Author: John Fladd

Feast of Pumpkins

6 ways to put pumpkin on your menu

While breaking down a whole pumpkin and cooking it from scratch might sound a little overwhelming, Jason Devriendt is confident that you’ve got this. He is a farmer and one of the owners of Devriendt Farm Products in Goffstown. You just have to pick the right variety of pumpkin, he said, which probably isn’t the kind you carved for Halloween.

“Jack-o’-lantern pumpkins are a much older variety,” Devriendt said. “They kind of started it all. Nowadays, we obviously have eating pumpkins. The main difference is that the content of sugars an eating pumpkin will produce is going to be significantly higher. You can still eat jack-o’-lantern pumpkins. They’re just going to be very, very bland.”

“One of the biggest names [of eating pumpkins] is a style called cheese pumpkins. We grow a particular variety of it called Long Island Cheese and it’s a squatter, tan color squash pumpkin. They boast an even higher sugar content than even sugar pumpkins. Supposedly the flesh of those smooths out a lot more in the cooking process. It breaks down better. The average cheese pumpkins get larger than a sugar pumpkin. I’d probably say somewhere in the 10- to 15-pound range, whereas your average sugar pumpkin is going to be anywhere between three to five pounds.”

On the other hand, there is no shame in using canned pumpkin. For Amy Casella, the owner-operator of Crumbs on Cambridge in Bedford, canned pumpkin is her default ingredient. “Truthfully, I don’t break down pumpkins,” she said. “It’s just too time-consuming for me, so I’ll go after the organic canned pumpkin and I think it’s lovely. The flavor is good, the texture is good.”

Pumpkin to Drink

One of To Share Brewing’s most popular seasonal beers is something called Sophisticated Pumpkin, but co-owner and brewer Aaron Share says he had to be talked into offering it.

“When we first opened [the brewery], I was very resistant to the idea of making a pumpkin beer,” Share said. “I made pumpkin beers as a home brewer, but I just didn’t think it was something that folks would really enjoy, because it just had a lot of pumpkin. And so after a couple years of [my staff] insisting that we make a pumpkin beer I finally caved and told them that I was going to do it my way. It wasn’t going to be overly sweet. So what I did is I used our Vienna lager recipe and we add 40-something pounds of pumpkin to our mash. We add just a touch of pumpkin pie spice and we add some bourbon-soaked vanilla to it to just give it some added flavor and sophistication. So it’s a little more upscale than I would say some of the ones out there that are made with mostly sugar.”

Because even his pumpkin beer has some sweetness to it, Share suggests pairing it with other sweet foods. “I would go with something a little bit more robust in flavor. Maybe something like a pumpkin ravioli or something like that. Or even if you’re just snacking on a piece of pumpkin bread or something, I think it would stand up to that. Even something like a Boston cream pie could pair nicely with it.”

Bourbon Pumpkin Smash

This cocktail will help you ease into the holiday season. Even with a bunch of complementary flavors, the pumpkininess shines through.

  • 2 ounces pumpkin syrup (See below. You’ll have to make it yourself, but like all syrups it is almost embarrassingly easy to make.)
  • 2 ounces bourbon – there are several strong flavors at play here, so probably don’t use your very best bourbon for this
  • ½ ounce orange juice
  • Several dashes of orange bitters – this is to offset the sweetness of the other ingredients. Use your best judgment
  • Ginger beer to top – not ginger ale. Ginger beer. You want the spicy bite of the good stuff.

Combine the pumpkin syrup, bourbon, orange juice and bitters in a cocktail shaker, then dry shake it (without ice) for several seconds, before adding ice and shaking it again. This is to prevent the syrup from seizing up when it hits the ice.

Strain over fresh ice in a large rocks glass, and top with a couple ounces of ginger beer.

Pumpkin Syrup

  • ½ cup (156 g) maple syrup – the real stuff, please
  • ⅓ cup (75 g) water
  • ⅓ cup (75 g) pumpkin puree
  • ½ teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
  • a pinch of sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla

Add all the ingredients but the vanilla to a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Simmer over low heat for two to three minutes to make sure all the ingredients have gotten to know each other.

Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla. (Vanilla is very volatile. It won’t explode or anything, but it evaporates easily and takes some flavor with it.)

Not for nothin’, but if you’re a pumpkin spice fan this is great in your coffee.

Pumpkin with Chocolate

Given its distinctive flavor, pumpkin pairs surprisingly well with a wide variety of other distinctive flavors — brown butter, whiskey (particularly bourbon), “warming” spices like ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and black pepper, almost every type of nut, and of course chocolate.

Brown butter pumpkin chocolate chip cookies

If you were to tell people that you were field-testing pumpkin recipes, a shocking number of them, a truly startling percentage, would try very, very hard to give you their recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.

These cookies hit several of pumpkin’s sweet spots: brown sugar, chocolate, and brown butter. While theoretically there is probably a baked good somewhere that would not be improved by the use of brown butter, this is not one of them. The caramelized milk solids bring a rich, almost savory flavor that stands up to the pumpkin’s muskiness. A pinch of citric acid balances out the brown butter’s heaviness and gives these cookies a mouth-watering quality.

  • ½ cup (1 stick) butter
  • ¼ cup (50 g) dark sugar
  • ½ cup (100 g) granulated sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 6 Tablespoons (86 g) pumpkin puree
  • 1½ cups (188 g) all-purpose or white whole wheat flour
  • ¼ teaspoon salt – I like kosher salt or coarse sea salt
  • ¼ teaspoon baking powder
  • ¼ teaspoon baking soda
  • ¼ teaspoon citric acid (optional – the odds of your having a bag of citric acid hanging around in your pantry are admittedly low)
  • 1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
  • ½ cup (90 g) semisweet or dark chocolate chips

Brown the butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Wait until it has stopped foaming, then watch it like a hawk until it turns the color of dark toast, then remove it from the heat and let it cool for a couple of minutes.

In a large bowl, combine the powdery ingredients — the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, citric acid and spices. Set it aside. Mutter “Your time will come” to it.

With a stand mixer or hand mixer, beat the brown butter and the sugars until they are as combined as you can get them, about three minutes. Add the vanilla and keep beating. Add the pumpkin and keep beating until it is fluffy and looks like caramel frosting.

Turn your mixer to low, to prevent the poofing of flour, and spoon the dry ingredients into the mixture until everything is barely combined. Stir the chocolate chips in by hand. Cover the dough and chill it in your refrigerator for at least half an hour.

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

Flatten tablespoonfuls of the chilled dough onto the palm of your hand. Roll it into a ball, then flatten it, and place it on a parchment or silicone-lined baking sheet. Arrange six of the disks on the sheet, then bake for 12 to 13 minutes.

Let the cookies cool completely before removing them from the pan. This recipe will make between 15 and 18 cookies, so you’ll be making three batches. Remember to keep the remaining cookie dough in the fridge between batches.

Pumpkin as Soup

Because it pairs so well with sweet ingredients, it’s easy to forget how well pumpkin works in savory dishes. Perhaps the most popular savory application for pumpkin is as a soup. For super ambitious hosts, serving pumpkin soup from a hollowed out pumpkin, or individual servings in baby pumpkins, is a Show-Stopping Number. But if you have too much drama in your life already, pumpkin soup is a Tier 1 Comfort Food.

Curried Coconut Pumpkin Soup

  • 2 Tablespoons coconut oil
  • ¼ teaspoon chili oil (optional)
  • 1 small or ½ large white or yellow onion, diced
  • 1 to 2 cloves of garlic, minced
  • 1 Tablespoon pickled jalapenos, minced
  • 1 teaspoon dark brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon garam masala or sweet curry powder
  • 1 15-ounce can of pumpkin puree
  • 1 15-ounce can of coconut milk
  • 1 cup of broth – I like vegetable broth, but chicken or turkey broth would work well too
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • roasted pumpkin seeds and chopped cilantro for garnish
pumpkin soup garnished with pumpkin seeds and chopped cilantro, in handmade white bowl with blue decoration on sides, sitting on kitchen counter
Pumpkin soup. Photo by John Fladd.

In a large saucepan, fry the onions, garlic and jalapeños in the two oils until the onions turn translucent and start to pick up a little color. You’re not looking for full caramelization here, but some light browning will bring extra flavor to the finished soup.

Stir in the garam masala and let the mixture cook for a minute or so, until your kitchen starts to smell spicy. Stir in the pumpkin and let the mixture cook for another few minutes, then add the broth and coconut milk. Bring to a simmer and let it cook for a few minutes.

Either transfer the soup to a blender or use an immersion blender to puree it until smooth. Season it with salt and pepper, then serve garnished with cilantro and pumpkin seeds.

Pumpkin in Bread

Pumpkin bread and its affiliates, pumpkin muffins, are fall classics.

“Once you get into this, your fall season, everybody wants pumpkin and apple,” baker Amy Casella said. One reason for pumpkin bread’s popularity, she speculated, is that it makes even novice bakers look good.

“If you’re using canned pumpkin,” she said, “it has a ton of moisture, so even if you overcook [pumpkin bread or muffins] it’s very forgiving.”

Pumpkin bread with crystalized ginger and a bourbon glaze

The conventional raisins have been replaced in this recipe by crystallized ginger — the spicy cubes that have the same texture as gummy candies. This gives the pumpkin bread pops of flavor, in contrast to raisins, which are, shall we say, more introverted in the way they present themselves. While the boozy glaze is not strictly necessary, it improves the already delicious pumpkin by at least 15 percent.

  • 1 package (about 16 ounces) boxed yellow cake mix
  • 2 cups (one 16-ounce can) pumpkin puree
  • ⅓ cup (113 g) molasses
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg – Seriously, if you’ve never grated nutmeg yourself, you’ve been missing out. The whole nutmeg kernels never go stale (as opposed to the pre-ground version, which turns to sawdust within a month or two) and smell almost citrusy. If you don’t have a microplane grater, use the smallest side of your box grater, the one you’ve always wondered what it was for. It’s for this.
  • ⅓ cup (38 g) chopped nuts (optional) – I like pecans for this, but if the idea of nuts in baked goods angers you, I totally understand.
  • ⅓ cup (57 g) crystalized ginger, chopped
  • Bourbon glaze – see below

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

Empty the cake mix into a large mixing bowl, and toss the ginger pieces in it. This will keep the ginger from clumping together. Add in the rest of the ingredients and beat the mixture for about two minutes.

Pour the batter into two greased loaf pans and bake for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on how big your loaf pans are. (Check them with a toothpick at 45 minutes.) Let them cool before depanning them. Drizzle them with bourbon glaze.

You can make this recipe as muffins. Remember to use liners in your muffin tin, and check doneness at 20 minutes.

Bourbon Glaze

  • 2 cups (227 g) powdered sugar
  • 5 Tablespoons bourbon – again, use some that tastes good, but don’t break out the premium stuff
  • ½ teaspoon vanilla
  • ½ teaspoon milk or half & half
  • a pinch of salt
  • 1 Tablespoon melted butter – aside from being delicious, this will help the glaze set and keep it from dripping off your bread or muffins

Mix everything together, adding the butter last, then drizzle over anything that needs to be drizzled — in this case the pumpkin bread, but I can’t help thinking this would be great with grilled pork chops.

Pumpkin Contributes to Granola

If you’ve never thought much about pumpkin seeds outside of field-dressing a jack-o’-lantern, you can find the roasted, salted variety in the seed-and-nut section of your supermarket, sometimes called pepitas.

In this granola recipe, pumpkin seeds fill the role usually played by chopped nuts. Much like pumpkin, they get along with an impressive number of other ingredients. In this case the addition of soy sauce and black pepper will play off their sweet/savory nature and add complexity to the final granola.

  • 2½ cups (263 g) rolled oats
  • ¾ cups (75 g) roasted, salted pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
  • ¼ cup (37 g) poppy seeds, sesame seeds, or a mixture of both
  • 3 Tablespoons dark brown sugar
  • ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • ¼ cup (50 g) vegetable oil
  • ⅓ cup (104 g) dark maple syrup, the real stuff
  • 2 teaspoon soy sauce
  • ¾ cup (127 g) dried, sweetened cranberries

Preheat your oven to 300°F.

clear glass bowl filled with granola made of a mix of oats, pumpkin seeds, and dried cranberries
Pumpkin granola. Photo by John Fladd.

In the largest bowl you have, combine the oats, seeds, sugar and spices, and toss them with your hands. Separately, mix the oil, syrup and soy sauce, then pour the mixture over the dry ingredients. Combine everything — again, with your hands. (You could theoretically use a spatula or something, but hands work better.)

Scoop the mixture onto a baking sheet, spread it out, and press it into the corners.

Bake the proto-granola for 15 minutes, then stir it up and press it back down into the pan. This time you will probably need to use a spatula or a large spoon; it will be too hot for your hands. Bake for another 15 minutes, then remove from the oven.

Let the granola cool. Hopefully there will be some clumps. Mix in the cranberries.

Ta-dah.

Pumpkin Made Fancy

Pumpkin soufflé is one of those dishes that can seem very intimidating. That also means it brings a lot of street cred if you can pull it off.

But here’s the secret: It’s easy to pull off. Just follow the instructions, one at a time. The final soufflé will be light and delicious.

  • ½ cup (113 g) whole milk or half & half
  • 1 Tablespoon corn starch
  • ½ teaspoon fresh-grated nutmeg – see the pumpkin bread recipe for a diatribe about this
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • ⅛ teaspoon ground cloves
  • ⅛ teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
  • a pinch of salt
  • 2 Tablespoon dark brown sugar
  • 2 cups (one 16-ounce can) pumpkin puree
  • 1 Tablespoon orange liqueur – Grand Marnier is a classic for this, but orange curacao or even triple sec will work
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • zest of a large orange
  • 8 egg whites
  • ¾ cup (150 g) white sugar

Preheat your oven to 400°F.

Thoroughly butter the inside of a soufflé dish, the ceramic one with vertical ridges on the outside. Really slather the butter on. Then dust the buttered surface with white sugar. Set the dish aside.

white souffle dish sitting on counter, fluffy souffle risen
Pumpkin souffle. Photo by John Fladd.

In a small saucepan, combine the milk or cream, the cornstarch and the spices, and bring to a simmer. It should thicken considerably. Remove from heat and transfer to a mixing bowl.

Stir in the salt, brown sugar, pumpkin, orange liqueur, vanilla and orange zest. Mix thoroughly and set aside.

Using the whisk attachment on your stand or hand mixer, beat the egg whites until they reach “soft peaks.” This means they’ve turned white and are slightly thickened. Mix the sugar into the egg whites and whip on high speed, until they reach “stiff peaks.” This means, if you turn the bowl sideways or upside down, they stay put.

OK, this is the closest this recipe gets to tricky. Don’t panic. Drink a slug of the orange liqueur, if you have to.

Add about a third of the stiff egg whites to the pumpkin mixture, and stir to combine. This is just to lighten up the batter. Add half of the remaining egg whites to the pumpkin bowl and gently fold them into the mixture. This means to mix it super-gently so you don’t deflate the fluffy egg whites. (If you are nervous about this, search online for a video: “how to fold egg whites.” It’s actually very simple.) When the egg whites are folded in, do the same with the remaining egg whites.

Transfer the eggy pumpkin mixture to the soufflé dish. Put it on the middle rack in your oven and bake for 30 minutes. When it is done it will have risen above the rim of the dish and will be a golden brown color.

As soon as you take the soufflé out of the oven, take a picture of it. Within the next 10 minutes or so it will deflate and will not look as awe-inspiring. But it will still be delicious.

Prohibition sneakiness

The Home Bartender’s Guide and Song Book was published at the height of Prohibition. I dream of owning an actual hard-copy edition someday, but I’ve been reading a digital version from The Internet Archive with great interest.

Alexander

Someone concocted this camouflaged dynamite years ago. Here’s to him. Smooth as silk, its rich, creamy sweetness made it seem as though you were drinking nothing more than a simple chocolate ice cream soda. —The Home Bartender’s Guide and Song Book (1930)

2 ounces gin – When this recipe was written, the quality of any gin available was extremely variable. The Song Book makes references in places along the lines of, “If you can get your hands on some of the good stuff, do such and such,” implying that many readers would be using some pretty rough stuff. If you want to feel super-authentic, go ahead and buy the absolute cheapest bottom-shelf gin you can find. The rest of us will go ahead with something that won’t make us want to claw our eyes out. I’ve been drinking Hendrick’s Oasium lately and have been very pleased with it in this application.

2 ounces crème de cacao – This is about four times the amount of crème de cacao you’re likely to find in any contemporary cocktail, but go ahead and use the full 2 ounces. That isn’t a typo.

2 ounces half & half – The original recipe calls for heavy cream, but going with something slightly lighter leaves the door open for drinking more than one.

Ask your digital assistant to play “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” by Duke Ellington. This was a standard of the time, and it stands up extremely well, with a rhythm that lends itself to shaking a cocktail.

Combine all three ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker and shake vigorously for 30 to 45 seconds. You should hear the sound of the ice breaking into shards.

Strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass, and drink, thinking of youthful indiscretions.

The authors of the Song Book nailed this one. There is definitely a ginny backbone to this drink, but mostly it tastes of slightly sweetened dairy and empty promises.

Baby Fingers

We really don’t know who named this one, or why. But we have a good idea that the name is appropriate enough. And if you think Sloe gin means SLOW, you’re mistaken, lady. Many a stubborn genius, whose forehead caressed a curbstone, changed his mind after several ‘Baby Fingers.’ —The Home Bartender’s Guide and Song Book (1930)

1 ounce gin

2 ounces sloe gin

3 dashes bitters – At times I’ve used cardamom bitters and homemade black pepper bitters, and I’ve been pleased with either.

Ask you-know-who to play you Cab Calloway singing “Minnie the Moocher” from the The Blues Brothers soundtrack. You won’t be sorry.

Combine the gin, sloe gin and bitters over ice in a cocktail shaker and shake thoroughly. Strain into a stemmed glass. This cocktail is at its best when it’s skull-shrinkingly cold, and holding it by the stem of a glass helps keep it colder longer.

If you are the type of purist who keeps their gin in the freezer or uses steel or granite cocktail stones to prevent watering your cocktail down, actually use ice this time. This super-boozy cocktail benefits from the slight dilution that comes with shaking it over ice.

Which is not to say it isn’t good. As the authors of the Song Book indicated, it goes down smoothly and deceptively, and the next thing you know you’ve had three of them and you’ve texted your friend with the Very Bad Ideas. It would be too sweet if not for the bitters. It would be too harsh if not for the ice dilution thing.

Featured photo: Baby Fingers and Alexander. Photo by John Fladd.

Spirited celebration

New Hampshire celebrates Distiller’s Week

By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com

The week of Oct. 30 through Nov. 6 is New HamDipshire Distiller’s Week, an annual set of events presented by the New Hampshire Liquor and Wine Outlets. There will be tastings and bottle-signings at individual stores during the week, as well as a Worldwide Spirit Sabbatical on Wednesday, Nov. 5, and the 12th Annual Distiller’s Showcase on Thursday, Nov. 6.

According to Mark Roy from the New Hampshire Liquor Commission, Distiller’s Week allows consumers to discover products that they would be unlikely to encounter on their own, and producers to discover new customers and new markets. He used an event called the Worldwide Spirit Sabbatical as an example.

“We have spirits represented [at this event] from all over the globe, including some smaller niche brands that you may not have heard of,” he said. “So it’s a good opportunity to come in and sample some spirits not only from right here in the U.S. but from places around the world like Japan, Scotland, Ireland, India, South America and the Dominican Republic. This event is at a smaller, more intimate venue so you can get to spend a little bit more one-on-one time with some of the brand ambassadors and people who’ll be there.”

Featured guests at the Spirits Sabbatical will include Taylor Grieger from Cape Horn Tequila, and adventurer-turned-distiller and the subject of the documentary Hell or High Seas; Ashok Chokalingam from Amrut Distilleries, a pioneer in India’s single-malt whiskey movement; and Grace Gonzalez from El Mayor Tequila, an expert in tequila production.

“We have other brand owners coming in,” Roy added. “Jeremy Roenick, an NHL Hall-of-Famer and former Chicago Blackhawk, is with us. And somebody new coming in this year is former America’s Next Top Model judge and photographer Nigel Barker, who is now the co-owner of the Barker Company.”

The culminating event of Distiller’s Week is a much bigger proceeding: the Distiller’s Showcase, which will take place Thursday, Nov. 6, at the DoubleTree by Hilton Manchester Downtown and will feature more than 600 spirits for sampling. Roy said the Showcase is expected to have between 1,300 and 1,500 attendees, most of whom are not part of the liquor industry.

“The majority are just individual consumers,” Roy said. “The first year we started we had 200 [people] in attendance, and last year we sold out at 1,300, so there’s a lot of word of mouth. People come to the event and see what a great value it is. We do get great support from my local restaurants. We’ll have upwards of 30 restaurants at the event, offering samples of their food, so we get support from our restaurant partners, but the main attendees of the event are our actual consumers, and they can purchase [liquors] that evening through our website and get a discount that evening and then pick up bottles throughout the week at select locations throughout the state.”

Roy said an unusually large number of distillers and distillery owners will be on hand to discuss their spirits.

“A lot of them are the smaller craft distilleries from New Hampshire,” he said. “Distilleries will be represented by their owners and distillers coming from Vermont and surrounding states, and even more of them are from the New England area, but I’d probably say 20 percent or so of the representatives are brand owners or distillers from their actual company.”

“I talk to [spirit] representatives from all over the country,” he said, ”and they think this is one of the best events not only on the Eastern seaboard but throughout the country, so they love to come back and get in front of that many consumers in one evening and have the opportunity to talk one-on-one about their brands. So we have a lot of people that look forward to this event and come back every year.”

Proceeds from the Distiller’s Showcase will support the New Hampshire Food Bank. The event is for adults 21 years of age or older, and once again, free rides home will be provided to showcase ticket-holders within a 20-mile radius of the event.

David Wadsworth owns and operates a small distillery, Mount Washington Distillers (270 Hounsell Ave, Gilford, mtwdistillers.com), that he’s extremely passionate about.

“We make five different spirits,” Wadsworth said. “One of them is Huntington’s Distilled Gin. It’s named after the Huntington Ravine Trail on Mount Washington, which is the most difficult trail. It has 29 botanical [ingredients]. Most gin would have five to seven botanicals. We wanted to make a gin that nobody else could make and that was not like anything else. It’s not a British gin. It’s a botanical gin.”

With an unusual product in an already crowded spirit market, it can be challenging, Wadsworth said, to find a way to connect with new customers. He said Distiller’s Week provides a unique opportunity to give consumers an opportunity to taste his gin, whiskey and vodka, and learn from him why they are different from other liquors.

“We’re a very small distiller,” Wadsworth said. “Distiller’s Week has all the major suppliers to the New Hampshire Liquor Commission stores statewide, very big and very small ones like me. So our participation is actually quite important because nobody knows about us. We might get a few hundred to 1,000 people coming through a Distiller’s Week event; we get excellent coverage and publicity and people can try our product. They can learn about why we’re different from everybody else. For us, it’s a natural.”

2025 Distiller’s Week

2025 Distiller’s Week events sponsored by New Hampshire Liquor Stores and Outlets will include tastings and bottle-signings at individual outlet locations throughout the state. Visit liquorandwineoutlets.com/events.

Worldwide Spirits Sabbatical

When: Wednesday, Nov. 5, from 6 to 8:30 p.m.
Where: Pembroke Pines Country Club, 45 Whittemore Road, Pembroke, 210-1365, pembrokepinescc.com
Tickets: $65 through eventbrite.com.
More: distillersshowcase.com/event/worldwide-spirits-sabbatical-2025

Twelfth Annual Distiller’s Showcase of Premium Spirits
This event provides the opportunity for guests to meet distillers from around the world while sampling food from New Hampshire’s top restaurants.
When: Thursday, Nov. 6, from 6 to 8:30 p.m.
Where: Doubletree Expo Center, 700 Elm St., Manchester, 625-1000
Tickets: $81.88 through eventbrite.com. Proceeds from the event will support the New Hampshire Food Bank (New Hampshire Food Bank (nhfoodbank.org).
More: distillersshowcase.com

Featured photo: Distiller’s Week. Courtesy photo.

The Weekly Dish 25/10/23

By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com

• This wine costs how much? Wine-themed online travel agency intothevineyard.com reported in an Oct. 13 press release that New Hampshire consumers pay more for bottles of wine than residents in any other state. “New Hampshire tops the charts,” the press release reads, “with a bottle of Josh Cellars Sauvignon Blanc averaging $17.98 (+39% above the national white wine average) and Cabernet Sauvignon at $19.48 (+39% above the red wine average).” The study found that the same wines in Florida, on the other hand, average $10.87 and $13.27.

• Books and wine: Averill House Vineyard (21 Averill Road, Brookline, 244-3165, averillhousevineyard.com) will host Pouring Over Pages, a book & wine pairing night, with four wines, four romance reads, games and prizes, from 6 to 8 p.m. Just a Taste Books will be on site for a night of romance, wine and literary fun. Non-alcohol option on arrival. General admission tickets are $45; VIP tickets are $65. Visit averillhousevineyard.com/events.

• Hot dogs and lager: Candia Road Brewing Co. (840 Candia Road, Manchester, 935-8123, candiaroadbrewingco.com) will celebrate the launch of this year’s Vienna (Wiener) Lager with Weenie Weekend Saturday, Oct. 25, from noon to 9 p.m., and Sunday, Oct. 26, from noon to 6 p.m. More than 20 varieties of hot dog will be on the menu, including vegan and vegetarian options.

• Eating acorns: The Concord Food Co-op (24 S. Main St., 225-6840, concordfoodcoop.com) will host a hands-on class that teaches folks how to process acorns into edible treats, on Tuesday, Oct. 28, at 4 p.m., led by nature educator Julieann Hartly. Children and adults are welcome. This event is free, but you can reserve a spot through eventbrite.com.

Tutti Frutti Ice Cream

  • 1 20-ounce can of crushed pineapple, drained.
  • Juice of 1 small lemon
  • ¾ cup (150 g) sugar
  • 2¼ cups (510 g) half & half
  • 2 ounces (1/4 of an 8-ounce package) cream cheese
  • 1 Tablespoon light corn syrup – you don’t think you have any, but there is almost certainly half a bottle, pushed to the back of the cabinet where you keep your baking stuff.
  • 2 Tablespoons elderflower liqueur
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • ½ teaspoon almond extract
  • 1 lb. (450 g) mixed frozen fruit – I like strawberries and dark cherries.
  • 1 Tablespoon sugar

Combine all the ingredients for the ice cream base (everything but the frozen fruit and the tablespoon of sugar) in your blender, and blend thoroughly. Strain through a fine-meshed strainer, then chill in your refrigerator for at least an hour or two — preferably overnight. If you don’t have an ice cream maker, double-bag the ice cream base in large zippered plastic bags, and freeze on its side, to make a solid sheet of frozen base.

When your ice cream base is sufficiently chilled or frozen, roughly chop the frozen fruit, then mix with the remaining 1 Tablespoon of sugar, and set it aside. As the fruit thaws, the juice will bleed into the sugar and create a truly remarkable syrup.

If you’re using an ice cream maker, blend the chilled ice cream base briefly, then churn it in your ice cream maker, according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

If you are not using an ice cream maker, break your sheet of frozen base up into chunks and blend on low-to-medium speed in your blender. As the chunks are ground up by the blades of the blender, it will produce just enough heat to mix everything to the consistency of soft-serve ice cream, which is roughly the same texture as an ice cream maker would bring it to.

Spoon the ice cream base and syrupy fruit into whatever container you’re going to use to freeze it, alternating layers. Label the containers, and harden the ice cream in your freezer for at least a couple of hours before serving it. This should make a little more than a quart of finished ice cream.

Tutti Fruiti is a style of ice cream that was at the peak of its popularity in the 1920s and ’30s. It has a fruity — in this case, pineappley — flavor, with bright pops of fruit. For the full effect of eating it, eat it while watching a silent movie. I recommend Easy Street (1917) with Charlie Chaplin, or The Mark of Zorro (1920) with Douglas Fairbanks. This would be an excellent Date Night activity.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Hot from the pizza oven

Simply Fired NH turns a home project into a local fave

Seth L’Heureux takes pizza-making personally. It’s almost impossible to achieve the extremely high temperatures necessary to make a classic Neapolitan pizza in a home oven. The crust doesn’t get the crispy-on-the-bottom-but-still-chewy texture that serious pizza enthusiasts prize.

So L’Heureux built a full-sized wood-fired pizza oven in his New Boston backyard.

“I researched [pizza ovens] to death,” he remembered. “The oven itself came in a kit from Australia. It’s a pre-cut kit — I call it Legos for adults — and it took us about two years to finish it. We started it one year, we built the base, and then started getting it out of the ground.” L’Heureaux said he didn’t have any previous masonry experience. “It was designed for somebody that’s never done masonry before. Everything we needed was jammed into this crate, and cut perfect. Everything fits exactly where it’s supposed to fit. And every time there was a tricky part, there’s a YouTube video for it. This guy’s literally, ‘OK, well this is the next step of your build.’ I’d go to YouTube, watch the videos and then go do it.”

After two years L’Heureux had a fully functioning professional-grade pizza oven. Which, he said, is when his family’s pizza obsession really took off.

“I do everything homemade,” he said. “I make the dough myself. The dough cold-ferments for two days before we use it. It gets almost like a sourdough flavor, but it’s, you know, I use regular yeast. I make my own sauce. We make a pepperoni with hot honey and ricotta — it’s the hot honey we make from peppers that my son grows in the garden. I actually just cured 40 pounds of bacon for a future pizza we’re going to do. I don’t just buy store-bought bacon; I buy the pork belly and I cure the bacon.” He remembers sending his wife to the butcher to buy the 40 pounds of pork belly. “And the woman told my wife, ‘It’s a little over’. My wife said, ‘It’s 56 pounds’. I said, ‘That’s not a little over — that’s 16 pounds over. 40 pounds is enough.”

Word spread about the pizza.

“We had friends and family who were always saying, ‘You’re going to sell your pizza, right?’ I said, ‘Oh, it’s a lot of work and probably not worth it,” but last year we built a Google form where people could order a pizza — mostly just friends that we knew, and we kept it quiet. We did a few pop-ups, tested it out, and then kind of were like, ‘Oh.’”

Jump forward another year and the L’Heureux family owns a small pizza business, Simply Fired NH (98 Carriage Road, New Boston, SimplyFiredNH.com).

“Right now we’ve been trying to do it every two weeks or so,” L’Heureux said, “but it’s weather-dependent, obviously. It’s all pre-order. We have a website with an order form. Usually it’s 15-minute windows where we ask people not to order any more than four pizzas. So if somebody goes in and only orders one or two, I’ll open up another spot right after it, because then I can get three or four in that window. They cook really quick. I’m usually cooking pizzas around 750, 800 [degrees]. It’s a really fast cook.”

L’Heureux said his wife posts when they expect to make pizzas on social media, “and the last two times, we’ve sold out [all our time slots] within the day. I think we’re at pretty much our max, like 60, 65 pizzas. We did 63 last Friday night, between four and eight o ‘clock, and that’s a lot. We’re hustling for four hours, pushing those pizzas out, but it’s a great experience for my kids.”

“I tell people the pizza oven is like my third child,” L’Heureux said. “We put so much blood, sweat and tears into building the thing, but we do love it. I always say if we ever move, we’re in trouble, because I’m definitely going to want another pizza oven wherever we go.”

Simply Fired NH
98 Carriage Road, New Boston
Simply Fired accepts orders for pizza roughly twice per month. Operating times are posted on Facebook and Instagram. Order through the Simply Fired website, SimplyFiredNH.com.

Featured photo: The L’Heureux family. Photo courtesy Seth L’Heureux.

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