Author: John Fladd

I don’t think it’s possible to buy a bottle of grapefruit juice with bad intentions.

You walk up the juice aisle at the supermarket, thinking about important things, like what kind of animal you could beat in a fist fight. A poll a few years ago revealed that seven percent of American men believed they could defeat a grizzly bear in unarmed combat. (Shockingly, five percent of American women thought they could beat one up.) You aren’t part of that six percent, but you’re reasonably certain that you’re tougher than something — a koala bear, maybe, although that might involve more tree-climbing than you’re comfortable with.

At any rate, you’re walking up the juice aisle and you hear a bottle of grapefruit juice calling to you (in a metaphorical sense). So you buy the grapefruit juice, take it home with you, make one very good cocktail with it, then forget about it. Six months later you find it hiding in the very back of the refrigerator, and you spend the next 20 minutes doing internet searches to find out how acidic grapefruit juice is (It has a pH of roughly 3, for what it’s worth) and the odds of its having gone bad. In the end you pour it down the drain, apologizing to it, saying, “Sorry Buddy, it didn’t have to end this way.”

The point here is that unless you’re super-enthusiastic about grapefruit juice, you’re probably better off just buying an actual grapefruit and squeezing it for that drink.

• 1¼ ounces Cointreau or other orange liqueur – Grand Marnier would work well, or a dry triple sec.
• ¾ ounce cachaça, or flavorful rum
• ½ ounce fresh-squeezed lemon juice
• ½ ounce fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice (see above)
• 1 teaspoon dehydrated grapefruit juice powder (optional) – available online, this bumps up the grapefruitiness of the recipe without throwing off any of your liquid ratios, if that’s the sort of thing you invest emotional energy into.
• 1 dash Angostura bitters

If you actually have dehydrated grapefruit juice powder and are using it in this recipe, mix it with the cachaça at the bottom of a cocktail shaker with a long-handled spoon, until it is completely dissolved. Add some ice, and the rest of the ingredients, and shake thoroughly.

Ask your digital assistant to play “Tie Me Kangaroo Down”; not for any particular reason — it’s just a fun song, and this is a good excuse to break it out.

Strain the cocktail into a coupe glass.

Featured photo: Upper Cut. Photo by John Fladd.

Southern NH Food Truck Festival offers culinary variety

The first weekend of August has become the traditional date for the Southern New Hampshire Food Truck Festival at the Hampshire Dome in Milford. Jody Donohue’s company, Great New England Events, organizes the Festival.

“We’re excited to have some new additions this year,” Donohue said. “There will be a couple of new food trucks joining us. We always mix it up. We never want to hold the exact same event twice. We have an ABCbowls truck that uses a variety of fresh ingredients and makes different types of bowls. We have an Asian truck joining us this year. We have a new truck for us, an Indian truck. And we also have lots of sweets. We have A Slice of Heaven Cheesecake joining us from New York this year. They make fresh cheesecake; you can buy a whole cheesecake or you can just have a slice. We have our Uncle Joey’s Cannoli truck back again this year. And we’ll also have bubble tea, of course, that’s always popular with people, as well as fresh squeezed lemonade. We have baked goods, and beef jerky, jams and jellies for some specialty foods that will be part of our lineup. We have 15 food trucks this year.”

And there will be 40 vendors inside the Dome, Donohue said, “offering handmade products. leggings, apparel, jewelry, pottery, ceramics, hunting items and seaglass.”

There has been a special effort to make this year’s Festival family-focused.

“We’ve added some extra fun and magic tricks,” she said. “We have a clown all weekend, a very friendly clown, who’s very friendly looking, and he will be walking around and doing magic tricks and making balloon animals for the kids. In addition to that, this year, there is a bead bar that will be set up in the kids’ area with face painting, and henna art.”

“This year we have added some characters that a lot of the children will like. … They will walk around both days, doing photo opportunities and signing autographs. We will have a little children’s coloring area set up so kids can go there and color. We also have two beautiful princesses coming each day,” she said.

Donohue said the Festival has been organized to be budget-friendly as well.

“We have two bounce houses,” she said, “ and we staff it, but the bounce houses are free. Kids can come for free. We have some bubble fun that they can use, and chalk play. They’re quite some little artists that come. And they make beautiful things. arrows on the pavement for us. So all of that’s included, ages 14 and under are free. Admission is $7 a person, but that admission is valid for two days. So if you attend on Saturday, if you ask for a bracelet, you can return on Sunday for free. You can come back and eat from the trucks or enjoy some of the vendors you might not have had a chance to see on Saturday. We have plenty of seating, lots of tables and chairs, hundreds of chairs, and also inside of the dome, there’s plenty of seating in there to eat. But some people bring a blanket and they sit down on the turf inside the dome and make a picnic out of it.”

10th Annual Southern NH Food Truck Festival
When: Saturday, Aug. 1, and Sunday, Aug. 2,
Where: The Hampshire Dome, 34 Emerson Road, Millford.
More: Entry is $7 for two days. Children 14 and under are free. Visit gnefoodtruckfest.com.

Featured photo: ABCbowls Truck. Courtesy photo.

• Crafts, beer, and sharks: To Share Brewing (720 Union St., Manchester, 836-6947, tosharebrewing.com) will celebrate Shark Week through Saturday, Aug. 1, with special shark-themed activities and shark-themed beer flights. Each Saturday through the end of August will be “Summer Camp” with free activities, $5 crafts for kids, and Camp Lunch Specials served on a lunch tray, including Uncrustables sandwiches, vegetables, fruit, and cherry Jello. There will also be a Jello beer option for adults.

• A mermaid tea party: The Manchester City Library (405 Pine St, Manchester, 624-6550, manchesterlibrary.org) will host a Mermaid Tea Party for children between the ages of 1 and 7, Monday, Aug. 3, from 10 to 11 a.m. Registration is required; call 624-6550, ext. 7628.

• Rich and chocolatey: Van Otis Chocolates (341 Elm St., Manchester, 627-1611, vanotis.com) will host an “All You Need is Truffles” class Thursday, July 30, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. A Van Otis chocolatier will demonstrate how to make a chocolate ganache. Participants will then be given a portion of fresh ganache to roll into their own truffles, and dip them into a variety of toppings. They will take home 24 hand-made truffles. The cost is $55.20.

• Cabernet and Captain America: Wine on Main (9 N. Main St., Concord, 897-5828, wineonmainnh.com) will host an evening of Marvel trivia with treats by Savvy Sweets and Treats, Wednesday, Aug. 5, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Test your knowledge of all things Marvel to win prizes. Everyone will get a personal box with four Marvel-themed cupcakes. You’ll also enjoy a wine tasting throughout the evening. The cost is $44.52 through the Wine on Main website.

• S’mores two ways: The martini and cupcake pairing for August at the Copper Door Restaurants (15 Leavy Drive, Bedford, 488-2677, and 41 S. Broadway, Salem, 458-2033, copperdoor.com) is s’mores themed. The S’mores Martini is made with whipped cream vodka, chocolate vodka, a splash of Kalhua, and cream, with a graham cracker rim and a toasted marshmallow for $14.75. A S’mores Cupcake is a graham cupcake with marshmallow filling, buttercream frosting, toasted marshmallow and a chocolate bar garnish and chocolate drizzle for $12.

Shortbread is about as simple as it’s possible for a cookie to be: butter, flour, sugar, and salt. There aren’t any tricky techniques or exotic ingredients. Recipes won’t throw technical put-the-newbie-in-their-place baking terms.

But weirdly, as you learn more about baking you find shortbread seems deeply suspicious.

“Where are the eggs? How will the dough hold together without eggs?” It turns out that exactly one half of the point of shortbread is that it is crumbly and delicate, and you don’t actually want it to hold together very long — just long enough to go from the oven to your plate to your mouth.

“What about the vanilla? EVERY cookie recipe has to have vanilla!” Yeah, not shortbread. The other half of the point of shortbread is the flavor of the butter. Even Vanilla, Supreme Angelic Queen of the Flavorings would be a distraction from the butter.

Eventually you learn to just accept the shortbreadiness of it all.

2 cups (240 g) flour – all-purpose flour works well for this, but because this is shortbread and does not depend on gluten to hold it together or anything, you can probably go crazy with whatever type of flour you like. Even rice flour would probably work well.

¼ teaspoon salt – I like to use coarse sea salt or kosher salt to bring little crunchy pops of salt to the final cookies.

Zest of two limes

1 cup (2 cubes) butter

¾ cup (85 g) powdered sugar

¾ cup (125 g) dried tart cherries

6 tablespoons (62 g) roasted salted sunflower seed kernels

Don’t worry about preheating your oven, not yet anyway. This dough needs to chill for several hours in the refrigerator before you bake it.

Whisk the flour, salt and lime zest together, then set it aside.

Cream the butter with your electric mixer — I use a stand mixer — until it is fluffy and lighter in color. Then beat in the powdered sugar, slowly at first so it doesn’t poof up into your face.

Slowly, a large spoonful at a time, mix in the flour mixture. You might have to scrape butter from the bottom of the bowl or the paddle of your mixer. Mix in the sunflower seeds and cherries.

Scoop the dough onto a large sheet of waxed paper or parchment paper. Roll it into a log and wrap up each end, then chill it in your refrigerator for at least four hours or overnight.

Now you can preheat your oven — to 325°F.

Unwrap your cookie mummy and cut slices from it about half an inch thick. Place the slices on a silicone- or parchment-lined baking sheet, and bake until they just barely start to brown a little, probably somewhere around 20 minutes or so. You will probably end up with two batches of 12 cookies.

Let the shortbread cool on the baking sheet and enjoy with tea.

Featured photo: Cherry-Sunflower Shortbread. Photo by John Fladd.