinct nutty flavor; Terrene, a blue-veined, “goaty” cheese that is aged longer than other varieties, and Chebar, a hard, Parmesan-like salty cheese with a buttery flavor. Woods said the only goat cheese she refuses to make is a traditional soft chevre. “Everybody makes that,” she said. “You can find it anywhere, so what is the point in making more of it?”
Woods said one of the things she likes most about selling cheese at markets is being able to talk one on one to customers, who often think they don’t like the flavor of goat cheese. They don’t understand the role pH plays in flavor, she said.
“I tell people, ‘You take a cube of the cheese, just a little cube, and eat half of it. You may not like the flavor, but swallow it, wait a few seconds, then eat the next half. You’re probably going to like it.’ Because what’s happened is the cheese has changed the pH of their palate. Our palates tend to be very acidic because of the types of food we eat.” The high pH of goat cheese neutralizes some of that acidity, Wood said. “That’s the true flavor of the cheese the second time around.”
“When people tell me they don’t like goat cheese,” Wood said, “I say, ‘Do you drink red wine?’ A lot of times they don’t because it tastes bitter to them. I tell them, ‘You probably have a tannin sensitivity because there’s a lot of tannin in red wine, just as there is in goat milk, because of what the goats eat.”
Like Christmas trees.
Cheese! Hickory Nut Farm products are available at the farm (22 York Lane, Lee) and at the Saturday Concord Winter Farmers Market (7 Eagle Square, Concord,downtownconcordwinterfarmersmarket.com). During farmers market season, Hickory Nut Farm products will be available at several area and Boston markets.
The Goat expands on the idea of traditional macaroni and cheese
Erica Fleury has given a lot of thought to macaroni and cheese. She is the owner of The Goat in Manchester, and she considers mac and cheese a very important food.
“I think it goes back to your childhood,” she said. “Everybody probably associates [macaroni and cheese] with their childhood. For people of my generation, it was our comfort food when we were kids. So I think they make that association. As a kid in the ’80s I definitely had Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, and my mom would make a homemade baked one once in a while; that was always good. And then as I got older I preferred Annie’s white cheddar.”
Today macaroni and cheese plays an important role at her restaurant. In addition to an entree portion — “It comes with a slice of fresh cornbread and it’s delicious,” Fleury said — The Goat offers a flight of different interpretations of mac and cheese. (For more on specialty flights at area restaurants, see our cover story on page 8.)
“It comes with three different types of macaroni and cheese,” Fleury said. “We have our house-made cheese sauce and we have a version with barbecued brisket, a truffle bacon version, and one with buffalo chicken with blue cheese.”
To Fleury, an ideal macaroni and cheese depends on two factors, texture and cheesiness.
“I think it has to have a homemade cheese sauce with some sharp cheddar in there, so it has a little bit of a bite,” she said. “And the pasta has to have some texture — it has to be al dente — preferably spirals. That’s what we use. And then you can add specialty ingredients. [Macaroni and cheese] definitely lets you get creative. Everybody has their own version of it and their own toppings and their own way of making it. Again, I think it goes back to how you ate it from your childhood.”
The three types of macaroni and cheese on The Goat’s flight start with a common base of the same mac and cheese, Fleury said.
“Our flight has small samples of the different versions,” she said. “When you’re eating our flight, it’s more about the toppings. So the base is the same … but you still get a bunch of different flavor profiles because you have the barbecue sauce on the brisket. We cook the brisket in-house and it melts in your mouth, but not like falling apart. There are solid pieces in there, but it’s definitely slow-cooked and delicious, but not to the point where it’s like mush, you know?” This gives the dish a contrast in textures.
“Then, the Buffalo mac and cheese has Buffalo chicken,” Fleury continued. “It’s fried chicken coated in Buffalo sauce, but then there’s the drizzle of blue cheese and also blue cheese crumbles, which gives it a complex flavor. You have a lot of different flavors going on with all the versions, but [the Buffalo chicken] definitely changes up the flavor of the whole dish for sure.”
Finally there is a version of macaroni and cheese with bacon and truffles. “It’s not super papery thin bacon,” Fleury said, “and it’s not the thicker bacon that we use on some of our other dishes. We make sure it’s crispy and then dice it up and put it on top and it has some truffle oil mixed in there and it gives another really complex flavor with everything mixing together.”
“ I think people like the flight with all the creative toppings on there, the different flavors,” Fleury said, “but mostly, I think they just really like macaroni and cheese.”
Mac & Cheese flight The Goat (50 Old Granite St., Manchester, 222-1677, goatbarnation.com/manchester) serves macaroni and cheese on its dinner menu throughout the year, but their Mac & Cheese flight is only available during cold months, usually from January through May. The Goat’s warm-weather comfort-food flight is centered around queso cheese sauce.
• Easter bake sale: The Assumption Greek Orthodox Church Ladies Philoptochos Society will hold an Easter bake sale on Saturday, April 4, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Assumption church hall (111 Island Pond Road, Manchester, 623-2045, assumptionnh.org). Spinach peta, cheese peta, Greek cookies, Greek pastry, and Easter bread will be available for sale. Quantities are limited. For information call the church office at 623-2045.
• Easter eats: LaBelle Winery (345 Route 101, Amherst; 14 Route 111, Derry; 672-9898, labellewinery.com) will host special Easter Sunday dining at its Amherst and Derry locations Sunday, April 5, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Bistro and Americus Restaurant will both serve the same three-course Easter menu at a set price. Dining takes place in LaBelle’s dining rooms and event spaces, accommodating all group sizes, from intimate gatherings to large celebrations. The cost for adults is $80, and an a la carte children’s menu will be available, with items ranging from $8 to $15. Advance reservations through the LaBelle website are highly recommended.
• April’s martini-cupcake pairing: The theme of the Copper Door’s (15 Leavy Drive, Bedford, 488-2677, or 41 S. Broadway, Salem, 458-2033, copperdoor.com) martini and cupcake pairing for April is Strawberry Shortcake. This month’s featured martini is made from Smirnoff Whipped Cream Vodka, strawberry cream liqueur, white creme de cacao, strawberry syrup, cream and fresh strawberries with a shortcake rim for $14.75. April’s cupcake features a lemon cupcake, with a strawberry preserve filling, cream cheese frosting, fresh whipped cream, a fresh strawberry and a topping of strawberry crumble, for $11.
• Wild game dinner: Join the 603 Brewery (42 Main St., Londonderry, 404-6123, 603brewery.com) to kick off New Hampshire’s Craft Beer Week with a five-course pairing dinner featuring 603 Brewery beers and a collection of game dishes. Your ticket includes a Daydreaming/603 Brewery collaboration welcoming beer poured from the cask engine, a five-course dinner and a take-home NH Pint Days 2026 collectors’ pint glass. Dishes are served as is, with no substitutions. The dinner will take place Wednesday, April 8, beginning at 6 p.m., at Cask & Vine (1 E. Broadway, Derry, 965-3454, cask.life/cask-and-vine). Tickets are $99 per person, or $79 without alcohol. To register, search “603 Brewery Wild Game Night.”
• National Deep Dish Day cooking class: UNO Pizzeria & Grill (15 Fort Eddy Road, Concord, 226-8667) will host a Deep Dish Pizza cooking class and lunch Saturday, April 4, at noon. Ticket includes pizza demonstration and pizza with a salad, a beverage and a dessert. Tickets are $64.80 through unos.com/cookingclasses.
• Maple madness: Averill House Vineyard (21 Averill Road, Brookline, 244-3165, averillhousevineyard.com) will continue to offer its popular Wine Tasting, Maple Wine Cream and Tour, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, April 3 through 5. Each tour will include a tasting of two maple-infused wines, a cup of maple-infused WineCream ice cream, a full wine cellar, winery and 1830s Tasting Room Tour, and an Averill the Elephant Embossed Souvenir wine glassm, according to the event’s eventbrite.com page where you can purchase tickets for weekends throughout April.
• BBQ Easter: KC’s Rib Shack (837 Second St, Manchester, 627-7427, ribshack.net) will host its All-You-Can-Eat Easter Buffet, Sunday, April 5, from 12 to 5 p.m. Expect smoked ham, brisket, pulled pork, ribs and more with side dishes. The cost for adults is $32, and $15 for children 5 to 10. Reserve online through facebook.com/kcsribshack.
Small bites and small sips OFFER A big flavor experience
Having a hard time picking just one thing from the menu? Fortunately, there is a tool to make life easier when you’re feeling indecisive: flights. Originally the province of extra-fancy restaurants or vineyards, flights allow a guest to choose several — usually four to six — tasting-sized portions of beer or wine or even pancakes.
Looking to try a bunch of flavors in one sitting? Here are a few places offering flights.
Five beers atRockingham Brewing Co.
1 Corporate Park Drive, Unit 1, Derry, 216-2324, rockinghambrewing.com, about $7
Microbreweries were some of the first businesses to serve flights, and especially for breweries with large numbers of beer on tap or unusual flavors or styles of beer, flights are a good way to introduce a guest to a range of what a brewery has to offer, said Ali Leleszi, owner of the Rockingham Brewing Co.
“We offer custom flights of five different beers — 4-ounce samples — in our tap room,” she said, “which allows our customers to choose a variety of beers rather than settling on just a full pint. It’s usually first-time visitors who opt for a flight rather than a full pour. We definitely encourage [a flight] if people want to try a little bit of everything.”
Leleszi said many people who order flights come in with a general idea of what style of beer they’d like to try.
“Usually,” she said, “there’s a style that they kind of gravitate toward and we can help them craft a flight that would be toward their preference. Oftentimes we have five different IPAs on [tap], so you could do a full hoppy flight if you’d like, or maybe people will go for a darker flight, but maybe they’ll put a wild card in there for a beer that maybe they wouldn’t have tried otherwise, that’s outside of their comfort zone.” On any given day Rockingham Brewing has 15 beers on tap. “And we have flights of five,” Leleszi said, so they can order about a third of the menu at a time.”
Ordering suggestion: “We’re releasing a dortmunder, which is a traditional German-style lager, towards the end of April, Lelleszi said. “That’s a returning beer for us. It’s a collaboration with Kelsen Brewing. Also, sometimes we offer flight pairings….”
Four iced coffees or milkshakes or martinisat Yolk Grill
116 Bridge St., Pelham, 635-09925, or 6 Elm St., Nashua, 864-0695, theyolkgrill.com; iced coffees are $16.95, milkshakes are $20.95, martinis are $35.95
Emily Kurs from The Yolk in Pelham said a surprising number of Girls’ Breakfasts Out involve drinking a flight of martinis.
“There can be one person who gets it, but ideally we have couples come in, usually two girlfriends going out for breakfast. It makes for a good little Girls’ Day. You can pick three of our martinis that we have on our specials, and customize it however you like, and then we bring it on a little tray. Espresso martinis are always popular, and we have a chocolate bunny martini right now — it’s called a Bad Bunny.”
Kurs said the options for iced coffee flights are changed frequently.
“Usually every two to three weeks we try to change it up,” she said. “We’ll change up the flavors, we’ll change up the topping, basically to just fit the theme of the month. Right now … Easter is right around the corner. We have four different flavors related to Easter themes like Marshmallow Peeps. There’s one that’s carrot cake. It has a little brownie on top,” Each serving of coffee is about 6 ounces, she said. “They come as black coffee topped with a little bit of whipped cream.”
“The milkshakes follow the same theme,” Kurs said, “but they have different toppings, so you won’t be getting the same thing. … The same idea, vanilla, Oreo. We do some cotton candy sometimes. Right now there’s banana on there. We try to change up the flavors pretty often.”
Ordering suggestion: “Honestly, I’m an Oreo girl,” Kurs said, “so I love a nice Oreo milkshake with some vanilla frosting and Oreos on the rim. I’ll put whipped cream on there, too.”
Six flavors of ice creamat Social Club Creamery
138 N. Main St., Concord, 333-2111, socialclubcreamery.com
According to Cole Glaude, owner of Social Club Creamery, ice cream flights are a popular Date Night activity.
“It’s mostly couples in general that want to try a bunch of different flavors,” he said. “In total, [a flight] is a lot of ice cream — I think maybe just a little too much for one person. And if they split a flight, it usually saves them money instead of getting a couple of different scoops of ice cream.”
Social Club’s flights have six half-scoops of ice cream.
“Basically,” Glaude said, “it’s just a sampler of six different flavors and it comes in a six-slot egg carton. I want to say in total it equals about three scoops of ice cream, but you get six different flavors, so it gets you a nice variety. You can try out a good majority of our menu without having to commit to one flavor.”
The ice cream menu at Social Club has two sections — several varieties of familiar flavors that are available year-round, and several monthly flavors that are more unusual and only available for a limited time. Glaude said a flight allows enthusiasts to try all the new flavors at a time.
“A lot of people will try the four monthly specials,” he said, “and then have an additional two, or sometimes they’ll just do six of the classics that they’ve never been in before. Usually the staff will give them recommendations on their favorites, but it’s completely up to the customer.”
Ordering suggestion: “I would probably do at least two seasonals,” Glaude said, “just so they could try out the monthly specials that we have going at the time. And then I would probably do honeycomb, salted caramel, peanut butter brownie, and then probably like maple latte — those aren’t too far out, not like our deep fried pickle ice cream or anything like that.”
Five wines or liquorsat Flag Hill Winery and Distillery
297 N. River Road, Lee, 659-2949, flaghill.com, $15
“We are a winery and distillery, so we produce all of our own wines and spirits that we serve,” said David Brustlin, from Flag Hill Winery and Distillery. “The flights in our tasting room are pretty straightforward. We have a wide range of products, and you can taste any five of them, so if you just want to do wines, if you just want to do spirits or you want to mix and match, so you just pick five. For wine we pour an ounce of each, and for spirits we pour a half ounce.”
White wines are a popular category for flights, Brustlin said.
“People really like dry white wines,” he said, “and our Flag Hill whites are very popular, but if people like sweeter whites, our Cayuga White [a fruity wine made from Cayuga grapes] and the La Crescent [a sweet dessert wine] are very well loved. We also have some carbonated wine, a bubbly version of the Cayuga White, which people love. Then we have a wide range of spirits. People tend to want to try our whiskey, because we grow our own corn, rye and wheat on site. We also have a wide range of fruit liquors that appeal to a wide audience. Probably our Maple Bourbon — which is our straight whiskey with maple syrup added to it — is the spirit that almost everybody tries.”
Four margaritas at Raices Authentic Mexican Cuisine
Margarita flight on a Ferris wheel at Raices Authentic Mexican Cuisine. Photo by John Fladd.
2626 Brown Ave., Manchester, 932-2770, raicesnh.com, $23.99
A flight of margaritas at Raices comes balanced on a model Ferris wheel.
“This is a margarita flight that we call La Rueda de la Fortuna,” said Jose, one of Raices’ bartenders, “and we have four flavors — blackberry, tamarind, mango, and strawberry.” This flight is very popular, he said. “A lot of people order this…. People share it with their friends.
Which one should you grab before your friends get to it? “My favorite is tamarind,” Jose said. Tamarind and mango.”
Four types of pancakes or mimosasat Purple Finch Cafe
124 S. River Road, Bedford, 232-1953, purplefinchcafe.com, pancakes are $25
A pancake flight at the Purple Finch is big, manager Meagan Prudhomme said — shockingly big.
Pancake flight at Purple Finch Cafe. Courtesy photo.
“You get two buttermilk pancakes; those are just plain. You get two chocolate chip pancakes. You get two blueberry pancakes and then two Fruity Pebbles. It comes with fresh fruit on the board, so there’s fresh strawberries, fresh bananas and fresh blueberries. And it comes with whipped cream on it. These are full-sized, 6-inch pancakes. It might be the perfect family meal. Everybody can split it. A lot of people even get it as an appetizer for big parties.”
Prudhomme said that far and away the most popular pancake in the pancake flight is the one made with Fruity Pebbles cereal.
“Everybody is really surprised that the Fruity Pebbles stay crispy,” she said, “because everybody assumes that with it going into the pancake batter that they would become soggy. But no! They’re nice and crispy and delicious.” The cereal doesn’t actually soak in pancake batter, she said. It is sprinkled across the tops of the pancakes before they are flipped, so it doesn’t have a chance to get soggy.
Perhaps the best thing about the pancake flight, Prudhomme said, is “that it goes really well with our mimosa flights. We have a couple — we have one called the Taste of New England, where you get a mimosa from each season. The spring one is a honey-lavender-lemonade mimosa. The summer is a pineapple sunrise. The fall one is apple cider. And the winter one is called the Jack Frost and it’s made with blue curacao and lemonade. We also have a Rainbow Mimosa flight, and that one is orange Aperol and then mango cherry. We have a tropical Midori, which is a green color. And then the last one is the honey lavender lemonade, just like from the New England one.”
Several small piesat Slightly Crooked Pies
1209 Elm St., Manchester, 661-4575, slightlycrookedpies.com, three 5-inch pies or six 3-inch pies are $27
“I have found that a lot of people will look at a menu and they get overwhelmed,” Lauren Cline, owner of Slightly Crooked Pies, said. “And they have a hard time picking — ‘Do I want blueberry or do I want blueberry and lavender? Do I want cherry or cherry coconut crumble?’ And so if you do a pie flight you can try it all. And you can try a little bit of it all. With pies, you’re an attentive audience, you’re in a dedicated area, and you’re trying a dedicated product. And it’s a great way for you to be able to experience something that you might not be willing to commit to, right? So those of us who have food commitment issues, it’s a fantastic way to do that. And if you don’t like it, you didn’t really lose that much; it takes the second guess out of there.”
Liz Hitchcock, the owner of Manchester Distillery, has opinions about the order in which a flight-orderer should drink her spirits. She suggests moving from light liquors with some subtle flavors to progressively more assertive ones.
“You might start with our vodka [which has a clean, neutral flavor], then move into our gin, which is a crisp, American, citrusy-forward gin that finishes with classic gin flavors like juniper, coriander, and angelica root,” she said.
“We then offer a taste of our barrel-finished gin,” Hitchcock continued, “which sits in a high char, white oak barrel for 90 days and takes on the color of a whiskey and gives it a great new flavor.” Barrel-aging gin is a fairly recent development in the distilling world, and many such gins are lightly sweetened, she said. “That actually gives me a little bit of a headache, so ours isn’t sweetened at all; it’s just finished in the barrel. Then you probably would move into what we consider a ‘contract whiskey.’ It is a typical whiskey that we have contracted from out of state, brought it in and finished in our own special way. We call it ‘Double Bluff’ because it’s a bit of a fun play on the fact that we’re kind of making up things as we go just like you do when you’re doing a bluff. It’s a bourbon whiskey and it’s got sweet corn with an honest rye. It’s smooth — in fact, even our barrel strength, which you can sometimes get in the tasting room, which is 110 proof, people are surprised at how smooth it is. And then finally, we finish usually with our chocolate liqueur called ‘Speedy,’ which is made with cocoa nibs, French vanilla beans, and sugar, which kind of is like the dessert at the end of the tasting.”
Four cupcake-sized cheesecakes at Big Dog Eats, Home of Choo Choo’s Cheesecakes
20 South St., Milford, 249-5008, bigdogeats.com, $22
According to Shanna Allen, owner of Big Dog Eats, what makes her cheesecakes uniformly excellent is that they all start with the same perfect cheesecake base.
“Our cheesecakes are always the same flavor,” she said. “It’s the toppings and the crust that change. You always get that same decadent cheesecake that we have.”
Cheesecake flight at Big Dog Eats. Courtesy photo.
A flight of cheesecakes might vary from season to season, Allen said, but, “they almost always have a plain with a graham crust, then some sort of a fruit compote. That’s a classic. The fruit goes on the side, for the people that don’t want anything. We usually have another flavor which we have all the time — maybe an apple crisp, or a turtle, or a plain cheesecake with a chocolate crust. We make different kinds of fruit creams, fresh fruit sauces and compote, lemon and lime curds. That all depends on the season…. Right now, for the end of March, we’ve done pistachio and then for April and for Mother’s Day we’re doing a blueberry-lemon, which has our lemon curd topped with our blueberry compote. Our cheesecakes aren’t inherently too sweet, so it really complements the sauces and toppings.They’re normally garnished with edible flowers.”
While you might think most of these four-packs of cheesecake are bought as gifts, Allen said that isn’t the case.
“We have some people come in twice a week,” she said, “just to get them for themselves to bring home for dinner, and again, for after dinner. A lot of people will get the four and sit and eat and have a cocktail and then they will share like half of each so they try all four flavors.”
Four mimosas or cocktails or mocktails or iced coffees at Friendly Toast Bedford
4 Main St., Bedford, 836-8907, thefriendlytoast.com/bedford-nh, $19
Drink flights at The Friendly Toast are inspired by one particular time of the week, COO Staci Pinard said.
“We’re known for our brunch,” she said, “but we’re really excited about our bar program as well. For us, what we serve from the bar really needs to match the food. So we recently launched a spring bar menu. So we do a seasonal bar menu and we currently have three featured flights on that. We have three alcoholic flights, and then we have a wellness mocktail flight as well.”
The most popular flight, Pinard said, is a classic mimosa flight.
“This is something we do — rotate with some seasonal flavors. We’re headed into spring, so we designed the mimosas around that.” This includes a ‘Market Square” mimosa, she said — a classic orange juice-based version. “We have the Rose Berry Bliss,” she said. “This is a new addition to our menu. Most of our mimosas have your classic Champagne on it. This one actually features a really nice rosé prosecco, so you get a nice kind of rosé hint to it. We use our mixed berry jam, which we make fresh in house, and then it has a elderflower liqueur as well. And then fresh lemon juice that we squeeze in house as well.” There is also an “Extra Fancy” mimosa, she said, made with Stiggins’ Fancy Pineapple Rum. This is followed by a blood orange Aperol Spritz.
There is also a spring-themed cocktail flight, Pinard said, called The Secret Garden, with drinks making use of white wine, berries, tequila, coconut water, grapefruit liqueur and several other light, zesty ingredients. There is also a non-alcoholic juice-based flight with carrot ginger turmeric juice, pineapple, kale, guava, and more blood orange.
Three espresso martinisat The Miller’s Tavern
1087 Elm St., Manchester, 854-8442, themillerstavern.com, $20
You’ve got your choice of two different espresso martini flights at The Miller’s Tavern, said bartender Kristyn Merritt — a Light Flight and a Dark Flight.
“The dark has no Baileys,” she said, pointing to each martini in turn.
“Here is an Original,” she said, “and there’s a salted caramel, and a peanut butter. The original does not have a rim, but it gets the three coffee beans.” By this she meant that two of the martini glasses had flavorings on their rims. “The salted caramel has caramel vodka, RumChata, and it has caramel and salt on the rim. And then the peanut butter gets chocolate and peanuts on the rim, and has Screwball [a peanut butter flavored whiskey], peanut butter, and the Baileys. The original dark is just Kahlua, vanilla vodka, and espresso.”
“It goes without saying that there are some secret ingredients,” she said. “They are delicious, but they are secret.”
Merritt said the flight is popular after dinner.
“Customers wait till dessert,” she said, “and everybody gets a round of espresso martinis. But some people start with it.”
“We have a lot of lemonades that we can actually do,” said Jill Lucas, owner of The Spot, “but on our board we feature four of them to go in a flight. One of our baristas came up with most of these and right now we’re calling our lemonade flight The Garden Social.”
“The first one is a cucumber and honey lemonade. It’s got fresh muddled cucumber with honey. The second one is a sunburnt mango lemonade, which is fresh muddled mango with Tajin [a chili-lime spice blend]. The third one is a botanical berry lemonade, which is fresh muddled strawberries and basil. And then the fourth one is a blueberry breeze lemonade, which has fresh muddled blueberries and mint.”
“We just started this flight a couple of weeks ago,” Lucas said, “but people have started ordering it. We make fresh-squeezed lemonade here, so this seems like a natural for us. We can do hot chocolate flights. We do coffee flights. We do chai flights. We can do, you know, lemonade flights. We do whatever somebody wants.”
5½ cups (1,250 g) whole milk – We don’t want this pudding to be too fatty or not fatty enough. Whole milk brings just the right amount. If you want to make a vegan version of this, substitute a plant milk with around a 4 percent level of fat.
½ cup (99 g) sugar – This doesn’t seem like enough. It is.
½ teaspoon salt
Heaping ½ cup (120 g) medium-grained rice – Why medium-grain? We’re counting on the rice to throw off threads of starch to help give the pudding its texture. Short-grained rice – sushi or Arborio rice – would give off so much starch that the individual grains would start to collapse into mush. Regular jasmine or long-grain rice won’t throw off as much starch as we’re looking for, giving the final pudding a looser texture.
2 teaspoons vanilla – to bring depth and deliciousness
Ground cinnamon, or nutmeg, or cardamom to sprinkle on top (very optional)
In a large saucepan, bring the milk, sugar and salt to a boil, stirring occasionally.
Crash the heat to its lowest setting, and stir in the rice. This will cool the mixture down slightly, so stay with it, stirring occasionally, until it comes to a gentle simmer. This means that the surface of the liquid will be moving around, thinking about bubbling, but not quite committing to a full boil.
Leave the pudding to simmer for about an hour. If you’re a nervous cook, go get a chair, and sit near the stove reading a martial arts magazine or doing a crossword puzzle. If you are more relaxed about such things, set a timer, and go into the next room to catch up on your binge-watching. Set a timer for about half an hour to remind you to go stir the pudding, but otherwise leave it to find its own way.
After 50 to 60 minutes, check on the pudding. If it is still pretty liquidy, let it cook a little longer. Maybe goose the temperature a tiny bit. You are looking for a consistency like that of yogurt. If it seems thick enough, kill the heat, stir it once or twice, and leave it to cool.
Eventually, come back to your cooled pudding, and stir the vanilla into it. Because vanilla evaporates at fairly low temperatures, taking vanilla-y flavor compounds with it, you’ll get more bang for your buck vanilla-wise if you add it to cool or cooling foods.
At this point the pudding will have a firm, proud texture. It would welcome being eaten right away but would also be perfectly happy to be chilled. It depends on whether you are a warm rice pudding person, a chilled rice pudding person, or somewhere in between.
When you are ready to serve the pudding, you might want to stir in a small amount of additional milk to loosen it up. Or not. Rice pudding wants what you want. It only seeks your comfort and happiness.
Featured photo: Rice pudding. Photo by John Fladd.
Fisher Cats get ready for another season of baseball and eats
One of the most challenging aspects of being responsible for the food and drinks at a ballpark is to serve fun and surprising foods to the fans, but at the same time to make sure that the staff is never surprised themselves.
According to Brad McClennan, the Fisher Cats’ new Director of Food and Beverage, there has been a change to the team’s approach to feeding fans.
“We’ve had an opportunity to run our production now ourselves,” he said. “We are part of DBH, Diamond Baseball Holdings, which is our ownership group. It is the largest minor league baseball owner in the country with 48 clubs, soon to be 49 actually. And many of the clubs this year have decided to produce our food in-house, so we are now a DBH concession.” He hopes having so many minor league clubs working together on their catering will mean the food at all the clubs will always be of a high standard. The hot dogs will always be good hot dogs. Popcorn will be consistently fresh, crisp and warm from the popper, regardless of which ballpark a fan visits.
Nobody is unhappy about getting consistently good food, McClennan said, but that creates its own challenges. How can a ballpark maintain its individuality and not serve the exact same food as all the other teams in the same group?
The whole identity of a minor league team, McClennan said, is to make each team an expression of its home community. The individual food experience at each park is part of the local culture.
“The goal [of working together with other teams in the Fisher Cats’ group] from creation was always to create a network for resources and tools but to keep local local. The menus at different parks will be very different. There will be ballpark classics and staples at every park, of course. You never want to not be able to get a hot dog or a bag of peanuts somewhere — and a cold beer — in a game.” But at the same time the Fisher Cats want to be able to represent New Hampshire through the food at Delta Dental Stadium.
“You’ll see a much better tie-in to some of our local [beer] distributors, for instance,” McClennan said, “like Amoskeag and Kettlehead. You’ll also start to see some products from LaBelle Winery, which we’re very excited about. On the food side you’ll see some fun new desserts. We’re keeping most of the specific items close to the vest, but one item that we’re proud of is a 24-ounce Bavarian pretzel that’s the size of a large pizza. We want people to see it and gasp. It is going to be a showcase; I personally can’t wait to see a 10- or 12-year-old walking around trying to eat that whole thing…. It’s really, really cool.”
There are plans underway to have food and drink specials specific to particular celebrations or to reflect visiting teams, McClennan said.
“We definitely take into consideration our opponents, “ he said, “because I think there’s some really fun, natural synergies you can promote with, especially with some of our local rivals, like right up the road in Portland. It’s kind of fun to have such a team that close; it’s a blast.” There will be food and drink specials to reflect games played by the Fisher Cats’ alter egos, the Chicken Tenders or the Space Potatoes.
“There are a lot of different synergies with the Tenders, of course, but we’ll also have Brandon and Lauren from [Manchester restaurant] The Potato Concept back this year again. They’ll be joining us back again for Space Potato weekends, which will be … kind of spread out throughout the year.”
Play ball, eat pretzels The New Hampshire Fisher Cats will open the 2026 season on Friday, April 3, with a home game against the Binghamton Rumble Ponies beginning at 6:03 p.m.
