Author: John Fladd

Poké, but vegetarian

How a Friendly Toast chef develops specials

The Friendly Toast changes its specials every eight weeks. Its special for June and July is something called a Faux-ke Poké, a vegetarian take on a Hawaiian poké bowl.

It looks exactly like poké but is made up of marinated pink pineapple, mashed avocado, pickled red onion and diced cucumber. It clearly doesn’t taste like authentic poké — no raw tuna — but it plays sweet, rich and acidic flavors off each other. In addition, each major ingredient has a different texture. On top of everything, in celebration of Pride Month, the colors — purple, green, red, and pink — are colors of the Pride rainbow flag.

How does a dish like this come about?

Justin Fischer is The Friendly Toast’s Director of Culinary Operations. Among other duties, he is in charge of recipe development for the chain’s 12 locations, which include its original spot in Portsmouth as well as locations in Bedford and Nashua as well as in Maine, Vermont and Massachusetts. He said this particular dish developed from one particular ingredient: pink pineapple.

“It’s this fantastic ingredient that I really wanted to work with,” Fischer said. “We’ve got a few distributors we work with. If I tell them, ‘I’ve got this fantastic ingredient; can you find it for me?,’ they’ll get it. Each of the pink pineapples came in its own individual box!”

Costa Rican pink pineapples have a firm texture, and a color much like that of raw tuna, though obviously they taste very different. The pineapple, which gets its pink color from lycopene, an enzyme that helps give tomatoes their color, has a sweet, perfumy taste that Fischer decided to pair with the richness of lightly mashed avocado.

“Once we added the avocado, we needed a little acidity, which we got from the pickled red onion,” Fischer said.

One of the constraints Fischer and his team work under is to keep new recipes simple to prepare and use ingredients that Friendly Toast kitchens would mostly already have in rotation.

“Originally, we tried this [dish] as a spring roll,” Fisher said. “It was good — everyone liked it — but there were a lot of steps to teach the staff at all our locations.” So the development team worked to reconfigure the recipe.

The decision was made to add more sweetness and some umami (savoriness), so maple and soy sauce were added to the dish’s marinade. Spiciness was added through an aioli flavored with Korean chiles.

“We had a spicy salmon roll toast [on the menu already],” Fischer said. “That had been one of our first attempts to make a poké-inspired dish, and we had developed the gochujang aioli for that.” Wrapping the poké spring rolls in rice paper and deep frying them had been complicated in terms of adding more steps to their preparation, and had changed the temperature, but the fried rice paper had added a welcome crunch and flavor, so as the dish developed, the team decided to fry it on its own and serve it on the side of the poké as a garnish. Traditional poké has sesame, salt and green onions, so this interpretation is sprinkled with everything bagel seasoning, which adds yet another layer of flavor, color and texture.

At the same time that Fischer and his team were developing The Friendly Toast’s spring and summer specials, they were also reconfiguring all the restaurant’s recipes to eliminate peanuts and tree nuts.

“It’s really important to us that everyone can try our food, so we spend a lot of time thinking about allergies,” said Fischer. The chain announced earlier this month that it was eliminating nuts from all its locations. “The Friendly Toast has transformed its kitchen protocols and menu to include safe meals for children with food allergies,” it announced in a press release on June 12, citing CDC data that one in 13 American children has a food allergy.

The Friendly Toast
4 Main St., Bedford, 836-8907, and 225 DW Highway, Nashua, 864-0051, thefriendlytoast.com

The Weekly Dish 24/07/04

News from the local food scene

• Community pancakes: The Merrimack Rotary Club (portal.clubrunner.ca/2943) will hold its annual Pancake Breakfast featuring pancakes, sausage, juice and coffee on Thursday, July 4, at Merrimack High School (38 McElwain St., Merrimack) from 8 to 11 a.m. The cost is $10 for adults, $8 for teenagers and seniors, $5 for children, and free for children 3 and younger.

• Communicating with, and drinking, spirits: Join Averill House Vineyard (21 Averill Road, Brookline, 244-3165, averillhousevineyard.com) and Intuitive Medium Jessica Moseley for Spirit to Spirits, a group medium reading and wine tasting in the vineyard’s historic 1830’s estate on Saturday, July 6, from 6 to 8 p.m. Tickets are $45 each and include a seat at the group medium reading and a wine tasting flight of four vintages, or a single glass of wine from Averill House Vineyards.

• Getting a grip on jams and jellies: The Educational Farm at Joppa Hill (174 Joppa Hill Road, Bedford, 472-4724, sites.google.com/theeducationalfarm.org/joppahillfarm) will hold a class on making jams, jellies and preserves on Sunday, July 7, from 1 to 2 p.m. The class will be taught by Betsey Golon, certified master food preserver from the University of Maine. This event requires registration. Tickets are $20 per person when purchased online, or $25 per person onsite.

Gazpacho

Here is a cold Spanish soup for days when it’s so hot that you can’t finish typing a coherent…

  • 2 pounds (900 g) fresh tomatoes
  • ¼ cup (50 g) pickled jalapeños 
  • 1 medium-sized cucumber, peeled
  • 1 small white onion, peeled
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • 2 teaspoons kosher salt, or coarse sea salt
  • ½ cup (100 gr) extra virgin olive oil
  • 3 slices of stale, crusty bread — Italian or French
  • 2 teaspoons sherry vinegar

Roughly chop the tomatoes, cucumber, onion and garlic, then transfer them to your blender. Mine is a heavy-duty job, named Steve, but a regular blender, an immersion (stick) blender, or food processor will do the trick, too.

Add the salt and pickled jalapeños, then blend everything, slowly at first, then more briskly. Your blender has been impatiently waiting for a chance to really go to town on something, so give him a treat and work your way through the dial or buttons, and let him really exert himself. You’ll be able to feel his smile as he sucks chunks to the bottom of the jar and powers through them.

Let your blender play with the puree for a couple of minutes, until everything has been broken down about as much as it’s going to be, then bring the speed back down to whatever equates to “medium” on your device.

You know that detachable plug in the center of your blender lid that you’ve always wondered vaguely about? Now is your chance to put it to use. While your proto-gazpacho is still blending, remove the plug and drizzle the olive oil through the hole and into your pinkish mixture. Blend everything for another 30 seconds or so, to make certain the olive oil is completely incorporated.

Strain the mixture through a fine-mesh strainer. This is to remove any remaining bits of seeds or tomato skins. Depending on how fine your strainer is, this will probably take about 20 minutes. You can help the process along by scraping the walls of the strainer with a spoon from time to time.

Meanwhile, soak your bread slices in water, then squeeze them dry.

Check on the gazpacho in your strainer. If it still looks fairly liquid, stir it around to encourage more straining, then go find something to do for a few minutes. How long has it been since you went through the top shelf in your refrigerator and got rid of all the food that has turned into science experiments?

When your gazpacho has thoroughly drained, discard the solids, thanking them for giving so deeply of themselves, then pour the liquid back into your blender.

Add your soggy bread, then blend everything for another minute or so.

Gazpacho is at its best ice-cold, so it needs to be chilled in your refrigerator for at least six hours. If you don’t have immediate plans for hummus or piña coladas, find some room on the bottom shelf, and just store it in the blender jar.

Right before serving, remove the blender jar from the refrigerator. Add two teaspoons of the best vinegar you have — sherry or Champagne vinegar is good, but it doesn’t have to be that fancy — and give it one last whirl in the blender.

This is delicious, but very, very smooth. If you feel like you’re missing some texture, add chunks of torn bread for garnish.

This is a festive-looking soup. Depending on your tomatoes, it might be anywhere from a pastel pink color to something like a terracotta orange. You might find yourself facing a bowl of it and saying to yourself, “I don’t know; it’s really hot. I’m not sure I’m up for soup….”

But you went to all this trouble, so you figure you owe it to yourself to at least try it, so you taste a spoonful.

And your mouth explodes in Technicolor.

This is vibrant and cold, and fresh and acidic and cold, and one spoonful just isn’t enough. It’s really good. Why don’t you make this every week during the summer?

That’s a good question.

Featured Photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Pastrami to go

Jewish food fest serves deli staples, baked goods & more

Temple B’nai Israel in Laconia is taking orders now for its 2024 Jewish Food Festival.

For 27 years the Reformed Jewish Congregation has held a food festival, and for 23 of those years it was very much like many food festivals held by religious communities. Until the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020.

“It used to be a very different format,” said spokesperson Barbara Katz. “We used to have an on-site food festival at the Temple. One day a year, people came by the droves. They lined up down the street. They bought food to eat there. They bought food to take home. And then Covid hit.”

When the lockdown was announced in the spring of 2020, it put the Temple in a bit of a bind. A lot of the food for the summer Festival had already been prepared and frozen.

“It was like, ‘OK, what are we going to do with this? Are we giving it away?’” Katz remembered. Fortunately, there was already an online ordering system, so fans of Jewish food could ensure they were able to get what they wanted. “It was a simple way for people to pre-order foods,” Katz said. “They would complain that they couldn’t get what they wanted because it was sold out. So we had started this pre-order system, which went really well.”

The members of the congregation were able to adapt that ordering system to take all the orders for food online, then arrange for people to contactlessly pick up their food on a particular date. “We put that into play that summer and we had a fabulous response,” Katz said. “And so now we find that it’s been a lot easier for us to host an online event than an in-person event.”

The Jewish Food Festival has a pretty consistent menu of items available for order.

“Every now and again, we throw something different in,” said Katz, “but not that often.”

The food on offer is traditional Jewish and American-Jewish dishes that customers look forward to each year. Baked goods like challah, blintzes and kugel are made by members of the Temple, as well as homemade Jewish dishes like matzah balls, knishes and slow-cooked brisket. Deli staples such as sliced pastrami, corned beef, and tongue meats, rye bread, and pickles, are ordered from Evan’s Deli in Marblehead, Mass., then brought back to Laconia just before the pick-up date.

“We buy big chunks of meat. We slice it, we package it,” Katz said. “It is fresh to go because we get it a day ahead. Anybody who orders fresh deli meats gets really fresh deli meat. We get great deli pickles that everyone just absolutely loves. We can never buy enough pickles to meet all the requests.”

“The other things we do fresh,” Katz added, “are chopped liver and the chopped herring. That is done right then and there.”

Katz stressed that although all the food at the Festival is authentically Jewish, it is not kosher. “We are a Reformed congregation,” she emphasized. “It is kosher-style in the sense that everything we do is in line with meats and dairy being separate, but we don’t want to lead anybody down a path. The other thing that is really very interesting is the majority of our customers from year to year to year are not Jewish. They love what we have to offer and keep coming back.”

The most high-demand items, Katz said, are the blintzes and the rugelach.

“Ours [the rugelach] is a very different recipe. They are coated with a turbinado sugar and the filling we use is not overly sweet. But that turbinado sugar on the top gives this unbelievable, lovely, little crusty thing going on with the sugary [crunch]. They are so good!”

Katz emphasized the importance of customers’ placing their orders in time.

“We give people four weeks to order,” she said, “but we don’t cook to order; we cook what we think will sell and that’s what’s on the inventory on the menu. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.”

New Hampshire Jewish Food Festival
Will accept orders until Sunday, July 7.
Order online at tbinh.org. Orders will be available for curbside drive-thru pickup, by appointment, on July 19 or July 20. Select your appointment time at checkout when you place your order.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Strawberries and cows

Farm-to-table brunch at Brookford’s Jamboree

You could be forgiven for assuming that the big draw at a Strawberry Jamboree would be strawberries.

According to Megan Archundia of Brookford Farm (250 West Road, Canterbury, 742-4084, brookfordfarm.com), the crowd favorite is the Cow Parade.

“The kids love it so much!” Archundia said. “It’s always so cute, and the cows are such characters!”

Admittedly, the ideal of a Cow Parade is enormously appealing, but isn’t it just taking the cows to the barn for milking?

“Essentially, yes,” Archundia admitted. “We’re not diverting the cows or making them do anything they wouldn’t normally be doing. We’re just inviting people to line up and watch.” Which does nothing to lessen the thrill of parading cows for young children.

Parading cows aside, this is a strawberry celebration.

“[The Farm] is doing pick-your-own strawberries for the first time,” Archundia said, “so it makes sense to let people come onto the farm and experience it for themselves. We’re letting people know who’s growing their food and giving them a front-row seat to it.”

In addition to picking berries, Jamboree-goers will be able to feed pigs, take hay-rides, listen to live music and enjoy a seasonal farm-to-table brunch.

“We always have a Farm-to-Table tent at all our events,” Archundia said. “It’s all food that’s grown on the Farm or that we sell in our farm store. It’s always really fun, with a curated menu. This time, of course, we’re going to have strawberry shortcake and our 100-percent grass-fed ice cream available. One of the owners, Katarina, has a German background, so the farm has a lot of cool fermented stuff. We’re going to do a sausage plate with farm sausage, sourdough bread from Orchard Hill Breadworks [in Alstead] and some sauerkraut. I think we’re going to have a German-style potato salad on the menu. Stuff like that.”

Brookford Farm holds several open-house events each year, and according to Archundia they all have a similar format.

“There will be some live music, some sort of farm-to-table food, hay-rides and cow parades,” she said. Yes, please don’t forget the cow parades. Later in the year, the Farm will hold a Sunflower Soiree, a Pumpkins and Puppets event, and Christmas With the Cows.

The farm staff enjoys these events, which bring income that a small farm welcomes, but Archundia said they are also part of a larger mission.

“Sometimes we feel so disconnected from [where we get our food from]. In the grocery store, it’s just a product on a shelf. Everyone who works here is just so passionate. We’re excited to invite whoever wants to come to these events and see it in action. We hope they get that little bit of a spark, too, and a little bit of excitement, feeling that connection to the Earth.”

Brookford Farm is very diversified. In addition to growing strawberries, it raises dairy and beef cattle, pork, pasture-raised chickens and eggs, and grows produce that it delivers to customers and sells in its on-site farm store. The Farm’s products are also sold at the Concord Food Co-op and farmers markets. In addition, there is a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program. Archundia is excited about the window the Farm’s events gives community members into what is being grown pretty much in their neighborhood.

“[The visitors] bring so much excitement1” she said. “Every time they come, they’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I had no idea! or ‘I live right up the road!’ or ‘This is so exciting; now that I know you exist, I want to buy your products!’”

And, of course, there’s the Cow Parade.

Strawberry Jamboree
When: Saturday, June 29, and Sunday, June 30, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Where: Brookford Farm, 250 West Road, Canterbury
Info and tickets: 742-4084, brookfordfarm.com
Tickets: General admission $10 online, $15 at the door; children 3 to 12 $7 online, $10 at the door; kids 2 and under free
No pets, please.

Featured photo: Cow parade. Photo by CCollette, Photography.

Beer and community at Kingston Brew Fest

25 breweries to bring samples

After the past couple of weeks that the Kingston Volunteer Fire Department has had — responding to heat emergencies and dumpster fires in full gear and 100-degree heat — beer and a dunk tank sound pretty good.

The Kingston Volunteer Firefighter Association is hosting this year’s Kingston Brew Fest Saturday, June 29, from 2 to 6 p.m. at 148 Main St. in Kingston. It is part of Kingston’s larger Summerfest Weekend celebration to earn money for the fire department.

“We started five years ago,” said Fire Chief Graham Pellerin, “as an idea for a fundraiser. Over the years, it’s fluctuated — obviously through Covid — but we’re looking to have another banner year, this year. Right now, we have 25 confirmed breweries attending, bringing at least three beverages each, so you’re looking at 75 items to sample.”

The Summerfest lasts three days, from Friday, June 28, through Sunday, June 30.

“Brewfest is on Saturday, in the afternoon,” said Chief Pellerin, “but Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we’re going to have carnival rides, entertainment throughout the weekend, line dancing on Saturday, a petting zoo on Sunday and a bonfire with s’mores on Saturday night. It’s kind of a fun event for everybody.” In addition, Summerfest attendees can expect ax-throwing, a dunk tank, touch-a-truck, mini-bike jumpers, and cow patty bingo.

This year, Chief Pellerin said, Kingston had trouble finding enough volunteers to run the events, so the members of the Fire Department stepped up.

“We said, OK, we’ll take it and carry the torch for this year.’” He said this is an event that brings the whole community together. “We have volunteers from the Town — we’ll have the Police Chief, myself as the Fire Chief, and the Building Inspector in the dunk tank, and some local business owners.”

For beer enthusiasts, after drinking samples at the Brew Fest between noon and 6 p.m., there will be a Beer Tent on site from 6 to 10 p.m. “It will be held like a restaurant bar,” Chief Pellerin said. People can go into a secured, fenced-in area, enjoy the live music and drink at their leisure.” The two beer-related events will be in a fenced-off area.

“It’s a good event,” said Chief Pellerin, “and we look forward to keeping it going year after year.”

Bobby Jackson is the Brewer for Sawbelly Brewing (156 Epping Road, Exeter, 583-5080, sawbelly.com). This will be his third Kingston Brew Fest. He’s a big fan.

“It was probably my favorite event we went to last summer,” Jackson said, “even with a torrential downpour.”

He is planning to bring three beers to Brew Fest this year. “I plan to bring a couple of IPAs and a Pilsner,” he said, “Ring of Haze — that’s a double IPA — Caribbean Wedding — a New England IPA, and probably my favorite of our beers right now — and Reinbot, a German-style Pilsner. Well, German-ish.” He said it’s heavily influenced by a Czech brewer he worked with once.

Jackson reiterated how much he likes working the Kingston event.

“There’s people from all over, and the organizers are super-nice,” he said. Plus, he said, he likes helping firemen.

Kingston Summerfest
When: Friday June 28, at 6 p.m. through Sunday, June 30, at 6 p.m.
Where: 148 Main St., Kingston
More: Find Kingston Fire Summer Fest on Facebook.

Breweries attending Kingston Brewfest

603 Brewing – Londonderry
Austin Street Brewery – Portland, Maine
Buena Gave – Manchester
Citizen Cider – Burlington, Vermont
Czar’s Brewing – Exeter
Definitive Brewing – Portland, Maine
Downeast Cider – Boston, Mass.
Exhibit A Brewing – Framingham, Mass.
Henniker Brewery – Henniker
Last ChairBrewery – Plymouth
Liquid Therapy – Nashua
Long Blue Cat Brewing – Londonderry
Lord Hobo Brewing – Woburn, Mass.
Mighty Squirrel Brewing Co. – Waltham, Mass.
New Belgium Brewing – national
OOCA NonCarbonated – national
Oddball Brewery – Suncook
Sawbelly Brewing – Exeter
Tap Brewing – Haverhill, Mass.
Throwback Brewery – North Hampton
Tuckerman Brewing – Conway
Woodland Farms Brewing – Kittery, Maine
Woodstock Inn Brewing – North Woodstock
Wormtown Brewery – Worcester, Mass.

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