Author: John Fladd

The Weekly Dish 25/12/04

• Gingerbread-palooza: Kimball Jenkins (266 N. Main St., Concord, kimballjenkins.com) will host the Home Sweet Home Gingerbread Exhibition, a “very sweet exhibition of artistic gingerbread creations crafted by community members, organizations, and businesses,” Saturday, Dec. 6, through Friday, Dec. 12 (no viewing hours on Dec. 11) from 1 to 8 p.m., according to the website. A Gingerbread Marketplace of local food and food-related vendors will take place on Sunday, Dec. 7, from noon to 6 p.m.

• New state liquor store in Manchester: In a Nov. 14 press release, the New Hampshire Liquor Commission announced that a new Liquor and Wine Outlet will open in downtown Manchester. The former Rite Aid location on North Elm Street will be converted to a 12,000-square-foot facility. This will be one of three Liquor and Wine Outlets in Manchester. Visit liquorandwineoutlets.com.

• Making cannoli: Tuscan Market (Tuscan Village, 9 Via Toscana, Salem, 912-5467, tuscanbrands.com) will host a cannoli-making class Sunday, Dec. 7, beginning at 10 a.m. Roll, fill and decorate your own cannoli shells using traditional Italian methods and house-made ricotta filling. Register online. Tickets cost $64.75 per person.

• December’s martini and cupcake pairing: The theme for December’s martini and cupcake pairing at Copper Door (15 Leavy Drive, Bedford, 488-2677, and 41 S. Broadway, Salem, 458-2033, copperdoor.com) is Eggnog. An Eggnog-tini made with Tito’s vodka, butterscotch schnapps, Vermont maple cream liqueur, and eggnog, with a caramel drizzle is $14.75. An Eggnog Cupcake with rum crème Anglaise filling, eggnog frosting, caramel drizzle, a white chocolate cup, and topped with a cinnamon stick and grated nutmeg is $11.

• Fire in Bedford: A fire broke out at 1750 Taphouse, 170 Route 101 in Bedford, on Tuesday, Nov. 25, according to media reports and to the restaurant’s Facebook page. “Thankfully, everyone made it out safely. No one was hurt but the damage to the building is severe,” according to the post about the incident, which includes a link to a GoFundMe for the staff. “Every dollar raised will go directly to helping our employees get through this challenging time covering essentials and easing the burden during the holiday season,” the post said. “We are heartbroken by this loss but deeply grateful for the outpouring of love and support from our community. With your help, we will rebuild, stronger than ever.”

Cranberry Jack

By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com

From my cranberry extravaganza in last week’s cover story, here’s one more cranberry recipe.

One of the most popular cocktails of the early 1900s was something called a Jack Rose. There are all kinds of theories as to who Jack Rose actually was, but the most likely explanation for the cocktail’s name is that it is made with apple brandy — apple JACK — and it is a rosy pink color.

There is an alternate theory that it is named after a mob enforcer from the 1880s named Jack Rose. Unlikely as it is, I like this theory, because I can just see a florid giant of a man in a bowler hat and with a nose that had been broken too many times, sitting in a dimly lit tavern with sawdust on the floor. The place is hot, smoky and crowded, but there is about five feet of empty space around this lug in every direction. He holds a tiny cocktail glass in his ham-like fist and lifts it up to the light to admire its delicate pink color before taking a sip and sighing with pleasure.

Traditionally this drink gets its color from a few dashes of grenadine. If you made the cranberry syrup from the Nov. 21 cover story (you can find that in the digital library at hippopress.com), you can use that instead.

1½ ounces apple brandy

1 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice

1 teaspoon cranberry syrup or grenadine

Combine the brandy, juice and syrup over ice in a cocktail shaker, then shake thoroughly. Pour into a Champagne flute or the smallest cocktail glass you own. I have one that I rescued from a thrift shop. I suspect it might have actually been a candlestick originally and the whole cocktail situation must confuse it.

Be that as it may, this is an extremely tasty Tiny Drink. Lime juice, as always, goes well with everything and provides an elegant link between the apple brandy and the cranberry. Ask your digital assistant to play some ragtime music during cocktail hour and serve several of these on a tray.

“At five o’clock I was in the Hotel Crillon, waiting for Brett. She was not there, so I sat down and wrote some letters…. I went down to the bar and had a Jack Rose with George the barman.” — Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises.

Featured photo: Jack Rose. Photo by John Fladd.

Upscale grazing

Wine Club takes some of the mystery out of wine

By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com

The world of wine can be daunting. Nobody knows this better than Emma Round, the owner of Unwined Wine Bar in Milford.

“Wine is something that so many people are interested in and they enjoy,” she said. “But not many people know much about it. Some people find it a little intimidating, I think, because there’s so much to know when it comes to wine. What makes it worth drinking? Why are we paying $50 for this bottle of wine and $20 for this one? Wine can be very pretentious. And people in the wine industry can be very kind of elitist, if I’m completely frank. You don’t need to spend lots and lots of money on a really great bottle of wine and you shouldn’t be afraid to kind of ask questions and learn more about it.”

In order to answer some of these questions, Round has started a Wine Club that meets at her wine bar once each month. The club is designed to give an introduction to curious wine newcomers, and to introduce experienced wine enthusiasts to new labels and varieties of wine that they might not know about. Participants try a handful of wines, which Round uses to explain qualities like “tannins,” “astringency,” “dry versus juicy” and the differences between different types of wines. The wines are served with a charcuterie board of meats, cheeses, fruits and other foods with flavors that complement or contrast with them.

“So many people are very hard and fast about pairing food and wine,” Round said. “For me this is an opportunity to show how many things you can have with wine and how those different flavor profiles will affect the wine. Some people, for example, drink red wine and really enjoy sweets, fruits and chocolate, and other people really enjoy a peppery salami. But they both bring out very different profiles. It allows people to kind of get an understanding of their own palate and to also see what other people like and how other people react with it.”

At the first meeting of Unwined’s Wine Club, participants tasted wines from five basic categories: a white, a red, an orange wine (which, Round emphasized, is not made from oranges, but is orange in color), a rosé, and a sparkling wine (in this case, a dry prosecco). Round said future Wine Club presentations might feature different wines from a particular region, from within one particular style, or from one variety of grape.

After the first Wine Club, Round tried to get a feel for what the participants were interested in learning about.

“I handed out questionnaires to allow people to influence the direction that we’re going to take,” she said. “The majority of people seem to want to learn more about different regions and the wines that come from those regions. So going forward, I think that’s what we’re going to do. I think we’ll be starting in Italy, just because I am partial to my Italian wine — if you look at our wine list, there are a lot of Italians. … We’ll try to highlight some of those more like unknown grapes … like they’re on the shelves in the liquor store but you might not always pick them up because you don’t know what they are.”

“I spent a lot of time getting qualifications in wine,” Round said. I’ve spent a lot of time studying it abroad. And most people don’t really have the time or the energy to do that; I completely understand that. I think Wine Club is a chance for us to just kind of get to know wine better. For me, Wine Club is an environment where no one’s going to judge you. When we taste [wine] together, people will come up with some really interesting notes, but nobody is wrong, because everyone’s palate is different. It’s all so subjective.”

Wine Club

Where: Unwined Wine Bar, 1 Nashua
St., Milford, 213-6703, unwinednh.com
When: Third Wednesday of every month,
6 to 8 p.m.
Cost: $50 per person.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Intimidation-free sips

Wine Club takes some of the mystery out of wine

By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com

The world of wine can be daunting. Nobody knows this better than Emma Round, the owner of Unwined Wine Bar in Milford.

“Wine is something that so many people are interested in and they enjoy,” she said. “But not many people know much about it. Some people find it a little intimidating, I think, because there’s so much to know when it comes to wine. What makes it worth drinking? Why are we paying $50 for this bottle of wine and $20 for this one? Wine can be very pretentious. And people in the wine industry can be very kind of elitist, if I’m completely frank. You don’t need to spend lots and lots of money on a really great bottle of wine and you shouldn’t be afraid to kind of ask questions and learn more about it.”

In order to answer some of these questions, Round has started a Wine Club that meets at her wine bar once each month. The club is designed to give an introduction to curious wine newcomers, and to introduce experienced wine enthusiasts to new labels and varieties of wine that they might not know about. Participants try a handful of wines, which Round uses to explain qualities like “tannins,” “astringency,” “dry versus juicy” and the differences between different types of wines. The wines are served with a charcuterie board of meats, cheeses, fruits and other foods with flavors that complement or contrast with them.

“So many people are very hard and fast about pairing food and wine,” Round said. “For me this is an opportunity to show how many things you can have with wine and how those different flavor profiles will affect the wine. Some people, for example, drink red wine and really enjoy sweets, fruits and chocolate, and other people really enjoy a peppery salami. But they both bring out very different profiles. It allows people to kind of get an understanding of their own palate and to also see what other people like and how other people react with it.”

At the first meeting of Unwined’s Wine Club, participants tasted wines from five basic categories: a white, a red, an orange wine (which, Round emphasized, is not made from oranges, but is orange in color), a rosé, and a sparkling wine (in this case, a dry prosecco). Round said future Wine Club presentations might feature different wines from a particular region, from within one particular style, or from one variety of grape.

After the first Wine Club, Round tried to get a feel for what the participants were interested in learning about.

“I handed out questionnaires to allow people to influence the direction that we’re going to take,” she said. “The majority of people seem to want to learn more about different regions and the wines that come from those regions. So going forward, I think that’s what we’re going to do. I think we’ll be starting in Italy, just because I am partial to my Italian wine — if you look at our wine list, there are a lot of Italians. … We’ll try to highlight some of those more like unknown grapes … like they’re on the shelves in the liquor store but you might not always pick them up because you don’t know what they are.”

“I spent a lot of time getting qualifications in wine,” Round said. I’ve spent a lot of time studying it abroad. And most people don’t really have the time or the energy to do that; I completely understand that. I think Wine Club is a chance for us to just kind of get to know wine better. For me, Wine Club is an environment where no one’s going to judge you. When we taste [wine] together, people will come up with some really interesting notes, but nobody is wrong, because everyone’s palate is different. It’s all so subjective.”

Wine Club

Where: Unwined Wine Bar, 1 Nashua
St., Milford, 213-6703, unwinednh.com
When: Third Wednesday of every month,
6 to 8 p.m.
Cost: $50 per person.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

A moo-ving experience

Christmas With the Cows returns to Canterbury

By John Fladd

jfladd@hippopress.com

According to Luke Mahoney, owner of Brookford Farm in Canterbury, the farm’s yearly tradition of Christmas With The Cows has its origins in Germany.

“My wife and her mother come from Dresden, Germany,” he said, “where they have this really fantastic Christmas market. And we now live on a farm. So we decided to merge the two worlds where the German Christmas street market meets an organic farm in the countryside. So there’s elements of both throughout the whole thing.”

Brookford Farm’s website describes Christmas With the Cows as “a celebration of our animals returning to their winter housing from their green pastures. Mostly outside, it has a festive atmosphere, with family-friendly DIY crafts, and farm fresh food.” Mahoney said that the food is a cornerstone of the celebration.

“It’s a merger of German cuisine and farm-to-table food,” he said. “Ninety-five percent of what is in the food is grown on the farm, but it’s German-inspired. There’s sausages and [farm-made] sauerkraut. We have cheese and latkes, which are potato pancakes, served with applesauce and sour cream from the farm. There will be quark balls [quarkbällchen in German], which is a real classic German Christmas market specialty. It’s a sort of a doughnut made with fresh quark cheese that we produce on the farm.” (Quark is described as a fresh, soft, and creamy cheese with a mild, slightly sour taste, similar to a cross between thick yogurt and cottage cheese.)

Mahoney said there will also be traditional German goulash and a traditional bread-like cake (or cake-like bread) called stollen.

“I think probably every part of Germany claims to have the best,” he said,” but Dresden is world-renowned for its stollen. When my mother-in-law came to the U.S. she brought the recipe with her, and we’ve been making it every year ever since. Again, it’s made with our own ingredients; we’re not growing the wheat, but the butter and milk come from our farm. We’ll have that for tasting, but also for sale.”

For many years, all of the farm’s fermented products were made by an employee from Russia, whom Mahoney described as “a wizard of fermentation.”
“Sadly,” he said, “this year, she actually passed away. But she wrote all her recipes down, and my wife led the sauerkraut production this year. Her son might be there to help us.”

All the farm’s dairy, Mahoney said, comes from 100-percent grass-fed Normandy cows, a French breed. Ironically, Christmas With The Cows is one of the few events that doesn’t feature Brookford Farm’s trademark Cow Parade, when the dairy herd returns from pasture to marching music. That’s down to the time of the year, Mahoney said.

“They’re in the barn for the winter,” he said, “so this is the one event where a parade is not included, but the cows are like ever-present. They kind of oversee the whole event from their barn and people can approach them, feed them hay, and folks can choose Christmas trees for them. We make a kind of mock Christmas tree forest in front of the cows, to make them part of the event.”

Christmas With the Cows
Where: Brookford Farm, 250 West Road,
Canterbury, 742-4084, brookfordfarm.com
When: three consecutive weekends, Nov.
29-30, Dec. 6-7, and Dec. 13-14, from 11
a.m. to 5 p.m. General admission tickets
(13+) are $14 through eventbrite.com or
$15 at the door. Tickets for children 4 to 12
are $9 online, $10 at the door. Children 3
and younger are free.

Featured photo: Cow at Brookford Farm. Courtesy photo.

The Weekly Dish 25/11/27

• Wine week: Tickets are on sale now for the 20th Annual New England Winter Wine Spectacular slated for Thursday, Jan. 22, at the DoubleTree by Hilton Manchester Downtown, 700 Elm St. Doors open at 6 p.m. for general admission, 5 p.m. for people with Advanced Entrance and Bellman’s Cellar Select tickets, according to nhwineweek.com. The Wine Week events will also feature Sommelier Select, on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 5:30 to 8 p.m. at Grappone Center in Concord which is a guided blind tasting, according to the website, where you can purchase tickets for that event as well.

• Farmers market goes indoors: The Concord Farmers’ Market has moved indoors for the season. Fresh, local products will be available Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon at 7 Eagle Square in Concord.

• Gingerbread decor: The Goffstown Public Library (2 High St., Goffstown, 497-2102, goffstownlibrary.com) will host a family gingerbread house decorating session Saturday, Nov. 29, from 11 a.m. to noon, and Wednesday, Dec. 3, from 6 to 7 p.m. in the children’s room. Pre-built gingerbread houses and decorating goodies will be provided; you just need to bring your imagination. Space is limited and registration is required. One registration per family please.

• Ramen bar: There will be a DIY Ramen Bar for tweens and teens (ages 10 and up) at the Maxfield Public Library (8 Route 129, Loudon, 798-5153, maxfieldlibrary.org) Tuesday, Dec. 2, at 4 p.m. Customize your own ramen with a variety of toppings in the Community Room. Feel free to bring Thanksgiving leftovers to create some wild options. Registration is encouraged.

• Holiday cooking with wine: On Wednesday, Dec. 3, from 6 to 7 p.m., LaBelle Winery Derry (14 Route 111, Derry, 672-9898, labellewinery.com/labelle-winery-derry) will host an interactive cooking demonstration and tasting featuring holiday cocktail party recipes. Sample each class recipe paired with LaBelle Wines. LaBelle’s chefs demonstrate the cooking processes and share culinary tips and techniques. Participants will also receive recipe cards so they can re-create the class recipes at home. The cost is $40 per person at labellewinery.com/public-winery-events.

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