¼ teaspoon cinnamon – depending on how flavorful your blueberries are
1 teaspoon fresh squeezed lemon juice
zest of 1 lemon
Dough
2 eggs
1/3 cup (79 g) water
1 teaspoon kosher or coarse sea salt
2 cups (240 g) all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting your counter when you knead and roll your dough, so it doesn’t stick
Garnish
sour cream
lemon wedges
sugar
blueberries in syrup (see below)
Add all the filling ingredients to a medium-sized saucepan. Stir everything to combine it, and to make sure you don’t have a bunch of sugar at the bottom of the pot that might turn into caramel before the mixture comes together.
Cook over medium heat, until the berries give up their juice. This happens easily with frozen berries, because of the ice crystals inside them, but the sugar will pull juice out of the berries even if they are fresh. You know that word from high school science that you were supposed to remember, but never could — osmosis? That’s what’s happening here. Once there is some sauce, taste it. Blueberries are a flighty fruit; you never know how they’re going to taste. If these taste a little dull, they probably need another squeeze of lemon juice to brighten them up. If they are just not very flavorful, add the cinnamon. On the other hand, if the syrup tastes fruity and zingy and makes you want to do a blueberry dance, you should probably leave well enough alone.
Bring the blueberry sauce to a boil, and let it simmer for two minutes, then remove it from heat.
In a medium bowl, mix the dough ingredients, starting with the eggs and water, until it forms a shaggy dough. Turn it out onto a floured counter and knead it until it comes together and makes a smooth ball. Cover it and set it aside for anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. While the dough rests, chill the blueberries in your refrigerator. You and the pierogi could both use a breather.
When you’re pretty sure the dough has rested enough, flour your counter again and roll the dough out as thin as you can. Don’t go overboard and try to read a newspaper through it or anything, but if you can get it as thin as a penny, you’re probably in good shape. Use a drinking glass that is 3 inches across to cut as many circles as possible out of the dough.
Take the blueberries and sauce out of the refrigerator, and strain it, saving the syrup.
Set a large pot of water on the stove to boil.
Now, this is the part of the procedure that requires confidence. Do not let the pierogi dough intimidate you. Making sure your counter is still dusted with flour, take a dough circle, and put a small amount — one half to a full teaspoonful — of the blueberries in the center of it. Fold it in half, to make a moon shape, then crimp the edge with a fork, to seal the berries inside. Keep doing this until you’ve used up all the circles, then roll the leftover dough out again and repeat, until you use it all.
Boil the pierogi, six or seven at a time, just like you would ravioli. Make sure none of them stick to the bottom of the pot, and fish them out when they float to the surface of the water.
Eat these warm, garnished with sour cream and a sprinkling of sugar. If they need some more brightness, another squeeze of lemon juice will do that for you. If they don’t taste strongly enough of blueberries, drizzle some of the blueberry syrup over them. These will chew like pasta, taste like summer, and give you some well-deserved emotional validation.
Bartender, 815 Cocktails and Provisions (815 Elm St., Manchester, 782-8086, 815nh.com)
“I’m 24 years old, born and raised in Manchester, New Hampshire,” Starr said. “I got the opportunity to start working at 815 Cocktails and Provisions in 2022, where I began learning the trade of being a bartender. Through this and the help of some of the loveliest people I’ve had the opportunity to work with, I’ve had the pleasure of serving some unique drinks. Being able to make cocktails is great, but really the best part is the experiences you share with new people every night and I’m glad I get to do it.”
What is your must-have kitchen/bar item?
I feel like good glassware is a must. I’m always hunting around second-hand shops, trying to find good coupes or a new tiki mug. Who doesn’t love having a funky little cup to drink out of?
What would you have for your last meal?
Scallops with risotto was always a special treat growing up, so if I’m going out I’m going out thinking about all the good scallops I’ve had. The pizza they eat in A Goofy Movie is my backup option.
What is your favorite local eatery?
This is a really loaded question, but Alley Cat Pizzeria has always had my back through thick and thin. Whenever I come back from a trip, I go and get a pie as a way to bring on that feeling of being home.
Name a celebrity you would like to see drinking one of your cocktails.
I feel like getting to serve David Byrne would be a once in a lifetime experience. His music has been a part of my life for so long that it would be such an honor to create something for someone who has unknowingly created a lot of memories for me. Finding a glass worthy of his style would be the hardest part.
What is your favorite drink on your menu?
‘Tacos Sold Separately’ is a drink we launched earlier this year that was a lot of fun coming up with. It’s a tiki drink with Myers’s Rum, Cynar, orange juice, lime, coconut, vanilla and nutmeg. I just love the melody of flavors that goes on with the fruits and spice while the dark rum kind of guides you through.
What is the biggest drinking trend in New Hampshire right now?
There’s been an increase in people who have been hopping on the mocktail train, which has been cool to see. I think what a lot of people are looking for today is a way to have that fun experience of going out without dealing with the side effects that alcohol can bring. I have definitely seen bartenders around the state upping the quality and care they put into their mocktails, because everyone deserves to have a good time out.
What is your favorite thing to make at home?
I’m pretty boring when it comes to making myself drinks, to be honest. Usually I just sip some rum or mezcal over ice. What I really love doing after a shift is making nachos with whatever random ingredients I may find in my fridge. No recipe, varying results, always a good time.
Classic Daiquiri from Griffin Star With the rapid rise in temperature I think everyone should know how to cool off with a basic daiquiri:
¾ ounce fresh lime juice ¾ ounce simple syrup (I really prefer demerara or a brown sugar syrup) 2 ounces of your favorite rum Shake that up with some ice and strain into a chilled coupe.
Sourcing from their farm and nearby at Eden’s Table Farm Store
Given how difficult it can be to find a spicy, flavorful chile in New Hampshire, is it possible to grow one here?
“We’ve had two hot peppers that I just love!” said Addie Leader-Zavos, co-owner of Eden’s Table Farm in Dunbarton. “I was shocked by how good a pepper year we had last year. We’re trialing a bunch of different paprika types this year.” The Czech Black, for instance.
Her husband, Michael Williams, agreed.
“These [the Czech Blacks] will fake you out,” he said. “They smell like mango fruit leather, but they are serious. These are a little milder than a serrano when they’re green, but then they blow way past it when they’re ripe. They go from 5,000 Scoville units [a system for rating the heat of chiles] when they’re green to 17 [thousand] to 30,000 when they’re ripe. They’re no joke.”
This is the first full season that Eden’s Table Farm has been in business. The wife-and-husband team have been building a new farm more or less from scratch.
“We are a diversified market farm,” Williams said. “We grow vegetables. We have 65 mature blueberry bushes that we inherited. We also have a rhubarb patch that we inherited from the previous owners. There are a lot of volunteer raspberry, black raspberry and blackberry bushes; we’re going to mark the ones that taste best and take cuttings and propagate for next year.”
And, of course, the chiles.
The Williamses grow many different fruits, vegetables and herbs that they sell through their farm store, but the peppers are a good illustration of the amount of thought that is put into growing them. Leader-Zavos spent months researching varieties of chiles that would do well in New Hampshire’s climate. Eventually she discovered multiple varieties from Eastern Europe, from countries with similar climates. After that, the new farmers selected the varieties with the shortest growing season to try on the Farm.
“It was really important to us to have the shortest days-to-maturity,” Leader-Zavos said. “We wanted to be able to grow varieties that will work for us when our growing season is so short.”
Growing seasons, soil acidity, and hours of sunlight are some of the factors that Williams and Leader-Zavos have been working hard to get a handle on. Since moving from Virginia, where Leader-Zavos worked as a pastry chef and Williams was a sommelier and wine marketer, the couple have tackled the steep learning curve of starting a farm and a business with enthusiasm. “Addie’s superpower is research,” Williams said. “She can find the answer to anything.”
Which is how the two ended up buying a farm in Dunbarton. They had decided to start a small farm together.
“We cast a pretty wide net when we were looking for farm properties,” Williams said, “and at one point the price on this property dropped and it showed up in our searches. [We asked ourselves] ‘Should we go to New Hampshire to look at this property?’” They visited the farm that November, and owned it by the end of January.
In addition to actually growing things, the couple’s main focus is on their farm store, which sells their own produce and baked goods, as well as other locally produced meats, dairy, wild foods and artisanal products.
“We are very locally focused in terms of sourcing,” Williams said. “Everything in here, with the exception of a very short list of items, is from New Hampshire, and the things that aren’t from New Hampshire are from Maine, and they’re all artisanal products.”
He pointed to several varieties of dried beans as an example. “These are Baer’s Best Beans,” he said. “One of the things I like to do with new suppliers is I will go to them to pick up my first order, because I want to see what they are doing and how they’re doing it. I walked in [to Baer’s] and somebody was hand-sorting beans. So I was very happy. I was like, ‘OK, these are my people.’ This is the level of detail and attention that I like.”
Not to mention that the beans will go really well with the chiles.
Eden’s Table Farm Store 240 Stark Highway N., Dunbarton Center, 774-1811 Open Thursdays and Fridays 3 to 7 p.m., Saturdays 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• Brew on: The annual Keep NH Brewing Festival is happening Saturday, July 13, at Kiwanis Waterfront Park behind the Everett Arena in Concord (15 Loudon Road). General admission is from 1 to 4 p.m., with VIP admission beginning at noon. The festival is the signature fundraising event for the New Hampshire Brewers Association and features one of the largest gatherings of craft beers on tap, with more than 140 options to try and more than 50 breweries represented. Food trucks, local vendors and live music will also be featured. For more information, and to purchase tickets, visit nhbrewers.org.
• Lemon up: LaBelle Winery (345 Route 101, Amherst, 672-9898, labellewinery.com) will hold I Love Lemon!, a lemon-themed wine pairing dinner, on Saturday, July 13, at 6:30 p.m.. This event will include four courses paired with LaBelle wines. LaBelle’s Chef and wine experts will share insights into each pairing with participants throughout the event. Tickets are $85 each and available through LaBelle’s website.
• Midday in the vineyard: Flag Hill Winery (297 Route 155, Lee, 659-2949, flaghill.com) will hold brunch by the vineyard on Sunday, July 14, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m Sparkling Cayuga will be served and there is a full mimosa bar. A farm-to-table brunch will feature a mac & cheese bar; fresh pastries and fruit; quiches, frittatas and more. Tickets are $65 per person and are available through Flag Hill’s website.
Flea markets generally fall into three categories:
Antiques. This doesn’t necessarily mean snooty people arguing over the fine points of Chippendale armoires, although it can. It means that most items on offer are old: boxes of old books, turn-of-the-last-century bottles, antique car parts, used CDs, piles of vintage Barbie dolls, or a stuffed owl or two — cool old stuff waiting for someone with a particular enthusiasm.
Sweat socks. Not just sweat socks, of course, but inexpensive consumer goods like burner phones, cell phone covers, neon-colored tracksuits and lots of shampoo. If you are looking for a velour blanket with a picture of a matador or a howling wolf on it, this is the place to find it. Please don’t think that I am mocking this type of market. It whispers sweet nothings to my heart.
Overgrown garage sale. You’re never sure what you’ll find at this kind of flea market. Yes, there are a few professional dealers specializing in Pokémon cards, or military surplus, but just as many of the vendors are people who have found themselves with too much of something on their hands — some old, some new — that they want to get rid of. For many of them it’s the getting-rid-of that’s the important thing. A sports family might realize they have 20 years’ worth of hockey gear, skis, football helmets and lacrosse sticks, and decide to flea market it.
About three years ago I found my flea market: the late, lamented Hollis Flea Market. It was an antiques market, full of vintage — stuff. There were some stunning antique clocks for customers with much richer blood than mine, but also any number of commemorative plates, piles of old postcards and, once, a giant pile of 3,600 C-clamps.
Unfortunately, this winter, the owners of the Hollis Flea Market announced that they were closing. This has left me searching for a new flea market.
Not counting yard sales and antiques shows, there are four major flea markets in the area:
Londonderry Flea Market
295 Nashua Road, Londonderry londonderryfleamarket.com Open Saturdays and Sundays 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. April through October Admission $1.50 per person; 60+ and kids under 12 get in free. The basics: The Londonderry Flea Market is an outdoor market on 30 acres, with up to 300 vendors on a given day. Many vendors do not accept credit cards; it’s a good idea to bring cash. There is an ATM on site. According to the Market’s website, there is a “huge assortment of items to find & buy for home, garden, work, pleasure, personal wants & needs. Make a list of things you’d like to buy before you visit the market. Bring the list with you to shop as the sellers here just may have what you’re looking for! f you don’t see it, ask them as it may just be out of sight.” Food: There is a concession tent in the center of the market selling burgers, hot dogs, snacks and drinks.
Londonderry Flea Market. Photo by John Fladd.
The Londonderry Flea Market is very, very large. There are two halves, one on each side of a fire pond. Many of the vendors work under cover, but at the very back of the flea market there are a number of people selling things from tables. I asked one man in the back who was selling old vinyl records and a seriously intriguing pile of 78s how business was. He said he hadn’t made any sales yet, “but it’s about to rain, and I’m located back here in Siberia.”
One of his neighbors in the back section of the flea market was Stephanie St. Pierre, an enthusiastic world traveler and a maker. She was selling a number of trinkets and antiques from Thailand and Myanmar, but her most fascinating items were four handmade cigar-box banjos. They are a reminder of a brief but intense enthusiasm from a few years ago. Some of the banjos have three strings; some have one.
“I like it,” St. Pierre said. “It’s just fun to play with one string. A diddly-bow, I guess is what they call the ones with one string.” At one point, she made electric cigar-box banjos. “The better ones had pick-ups,” she said. “You could plug them into an amp. I’m not musical, but I had fun going to the flea markets to find all the hardware.”
A 3-foot-tall Barbie doll in a crocheted sweater and miniskirt, concrete garden ornaments — I was distracted from these things by a table full of beads. I was struck by a 2-inch bead — a white porcelain cube with a hole through the center, and what appeared to be blue Chinese characters on the sides.
“What’s the story with this?” I asked the lady selling the beads. She examined it closely for several seconds. “I have no idea what that is,” she confessed. I bought it for a dollar, reasoning that I could tie it to my sword scabbard like a samurai, if I ever got really good at using a sword. It pays to be prepared.
Vincent is the Vinnie of Vinnie’s Uniques and Antiques. Unlike most of the vendors’ stalls, his has a sign. He is a regular; he sells at Londonderry every weekend.
“I look for stuff that nobody else has,” he said. “I want something that they [customers] cannot find anywhere else. If it’s something they’re going to have a hard time finding, I want to have that.” On this particular day, his favorite item was a model ship. “I’m going to tell you, I love this boat. This is a beautiful, beautiful boat,” he said. He pulled aside a tarp to reveal a glass case with a model of a four-masted ship inside. “This guy told me that this ship here burned down and they rebuilt it, but it was never the same ship. There isn’t a kit for this ship, so this ship was made by somebody [who knew it well]. I love my ship.”
Coolest item at the flea market that day: It’s a toss-up between a concrete garden statue of a sad dog and a gold-plated reproduction of a crocodile skull.
What I actually bought: The big Chinese bead and a $5 hockey goalie mask to use in my sword class.
Salem Flea Market (Outside)
20 Hampshire Road, Salem salemfleamarket.com Open Saturdays and Sundays 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Year-round Admission $1; a ticket will allow customers to return during the day The basics: The number of vendors at the outside market can vary on any given day, depending on the weather, but there are usually 50 to 60. Public restrooms are located inside the building. Almost none of the vendors accept credit cards. An ATM is located on the premises. According to the Salem Flea Market website, “The Salem Flea Market has been open for business for more than 40 years. We have new and used items, including antiques arriving every week.” Food: There are two or three concession stands at the entrance to the Indoors Market, as well as vendors selling fresh fruit in the Market itself. One review on the Market’s Facebook page reads, “Corn dogs. Corn dogs. Corn dogs. Corn dogs. Corn dogs.”
There are two parts to the Salem Flea Market: an outdoor market and an indoor one. It might be tempting to consider them as a single unit, but they are so vastly different that it makes sense to consider each on its own merits.
The Outside Market butts right up against the parking lot, and there is a lot going on. It is constantly in motion. It comes closest to being another garage sale-type market, but here the focus is on utility. Some of the vendors sell new items, most sell old ones, but virtually everything is practical. If you are looking for a hand-operated winch with 20 feet of chain, or a used large-screen television, this is the place for you.
Salem Flea Market (outside). Photos by John Fladd.
Lucas sells kitchen appliances. His tables are covered with blenders, food processors, microwave ovens and smaller kitchen tools. He has a small generator on hand, if any customers want to test out one of the appliances. Lucas doesn’t mind telling where he gets his merchandise. He buys the items from thrift stores, most of which he has a relationship with and will sell them to him by the pound. He cleans them up, if necessary, and resells them. I asked him how much he paid for a random blender. It was clean, new-looking, and looked like it would work well in most kitchens.
“I paid maybe 10 dollars,” he said with a shrug. “I can probably sell it here for 20.” What really jumped out at me was a variable-speed, hand-held immersion blender. I asked Lucas how much he wanted for it, and he said he was willing to let it go for $10.
On any given day, the outside market has anywhere up to a dozen cargo trucks. Most are from clean-out businesses or junk removal companies.
On this day, one vendor’s stock was mostly old, hard-worked lawn mowers and piles of air conditioners. His neighbor had three or four tables of used shoes. Another specialized in bicycles and stereo speakers. Because almost everything at the Outside Market is practical, and given the time of the year, several vendors at the front end of the market were selling garden plants. The people who sell at both Salem markets are from all over the world, so many of the vegetable plants for sale weren’t ones you might find at a local garden center — bitter melons, makrut lime trees and some with labels written in Asian characters.
A vendor named Melissa was beginning to think she might have come to the wrong flea market. She was located at the very back of the lot.
“I’ve got some bathrobes, some nightgowns, some [porcelain] figurines, some luggage,” she said, “a little bit of everything. It’s actually all mine. I’ve been a shopper my whole life and collecting things over the years. I usually sell on Facebook Marketplace, but that’s exhausting!” I asked what she thought her hidden gem was. She said that for the right person, the bisque porcelain figurines would be a satisfying find. “What is it they say? ‘One man’s junk is another man’s treasure?’”
Coolest item at the flea market that day: Two KitchenAid stand mixers. The vendor was looking for $80 for the small one, and even missing its bowl he was confident he could get $140 for the six-quart model.
What I actually bought: Plants — two brightly colored lilies and a large pot of Thai chile pepper plants for a total of $12.
Salem Flea Market (Inside)
20 Hampshire Road, Salem salemfleamarket.com Open Saturdays and Sundays 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. year-round Admission: The same $1 ticket. The basics: Public restrooms are located inside the building. Almost none of the vendors accepts credit cards. An ATM is located on the premises. Food: There is a small snack bar inside.
The Inside Market in Salem definitely falls into the sweat socks category. As soon as you walk through the door you’re greeted by enthusiastic salsa and mariachi music. Neon-colored T-shirts compete for space with affordably-priced perfumes and colognes. One vendor sells apparently new-looking mattresses still in their plastic.
One stall was filled to the brim with brightly colored Catholic statuary — figures of saints and religious figures of all sizes, religious paintings, and ceramic bowls and flower pots.
Salem Flea Market (inside). Photo by John Fladd.
The Inside Market has several twisting aisles that branch off unexpectedly. Just when you think you’ve seen most of it, you turn a corner and find a completely new group of stalls. Like almost all the shops, my vote for the coolest one doesn’t have a name above the door. It is about twice the size of other shops, and there are dozens — probably hundreds — of used bicycles hanging from the ceiling. It would be a mistake to think of it as a bike shop, however. The main focus of the business seems to be knives of all kinds and replica swords. Tucked away in a corner are two reproduction helmets, one Spartan and one medieval. Plus the truly impressive number of ceiling bikes.
The chain-link wall of a nearby stall is covered with hundreds of wrestling action figures. A man named Tony runs it with his wife. “I mostly sell Pokémon, wrestling, and action figure toys,” he told me. “That’s all I sell. Well, that and some baseball cards. And football cards — things that people collect.”
Another stall is about half the size of Tony’s and looks for all the world like a storage closet. It is packed full of packages of disposable cups and takeout containers. The owner had stepped out when I visited, so I made small talk with a lady who had come in looking for cups. “This is for a church event tonight,” she told me. “I always come here, and I’ve been coming here since before Covid. I always find what I’m looking for.”
A hand-written sign at another stall nearby read, “Good Quality According to the Price You Pay.”
Coolest item at the flea market that day: A trademark-skirting box of brightly colored toy ponies called Horse Lovely. “THAT BEAUTIFUL HORSE SPREAD YOUR WINGS AND FLY,” the box announced cheerfully.
What I actually bought: Three small resin figurines of babies doing kung fu, for $2 each.
Davisville Flea Market
805 Route 103, Warner davisvillefleamarket.com Open Sundays 4 a.m. to 1 p.m. (The website advises visiting between 6 and 11 a.m.) Open May 5 until the last Sunday in October rain or shine. Admission and parking are free. The basics: An outdoor market with anywhere from 50 to 150+ vendors. Live music, outdoor toilets. Food: There is a concession stand that sells cold drinks, coffee, foods and snacks. Frequently there will be food trucks or vendors selling food.
The Davisville Flea Market is an antiques-centered one. A few artists and craftspeople sell their work, but the majority of the vendors sell old items. There are vintage tools, piles of old photographs, and beer steins on offer.
Aiden and Myles are 9 years old. I met them as they stood, spellbound, in front of the Holy Grail for 9-year-old boys: a giant pile of dozens of Nerf guns. Aiden was willing to give me some flea market advice, though he was incredibly distracted. His friend Myles stood next to him, his mouth agape. Aiden picked up a bright orange Nerf machine gun and examined it as he said, “I’m looking for one that has an attachment that can hold a lot of bullets.”
Aiden said that he likes the look of the guns. “If they made these look like camo [camouflage pattern] that would be good, if you’re into that,” he said, “but I like the bright colors. I think they make them this bright, so you buy them more.”
Davisville Flea Market. Photo by John Fladd.
As I walked around to different tables, I was reminded of some lessons about flea market etiquette I’ve learned the hard way. I approached a table under the shade of some trees that was covered with antique tools. The vendor was having a conversation with another man, but in a slow, laconic way, with many pauses. When I was new to flea marketing, I would have used a lull in the conversation as an opportunity to ask a question, but that has rarely worked out well for me. The polite thing to do is wait until the conversation is completely done.
In this case, I waited four or five minutes for the two men to finish their conversation before talking with the vendor.
“How ya doin’ this morning?” he asked. This is a time-tested traditional greeting that indicated that he was willing to talk. I made a friendly but non-committal answer, because being too enthusiastic about anything sets the wrong tone in negotiations like this. I asked him about a hatchet on his ax table. “What’s the story with this?” I asked. (I could have asked him how much he wanted for it, but that could be interpreted as enthusiasm.)
Clearly this was the right thing to ask. He gleefully told me the brand name of the hatchet. Apparently, at least according to him, it was generally used for splitting shakes. At this point a couple of other customers had wandered over, but I was pleased to find that he had made me one half of the old-guy conversation, so he could make the other people wait.
He tried to sell me a bear trap.
I made my way to a tent run by artists Courtney Norton and Matt West. Their business, 7 Glass Studio, specializes in glass work and pyrography — using heat to burn designs into wood or leather. Matt works in low-heat, non-blown glass. Today he was selling extremely life-like glass caterpillars. “The black, yellow and white ones are your traditional monarch colors,” he explained. “The other ones are just fantasy. People like to stick them in their potted plants.”
John Zapollo sells a lot of different things. Today it was mostly books. He was questioning the wisdom of bringing them to the market. “Books have gone way down,” he said with a rueful shake of his head. “Books here at the flea market don’t seem to sell. It seems like more people are looking for tools and stuff to take care of their houses. The antique stuff that I sell doesn’t seem to get a lot of traction.”
The coolest item at the flea market that day: The bear trap.
What I actually bought: Three antique cookbooks from John. The most interesting one was published by the Heinz Corporation in 1939. I paid $1 apiece.
The first few sips of a blender drink are virtually perfect. The problem is that a few minutes later you’ve drunk all the flavor and you’re left with a weak, sad pile of slush.
Which is why, when I want a really cold drink, I rely on crushed ice. It chills the cocktail effectively, but stays apart from it, like a, I don’t know, a lifeguard or something. This metaphor has gotten away from me.
Blueberry Daiquiri
Blueberries in Syrup
Frozen wild blueberries – regular blueberries are in season and would definitely work for this recipe, but wild ones generally have more flavor and are small enough to get through a large straw; regardless, they should be frozen, to help syrup-ify them
An equal amount of sugar, by weight
A pinch of salt
The Daiquiri Itself
2 ounces blueberries in syrup
2 ounces golden rum – white rum would be a little too subtle for this application; a dark or black rum would overpower the other ingredients; something golden like Faraday is a good daiquiri rum
2 ounces fresh squeezed lemon juice
A splash – perhaps an ounce – of club soda
A large amount of crushed ice – this could be from the door in your refrigerator, or run through an old-fashioned, hand-cranked ice crusher; I prefer to wrap regular ice cubes in a bar towel and smash it up with the pestle from my largest mortar and pestle, which gives me a nice mixture of ice, from large half-cubes down to fine snow
Cook the blueberries, sugar and salt in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally. At first it will be a gloppy, slightly purple pile of sugar. Suddenly, a few minutes into the cooking process, the berries will realize the futility of their existential stubbornness and collapse into a thin jam. Keep cooking and stirring, until the liquid starts to boil. Make sure that all the sugar sticking to the sides of the pan has dissolved into the hot blueberry sauce.
Remove from heat, and set aside to cool.
Fill a mixing glass with a couple handfuls of crushed ice, then add the other ingredients. Stir gently, but thoroughly, into a more or less homogeneous solution.
Transfer into a tall glass, and top with a splash of club soda and a few syrupy blueberries.
Take your drink to your deck, or front porch, or fire escape, and drink it with an oversized boba straw while listening to “The Girl from Ipanema.” It could be the original Brazilian version, or the hep-cat, Sammy Davis big band version, or even Amy Winehouse’s take on it, but the important thing is that you can lean back and draw large amounts of blueberries, rum and lemon into yourself, until it’s difficult to know where you end and the samba music starts. In fact, you could make up an entire playlist of nothing but covers of “The Girl from Ipanema” and spend an hour or two comparing them.
Normally, one of the pillars of a good daiquiri is fresh lime juice, but blueberries and lemon get along so splendidly, whether in a cheesecake or a cocktail, that the lemon is a good substitution in this particular drink. It provides the same amount of acidity and zing, but dances — we might even say it sambas — with the blueberries. The syrupy blueberries bring sweetness and depth to the daiquiri and might even make it a little too sweet if not for the club soda, which brings additional zing to the proceedings while diluting the syrup. The crushed ice brings the temperature down enough to make drinking this cocktail intensely, almost painfully, refreshing.
