Maggie Prittie calls herself a chocolate sommelier; “sommelier” in French translates to steward. She teaches people how to taste, pair and source fine single-origin chocolates, and teaches them the history, art, science and culture of chocolate. She has created, produced and customized chocolates for pastry chefs throughout southwest Florida. She has led more than 350 local wine and chocolate pairings. She has made chocolates for the directors of the Louvre Museum, the Salvador Dali Museum, the Ringling Museum, Sting, and Yo-Yo Ma, and on the set of a Food Network series. She studied under renowned chocolatiers Ewald Notter and Anil Rohira. She is a member of the FCIA (Fine Chocolate Industry of America). Originally from New Hampshire, she recently moved back to the state to share her knowledge as an educator, sales representative, and recipe developer with World Wide Chocolate in Brentwood.
What is your must-have kitchen item?
Aside from the normal appliances, a convection/toaster oven, wooden and rubber spatulas and parchment paper.
What is your favorite local eatery?
Totally depends on my mood. Never fast food!
What celebrity would you like to see eating your food, and why?
Giada De Laurentiis. She is genuine and not pompous.
What is your favorite thing to make?
I love challenging myself with developing new recipes all the time, like Pistachio Spaetzle or developing a good espresso chocolate chip cookie recipe.
What is the biggest food trend in chocolate right now?
The biggest trend presently is just acquiring cocoa. The prices are skyrocketing and will keep rising. Single origin, farmer awareness, craft chocolate seems to be on the radar and hopefully will be more trendy.
What is your favorite thing to cook at home?
Grilled domestic lamb with pistachio spaetzle. For dessert, Ritz Carlton chocolate cake with chocolate panna cotta frosting and a drizzle of bourbon caramel sauce.
Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies From the kitchen of Maggie Prittie
Wet ingredients 1 cup browned unsalted butter ½ cup dark brown sugar (firmly packed) ¼ cup light brown sugar (firmly packed) ¾ cup granulated sugar 2 Tablespoons vanilla paste (Prova) 2 room-temperature eggs 2 Tablespoons Prova Arabica Colombian Coffee Extract
Dry ingredients 2½ cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon cornstarch (adding cornstarch helps to make chewy cookies)
Chocolate chips 2½ cups Domori 75% Venezuela Wafer Mix dry ingredients in a bowl and whisk to combine them. Brown butter, then let cool to room temperature (I let it cool in the bowl of the KitchenAid mixer). Using the whipping utensil of the mixer, whip butter until soft, almost fluffy. Slowly add all wet ingredients, adding separately, add eggs one at a time. Whip until well-mixed and almost fluffy. Slowly add dry mixed ingredients into wet ingredients. I add them ¼ cup at a time. Add chips once all dry is incorporated. Do not overmix. (Adding the wafers while mixing does break some of them up.) Bake on parchment paper-lined cookie sheet at 325°F for 10-12 minutes. Let cool on rack.
Nashua Center will present its 21st Taste of the Towns event at the Sheraton Nashua on Thursday, May 2, at 6 p.m.. Eighteen area restaurants, caterers, brewers and distributors will present food and drink as varied as Thai food, baked goods, Mexican dishes or vodka.
Taste of the Towns is the Nashua Center’s signature fundraising event of the year. Proceeds go to support the Center’s mission to provide high-quality specialized care and support to small children and young adults with developmental difficulties in the greater Nashua area.
“Everyone involved in the event is very proud,” said Nashua Center’s Director of Development, Maryanne Gordineer. “We’re so proud of the vendors who come back year after year, and for them this is a way of connecting with the community and giving back.”
Gordineer described the event as a way for like-minded people to network with each other and chat in a relaxed, celebratory atmosphere.
“It’s a memorable experience,” she said. “It’s just fun!” Gordineer said there are usually more than 300 guests who attend the event and circulate around, socializing and tasting samples from the participating vendors: “I like to think of it as dinner by the bite.”
In addition to its role as a fundraiser, Taste of the Towns is a way to bring attention to the Nashua Center and the work it does for the Nashua community. Established in 1973, the organization helps people build fulfilling lives as part of the community. In the case of very young children, this can take the form of early intervention services to help families identify developmental challenges and give them support. For young adults with special needs, it might be helping them experience post-secondary education, whether it’s attending classes, getting vocational training, or just experiencing an aspect of college life like using a school’s gym facilities or cafeteria. The Center helps provide adult day services or residential services for other clients.
“It’s all about inclusivity,” Gordineer said. “We facilitate independence and community participation.”
Tickets for Taste of the Towns cost $75. They usually sell out quickly, Gordineer said.
For Gardineer, who started with the Nashua Center shortly before last year’s event, it was an introduction to New England foods. “I’d never had a lobster roll before!” she said, adding that it was a revelation.
Taste of the Towns When: Thursday, May 2, at 6 p.m. Where: Sheraton Nashua, 11 Tara Boulevard, Nashua Tickets: $75 at nashuacenter.org Participating vendors: Bellavance Beverage Co. Bistro 603 Friendly Toast From the Barrel Brewing Co. Graceful Baking Imported Grape K’Sone’s Thai Dining & Lounge Liquid Therapy Live Free Distillery The Peddler’s Daughter Prestige Beverage Group Shorty’s Mexican Roadhouse Smokehaus Barbecue Tara House Grill Thon Khao Tito’s Handmade Vodka You You Japanese Bistro Woodman’s Artisan Bakery
The name of the Sal Terrae Spice Company came from owner Meredith Touma’s daughter, who was studying Latin at the time.
“It means ‘Salt of the Earth,’” Touma said. “To be the salt of the earth means to be excellent; to try your hardest, but not to be perfect.”
Derry-based Sal Terrae (salterraespiceco.com, 548-1490) specializes in producing spice blends made from ingredients sourced from around the world. As an example, za’atar, a traditional Middle Eastern mixture, has sumac as a core ingredient. Sumac, a deep red, intensely tart spice, is extremely popular in other parts of the world but difficult to find and source here in the United States.
“My husband is Lebanese,” Touma said, “and I send him home several times a year to bring high-quality sumac back with him.”
Touma started her business during the Covid lockdown. She said it was an outgrowth of her personal values. At the time, she was a stay-at-home mother of four and had made a commitment to always serve homemade meals.
“I wanted to teach my children to not be scared of new cultures or flavors,” she said. “During shut-down, [a lot of] people were eager to explore new things while they were stuck at home. Suddenly, there was a market for new flavors for them.”
The spice blends Sal Terrae sells vary from the traditional, like za’atar, to new blends that Touma has developed herself.
“The Beach Blend is the most unusual blend that we make,” she said. The blend, which includes smoked paprika, oregano, ginger and cloves, was developed with seafood in mind.
“It was partly inspired by Old Bay,” she said. “It’s a classic, but it seemed like it was missing something. It needed some smokiness and depth.” The smoked paprika adds a bittersweet quality that complements the savory flavors of fish, like salmon.
“It [Beach Blend] has a little sourness to it,” she said. “That acidic quality helps bring some of the more subtle flavors to the surface. That’s why they always tell you to cook your salmon with slices of lemon on top.”
That sourness plays a background role in some of Sal Terrae’s other spice blends, such as, surprisingly, the Sugar and Spice blend. Because it has a similar color to the “warmer” ingredients, it’s visually appealing and rounds them out. Traditional baking ingredients like ginger and cloves make sense. Three types of cinnamon are exciting to spice nerds and seem like a natural in this kind of blend. The cardamom is a little surprising, but welcome. And then there’s the subtle background sourness from the sumac, which brings the other flavors into sharper focus.
According to Touma, turning the traditional concept of “warm” or “cool” spices on its head provides her a lot of room to introduce her customers to different ways of cooking and new flavor profiles. Indian and Middle Eastern cooking traditionally use mace, cinnamon and cloves in savory dishes, while most American cooks use them in sweet applications. By focusing on what sorts of profiles she wants to create, Touma puts together nontraditional combinations that give her customers new ways to appreciate their favorite foods.
“Even as the owner, I’m still learning something all the time from my own spice blends,” she said. “None of our blends are going to be completely perfect for everyone, but everyone can find one that is perfect for their taste.”
Touma said today’s cooks have resources that allow creativity that past generations couldn’t take advantage of. “They were largely limited to cookbooks or word of mouth,” she said. Today, if someone wants to try a new ingredient or to cook something completely new to them, they can look up options on the internet. This is exactly the role she hopes that Sal Terrae’s spice blends will play — being able to play with food traditions, without being locked into them.
“OK, these ones are great,” said Keith Sarasin, pulling a bag of Indian snack mix down from a shelf. “They’re made with black salt, which isn’t something that most Americans are really familiar with. It’s got sulphury back-notes that are a little freaky at first, but after they’ve tried it, most people get addicted to it.”
Chef Sarasin is the chef and owner of Aatma, an Indian-themed popup restaurant. He describes himself as “Indian-food obsessed.” We were at Patel Brothers, an Indian supermarket in Nashua, looking over an aisle of dozens of varieties of snack mixes. He explains that people in South Asia — India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh — are passionate about snack foods. As if to illustrate his point, for every aisle of produce or staple ingredients at Patel Brothers, there is another one devoted to a different type of snack food.
“These,” he said, pointing to a package of biscuits (cookies), “are what you would have with tea. If you’re Indian, you keep some of these around all the time to serve to guests. There is a saying in Hindi that translates to ‘The guest is a god.’” That’s how seriously they take their snacks.
Almost every culture around the world has snacks that the people eat on the street, or sitting with friends, drinking tea, beer, coffee, or tequila, gossiping and arguing about sports. More and more of these snacks are making their way to New Hampshire — in supermarkets, superettes or convenience stores.
So, let’s do some exploring.
The following snack foods represent a small fraction of what is available at four local international markets — one Indian, one Filipino, one Mexican and one East Asian. These stores, in turn, are a fraction of the international snack landscape around us. There are Bosnian, African, Middle Eastern, and Greek markets that we haven’t had the opportunity to get to.
The snacks have been sorted by the stores where they were purchased (with tasting notes provided by snackers at the Hippo office). Because these are all ready-to-eat snacks, each section of regional snacks is followed by a recipe for a traditional snack from that culture that you probably won’t find on a grocery store shelf.
Patel Brothers. Photo by John Fladd.
Patel Brothers:
Masala mix & West Indies potato chips
Patel Brothers (292 Daniel Webster Highway, Unit 8, Nashua, patelbros.com, 888-8009) is a large supermarket that is part of a national chain of more than 50 stores, according to the website. This one sits in Willow Springs Plaza in Nashua, next to Home Depot. It is a full-service supermarket with produce, groceries and products from all areas of South Asia and it features an in-store bakery.
Gharana brand Chakri (Muruku)
Where it’s from: Indian snack, made in New Jersey Description: A dry, crunchy churro-shaped cookie or cracker, wrapped in a spiral. Tasting notes: “A deep-fried flavor with a spicy back-end.” “Unexpectedly spicy”
Lay’s West Indies Hot & Sweet Potato Chips
Where it’s from: Lay’s, the PepsiCo-produced chips you’re familiar with, has produced flavors for the Caribbean and South Asian market Description: A ruffled potato chip with Caribbean flavors Tasting notes: “I taste paprika; the heat grows as you eat.” “Very reminiscent of Old Bay Seasoning.” “Wow, this excites my taste buds with the sweet, then the spice!”
Swad brand Mamra Laddoo
Where it’s from: Indian snack, manufactured in New Jersey Description: Hard, crunchy caramelized puffed rice balls Tasting notes: “Very crunchy.” “A second cousin to caramel corn.”
Where it’s from: South India Description: Nuggets of dried bananas covered with sugar and spices Tasting notes: “This would be good with tea.” “Slight banana flavor — mostly hidden under the jaggery and cardamom. I like this.” “It tastes a little like garam masala.”
Bombay Kitchen Mumbai Masala snack mix
Where it’s from: Central Indian snack, made in New York Description: A snack mix made of chickpea crackers, peanuts, raisins, rice flakes, lentils, green peas and spices. Tasting notes: “There is a wide variety of textures. The flavor is subtle at first, with an aftertaste of garam masala.” “There is a variety of very crunchy and not-so-crunchy textures, with a nice amount of spice.” “I was much softer than I had thought. Not bad, but you need a decent handful to get the true flavor.”
Haldiram’s Khatta Meetha snack mix
Where it’s from: India Description: A snack mix made of chickpea crackers, peanuts, mango powder, lentils and spices Tasting notes: “Sweet tasting, with many spices. It isn’t hot.” “It starts out kind of bland, but quickly becomes addictive, with a sweet, mild heat and a soft crunch.”
Snack to make at home: Slacker Vada
Slacker Vada. Photo by John Fladd.
Vada, a fried fritter-like food, are popular street snacks in Southern India. Passengers on trains will reach out the windows of their carriages at stops along their journey and buy them from vendors at each train station. They are a perfect on-the-go street food — crunchy outside, comfort-foody inside, and easily eaten on the go.
Let’s be clear about this: This recipe is not authentic vada. An Indian auntie would have a lot to say about how not-authentic they are. A vada wallah (a vada aficionado) on the streets of Mangaluru would take a bite of one, then shake his head at the state of this weary world. But, these vada are tasty, deep-fried and easy to make at home. Once you have a vague idea of how good a vada is, you will want to seek out one that is more authentic and involves intimidating ingredients like asafetida (a spice that requires a whole other conversation).
1 15-ounce can of lentils – I like Goya
½ 15-ounce can of chickpeas (sometimes labeled as garbanzo beans)
2 Tablespoon finely chopped cashews
½ cup unsweetened shredded coconut
2 teaspoons finely minced fresh ginger
⅓ cup finely chopped fresh cilantro
2 hot green chiles, finely chopped – New Hampshire chiles are notoriously unreliable; your best bet is probably serrano or Fresno chiles, which have a good flavor and a reliably moderate level of heat
2 Tablespoon rice flour, possibly more
½ teaspoon salt
vegetable oil for frying
Your best tip for Indian cooking — or any cooking — is to prepare all your ingredients and lay them out so you know where they are when you need them and don’t need to rummage through your cabinets or refrigerator looking for something that you forgot you were out of. Professionals call this mise en place; it’s just another phrase for being properly prepared. Do that with your vada ingredients.
Rinse the chickpeas and lentils in a strainer until they stop being foamy.
Blend the lentils and chickpeas in your blender until they look like peanut butter and smell like refried beans. If the mixture is too thick, add water, a spoonful at a time, until it gets to where you want it to be.
Transfer the puree to a bowl, and mix in the other ingredients. It should be just stiff enough to work with your hands. If it’s too sticky, add more rice flour, again a spoonful at a time, until you can hold it and shape it with your fingers.
Take enough of the mixture to roll into a ball about the size of a golf ball. Roll it, then poke your finger through the middle of it, and shape it into a miniature doughnut. Vada are doughnut-shaped for the same reason doughnuts are: to allow them to cook completely in hot oil before they get greasy. It also allows you to get a deep-fried crispiness on the increased surface area of the vada. Make two or three while your oil heats up.
Heat 4 to 6 inches of oil in a pot to 350°F. If you choose a small pot, the oil will come to temperature quickly and you won’t need as much of it. You will only be able to fry one or two vada at a time, though, and the temperature of the oil will drop more easily when you add the room-temperature vada to the pan. If you use a bigger pot you will have more oil, can fry more vada at a time, and will retain a good frying temperature.
Fry the vada like you would doughnuts — 2 or 3 minutes on each side — until they are crispy and the color of brown car upholstery. Drain them on paper towels.
Because these are doughnut-shaped, part of your brain expects them to be sweet, but they are entirely savory. There are bits of chewy coconut, but also brightness from the chilies, ginger and cilantro. The background flavor is undefinably savory but supports its co-stars. These are excellent hot from the fryer, or at room temperature, although they are at their crispiest while they are still hot. They go very well with chai or coffee, and with a chutney, preferably coconut chutney.
Make these, grow to love them, and then we’ll talk about asafetida.
Saigon Asian Market:
sweets and seaweed
Saigon Asian Market (476 Union St., Manchester, 935-9597) is a medium-sized supermarket with groceries and products from Vietnam, China, Taiwan and Thailand. It offers fresh produce and excellent fresh seafood.
Kaoriya Mochi Peanut Flavor
Where it’s from: Traditional Japanese snack, made in Thailand Description: Soft pillowy rice mochi, with a sweet, peanut filling Tasting notes: “Two distinct textures; it tastes like a peanut butter bun.” “Very chewy; peanut flavor is very prominent, but not like peanut butter.”
Ricky joy brand Strawberry Mellow Cone
Where it’s from: China Description: Brightly colored, ice cream cone-shaped candy. Tasting notes: “Fun filling inside.”
Mag Mag brand Thai Hote Madame Plum
Where it’s from: Thailand Description: Spiced dry plum Tasting notes: “Madame is beautifully sweet and sour.” “Not too spicy — a nice balance of sweet plum and heat. I’m voting this my favorite.”
Tao Kae Noi: Mala Flavor seaweed snack
Where it’s from: Thailand Description: Dried, seasoned strips of seaweed. Tasting notes: “It has some heat.” “The spice builds as you eat it. It’s very fishy.”
Koe-Kae Sriracha Chilli Sauce Flavour Coated Green Peas
Where it’s from: Thailand Description: Freeze-dried peas, coated with a sweet sriracha flavoring Tasting notes: “It has a good crunch and good heat in small doses.” “Excellent crunch! The heat builds then recedes nicely.” “Great crunch! Perfect amount of spice for a snack food.”
Teddy Bear Sweet & Sour Spicy Tamarind
Where it’s from: Thailand Description: Dried tamarind fruit with added spice Tasting notes: “This has a delicious sour tamarind flavor. There are large seeds.” “Interesting combination — I got the sweet, the sour, and the spicy (in that order), with a nice gummy texture.” “I was not prepared for the seeds, but otherwise, I loved it. Sweet and sour with an earthy taste.”
Snack to make at home: Kluay Thod
Kluay Thod. Photo by John Fladd.
These fried bananas are a specialty in Bangkok, where street cooks use small, finger-sized bananas. Those totally work in this recipe but can sometimes be a little hard to find. Half-inch rounds of a regular Cavendish banana will work just as well, as long as it’s properly ripe — yellow, with a lot of brown spots on it. If the convenience store you buy your morning coffee from has bananas up by the register, they will be just about perfect for this recipe, especially later in the week, when the bananas have seen too much of life and have given up hope. Think of this as helping them fulfill their destiny.
10-12 finger-sized bananas, cut in half, or ½-inch rounds of 3 large, ripe ones
1¼ cups (200 g) rice flour, plus more for dredging
1½ cups (200 g) all purpose flour
1½ teaspoons baking soda
1 cup (200 ml) water
1 cup (200 ml) coconut milk
½ teaspoon salt – I like to use coarse sea salt
½ cup (50 g) sesame seeds
3 Tablespoons brown sugar
½ cup (50 g) finely minced coconut
vegetable oil for frying
Fill a pot with 4 to 6 inches of vegetable oil and set it to heating over medium heat. Keep an eye on it; you want it to eventually reach 350°F.
Meanwhile, mix the rest of the ingredients, aside from the bananas, in a large bowl. It will make a thick batter.
Pour a smallish amount, maybe half a cup, of rice flour into a small bowl. This is for dredging. When you’re deep-frying something, wet batter doesn’t like to stick to wet or damp ingredients, so it’s a good idea to cover whatever you’re frying with something dry and powdery — fried chicken often calls for seasoned flour or cornstarch, for example. In this case, you’ve already got rice flour on the counter, so we’ll use that.
When your oil has come to temperature, dredge several pieces of banana in rice flour, then dunk them in batter. Even with the rice flour, the banana might balk at being completely covered; you’ll have to convince it.
Carefully drop the battered banana pieces into the oil and cook them until they are a rich brown color. You’ll know when they’re ready; their beauty will stagger you. Fry a few banana pieces at a time to keep the oil at a consistent temperature.
Drain them on several layers of paper towels.
You owe it to yourself to eat at least a couple of these hot and crispy right from the fryer. They are lightly sweet, with banana notes in the background, and a savory, sesame-forward flavor from the batter. There’s a comforting contrast between the soft banana and the crispy/chewy texture of the sesame coating.
True to their street food origins, you and whoever else is in the house with you will probably eat this standing in the kitchen. If there are any left, they will still be good for several hours, especially with a glass of Thai iced tea.
GFM Pinoy Food Mart:
ube and adobo
GFM Pinoy Food Mart (224 North Broadway, Salem, gfmpinoyfoods.com, 458-1957) is a very small, snack-heavy Filipino grocery store. There are some refrigerated and frozen foods from the Philippines, but most of the stock is dry goods.
Fritzie’s Ube Cheese Pandesal
Where it’s from: Filipino pastry, made in New Jersey Description: A purple bun (ube is an Asian purple yam) with a mild cheese filling Tasting notes: “This tastes a lot like a croissant.” “It reminds me of pan dulce slightly. I can’t really taste the cheese.” “It … has a nice taste, like a sweet bread.”
Jack ’n’ Jill brand Chicharron ni Mang Juan (vegetarian pork rinds), Sukang Paombong flavored
Where it’s from: Philippines Description: Light golden-brown fried snack that is curled to look like pork rinds Tasting notes: “Salty and savory with more depth of flavor than I was expecting.” “Mild and crunchy; they would be excellent with three or four beers.”
Boy Bawang Cornick: Adobo Flavor
Where it’s from: Philippines Description: “Marinated Meat-Flavored Fried Corn” Tasting notes: “Chickeny-tasting corn nuts.” “Crunchy puffed corn with a mild flavor.” “Fave! I love these. They are like Corn Nuts, but not tooth-breaky.”
Jack ’n’ Jill brand Chippy Barbecue Flavored Corn Chips
Where it’s from: The Philippines Description: Barbecue-flavored corn chips the size and shape of Fritos Tasting notes: “The taste is a mix between a Bugle and a Frito.” “It’s light on the barbecue flavor, but I love the corn chip for a nice change-up.” “Savory, meaty taste at the end.”
Jack ’n’ Jill brand V-Cut Potato Chips
Where it’s from: The Philippines Description: Lightly smoky rippled potato chips Tasting notes: “It reminds me of a barbecue sandwich in a chip form.” “I really enjoyed the barbecue flavor of this one. Not too strong; just perfect.”
Snack to make at home: Tambo-Tambo
Tambo-Tambo. Photo by John Fladd.
Tambo-Tambo is a coconut pudding with tapioca pearls and rice balls from the Philippines. Because the Philippines is made up of more than 7,000 islands, each with its own culture, and because it is in the middle of several major trade routes, you never know what you’re going to get in a Filipino snack. The food culture of the Philippines has been impacted by East Asian, Indonesian, Spanish and even American influences. This particular snack leans heavily into three ingredients deeply rooted in the Filipino landscape: coconut, cassava (which tapioca is made from) and rice.
½ cup (75 g) small tapioca pearls
1 cup (250 ml) water
1 cup (150 g) glutinous rice flour – it will probably be called Sweet White Rice Flour in your supermarket, but it’s the same thing
another ½ cup (125 ml) water
1¾ cup (400 ml) unsweetened coconut milk
another ½ cup (125 ml) water
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup (100 g) sugar
diced fresh fruit – mangos are traditional, but I think fresh cherries would be fantastic
Soak the tapioca in a cup of water for half an hour, then rinse thoroughly.
Meanwhile, mix the rice flour with half a cup of water, then roll it into half-inch balls with wet fingers. (Your fingers should be wet. Giving the rice balls fingers would be disconcerting.) Cover them with a damp cloth until Game Time.
Mix the coconut milk, salt, sugar, and the last half cup of water in a small saucepan, then bring to a boil over high heat, stirring frequently.
Crash the heat to low, then stir in the rice balls. Cook them for about 4 minutes, until they are cooked through and chewy. Stir pretty much continuously, to keep the rice balls from sticking to each other.
Bring the heat back up to high, then stir in the rinsed tapioca, and stir until the tapioca has been cooked, another 3 or 4 minutes. The tapioca will thicken the mixture noticeably.
Remove from heat, and let the pudding cool, maybe 20 minutes. Serve, garnished with fresh fruit.
This snack is full of contrasts — the coconut pudding is creamy, the rice balls are chewy and the tapioca is, err, tapioca-y. The coconut is sweet — perhaps even a little too sweet on its own — but it is balanced out by the mildness of the rice balls. This snack is great warm, but even better cold and refreshing. I can imagine standing in a market in Manila, desperately hot and completely overwhelmed, then grounding myself with a dish of tambo-tambo.
La Michoacana Market:
Takis and Zambos
La Michoacana Market (112 Pine St., Nashua, 882-0271) is a small neighborhood market with Mexican snacks and products. It serves a small selection of American-style hot food, some with a Mexican twist.
Bimbo brand Nito snack cakes
Where it’s from: Mexico Description: Dry, chocolate-frosted and -filled snack cake Tasting notes: “A strong cocoa flavor.” “The sweet bread enhances the sweetness of the chocolate icing; it isn’t too sweet.” “Nice and chocolatey.”
Takis Hot Nuts Fuego
Where it’s from: Mexico Description: Peanuts with a spicy/sour coating Tasting notes:“The spiciness is all in the electric red dust.” “Very acidic.” “All the spice of a Takis with a peanut finish.” “Shockingly spicy at first, but ends nicely. It makes you want more!”
Yummies brand Ceviche Flavored Zambos
Where it’s from: Honduras Description: Ceviche-flavored plantain chips Tasting notes: “Outstanding lime and salt flavors; the fishy background is distracting.” “This tastes sort of like a seaweed chip; it’s pretty good.”
Diana Brand Jalapeňos tortilla chip
Where it’s from: El Salvador Description: Seasoned tortilla chips Tasting notes: “Tiny triangles. Delicate corn flavor with mild heat.” “not as hot as I expected but tasty and easy going with a great touch of spice.” “I’m obsessed with these! They are perfect, and almost no flavoring sticks to your fingers.”
Bimbo brand Choco Bimbuňuelos
Where it’s from: Mexico Description: The packaging describes it as “Sweet Crispy Wheels with Chocolate Flavored Coating” Tasting notes: “Extra crunchy. The chocolate is very melty.” “These are very dangerous! You could eat a whole package if you weren’t careful. The chocolate is so creamy and the crisp is light.”
Snack to make at home: Pemoles
Tambo-Tambo. Photo by John Fladd.
Mexico is another country that has had its food shaped by a huge number of influences — indigenous, Spanish and even French. Mexico has a complex and sophisticated baking tradition. There are Mexican cookies that would blow your mind. Pemoles are wreath-shaped cookies made with masa harina (corn flour) instead of wheat flour, and are flavored with coffee.
2 cups (250 g) masa harina (corn flour)
¼ teaspoon salt – again, I like to use coarse sea salt; it plants little salt bombs in the finished cookie
1 Tablespoon finely ground coffee
1¼ sticks (125 g) butter — authentic pemoles are made with lard, which tastes fantastic in baked goods but can be intimidating, so we’ll use butter instead; feel free to use the full-octane fat, though; you will not regret it
½ cup (125 g) sugar
1 egg
¼ cup (2 ounces) coffee liqueur
Toast the masa harina in a dry skillet, stirring constantly, until it darkens to a golden-brown color — about the same color as a lion. Transfer it to a bowl to cool.
Add the salt and coffee to the roasted masa harina. Stir to combine.
Using your electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar until they are pale yellow, light and fluffy.
Beat in the egg and then, once the egg is incorporated, the coffee liqueur.
Gradually mix in the dry ingredients.
When the dough has come together, refrigerate it for half an hour.
OK, this is where things get a little weird. Every recipe for pemoles says that you should knead the dough until it is smooth before chilling it. This seems impossible. The pre-chilled mixture is much too soft to work with your hands. Additionally, because there isn’t any wheat in this recipe, there is no flour to produce gluten, the stuff that makes bread and other baked goods pliable. I’m sure that the Mexican nuns who invented pemoles could do it; I haven’t worked out a way to.
Preheat your oven to 350°F.
Line a baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper.
Pinch off a tablespoonful of the chilled dough and form it into a 6-inch-long snake. Apparently, rolling it is recommended — and that would probably work if you could manage to knead the dough — but I’ve found that squeezing it in my palms works better. Put your snake on the baking sheet and form it into a circle. You should be able to form about a dozen cookies.
Bake for 30 to 35 minutes. You won’t be able to tell by the color when they are done, but if you poke a pemole and it feels like a cookie that hasn’t firmed up yet, they are ready to take out of the oven.
Let the pemoles cool, then eat them.
These have a crumbly, sandy texture, much like a really good shortbread. This is something bakers call sablé. The roasted corn flavor is deeply satisfying — a little like a good cornbread — and the not-over-the-top coffee flavor gives you an emotional anchor to hang the “Ooh-I-like-this” part of your brain on. It goes without saying that these are a natural to have with coffee.
Never mind that he’d worn a suit maybe three times in his life and one of those had been a rented powder-blue tux. This blazer cost as much as he earned in a month. He looked at his reflection in the mirror again, hoping he’d see something vaguely inspiring.
“Dress for the job you want.” Isn’t that what they say? But looking at himself, he could only hope that someone was hoping to hire a pudgy, nervous-looking kid on the verge of hyperventilating.
He looked at the price tag on the cuff of the jacket again, and tried to breathe deeply.
“I really don’t think—,” he started to say.
“Hush!” said the saleslady with authority. She was an older woman — of course, Charlie was still young enough that anyone over 35 was old, but she had clearly been doing this a long time and seemed to know what she was doing.
She turned him around, away from the mirror, then flipped up the collar of his shirt and quickly, with the ease of years of practice, looped a necktie around his neck, knotted it, then flipped his collar back down.
She turned him back to the mirror, but before he could take in any of the details of his appearance she tucked a pocket square into the breast pocket of the jacket, then stepped back and said, “How’s that?”
Charlie was stunned. It wasn’t so much that there was a dramatic change in who he saw in the mirror — still a young, round face — but this time it belonged to a better version of Charlie. It was a mature, confident Charlie. No, Charles, maybe, although only his mother had ever called him that and only when she was angry with him. This was a young man who knew what he was doing, a man who could get through an interview and wait for the person on the other side of the desk to explain what they had to offer him.
The saleswoman nodded with satisfaction.
“The right tie makes all the difference,” she said.
The Right Tie
¾ ounce top-shelf rum – I used a 15-year-old Barbancourt
1½ ounces apple brandy – I like Laird’s Applejack
¾ ounce fresh squeezed lime juice
¾ ounce orgeat (almond syrup)
Combine all ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker.
Shake gently. You want to chill this cocktail — if possible, without breaking up the ice.
Pour into a rocks glass.
This is a serious, booze-forward cocktail. Even the small amount of extra-good rum makes itself known. The apple brandy fades into the background, giving just a hint of subtle fruitiness and even more of an alcoholic backbone. Lime and almond get along very well and will work with either of these liquors, to say nothing of both of them.
And yet.
The combination as a whole is very intense — a little more boozy/sweet/acidic than is strictly comfortable. A natural inclination might be to shake this over ice extremely enthusiastically, break up the ice, and chill it as much as possible, then serve it in a stemmed glass to keep it cold.
Or — hear me out on this — drink it over ice in a rocks glass like a grownup.
There’s something about drinking from a rocks glass that brings a sense of maturity to the proceedings. More to the point, a rocks glass lets you use rocks. The intensity of this cocktail will limit you to small sips at first, which will give the ice time to melt a little and bring the intensity down, while keeping everything ice cold.
With a nudge, this could have been a tiki drink, and probably a good one, but the right glass, much like the right tie, brings maturity and the faintest of confident Mona Lisa smiles.
Featured photo: The Right Tie. Photo by John Fladd.
Dennis Molnar, co-owner of Concord Craft Brewing, says weather plays a bigger role in running a brewery than you might think.
“Most people, unless they’re die-hards, are pulled toward lighter beers,” he said of spring beer drinkers. Which explains the Jalapeño Cream Ale.
Molnar said one of the challenges of making specialty seasonal beers is knowing how much to make, and when to make it.
“We get people getting in touch with us all the time, asking, ‘Why can’t you make the Jalapeño year-round, or why can’t you make that very rich, heavy porter all year round?’ It’s hard to know what the right amount to make is, before people’s tastes change,” he said.
The Jalapeño Cream Ale originally started as a tribute to Cinco de Mayo, Molnar said, but after several years customers started to think of it as a generally springtime beer.
“It’s a Golden Ale,” he said. “It’s on the lighter side, which makes it popular for warmer weather. We use real jalapeños and let it age [with the chiles] for several weeks. There’s a little bit of spice there, but not so much that you can’t finish your dinner or anything.”
Before the Jalapeño this year, there was the maple-season-themed Logger Lager.
“Most years, in the late winter/early spring, we make a bourbon barrel-aged maple brown ale,” Molnar said, “but we had trouble getting barrels this year.” Instead the brewery put out a mazen, a German-style, medium-bodied golden ale with maple syrup. “We liked the name,” he said. “Also, small brewers [like us] make unpasteurized beers. That means that the yeast ferments out the maple sugars, and you’re left with a more subtle maple flavor.”
One of the advantages of running a small brewery is having the freedom to test out new ideas, Molnar said.
“We can make a small batch and see how it works out,” he said. At the moment, he and his team are thinking about something new for the summer, a cherry wheat beer.
“It should be a fun, light, bright-colored beer,” he said. “We’ve finally got a good source for cherry purée.”
During the summer the brewery’s customers drink beers that are lighter in color, texture and percentage of alcohol, but in the fall they start drinking heavier porters and stouts.
“Our Squirrel Fights Nut Brown Ale is really popular,” Molnar said, “and Apple Crisp — like the dessert — Porter is one of our most popular fall beers. We almost always brew a pumpkin beer, too. Some people really like pumpkin beers around that time of year. A lot of them don’t actually like eating pumpkin, but they love seeing it in a glass.”
Right now, the flavor of the moment is jalapeño. Because it has become identified so strongly with springtime, it will be around for the rest of the season.
“We’ll have it in stores until the beginning of June,” Molnar said, “and on tap for a little longer.”
Featured Photo:Photos courtesy of Concord Craft Brewing.
