Author: John Fladd

One day of Greek goodies

Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church will hold its annual Greek Food Festival

By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com

On Saturday, Sept. 26, the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Concord will hold its annual Greek Food Festival, the last of the region’s Greek festivals for the year. Constantine Newman is the priest at Holy Trinity.

“It’s a one-day festival,” he said. “We feature a lot of good Greek food, all of it homemade, favorites like the lamb kebabs and the chicken kebabs, moussaka, pastitsio, Greek meatballs and spanakopita. On the line we’ll have gyros and the ladies have a whole setup of Greek pastries that they’re selling.”

The Greek Food Festival is Holy Trinity’s biggest fundraiser of the year, Newman said. “This helps us get through the year. But it’s also a lot of fun, too. It’s not just a monetary thing, but it’s nice for showcasing Greek culture and food and just having a nice time together.”

While months of preparation go into the Festival, he said, there is always a last-minute scramble to get everything ready in time for the big day. “Some of the things we can prepare ahead of time. Some of the things though, you can’t really freeze them well, so we do them in the last week. Of course, all the meat that we get has to be cut and trimmed and then put on the skewers. It has to be marinated, so that can only be done in the last week. [In the days before the Festival] we will be doing the moussaka, the baklava, the galaktoboureko, and then all the meat stuff.” All the meat will be finished on the grill, he said.

For many Greek food enthusiasts, the acid test of a festival is the spanikopita — spinach and feta cheese sandwiched in many layers of buttered, paper-thin phyllo dough. Margaret Gegas is the head of the Spanikopita Committee. She said a really good spanikopita has only a few ingredients but they have to be of the best quality. “We put in a lot of fresh spinach — not frozen — and we use a good amount of feta cheese crumbled in each pan and olive oil. Every layer of phyllo is buttered. We put in the pita — maybe 25 sheets each of phyllo dough. At home, some cook might put dill, and they may put a lot of dill, or a lot of spearmint, but we do not alter that flavor because one may not like dill, one may not like spearmint, so we just stick to the recipe we have with scallions, and it blends very well with spinach and olive oil.”

Even more important, Gegas said, is to have a bone-deep understanding of the particular oven it is baked in.

“It is a lot of work,” Gegas said, “and baking it correctly is crucial. [Our spanikopita] are baked in a convection oven so they have to be watched carefully.” She said even if somebody used the exact same techniques and ingredients but tried to make the same recipe in their home oven, their timing and temperature would be off. After years of experience, Gegas and her team know that in the church’s ovens a batch of spanikopita should take exactly one hour.

“They go in,” she said, “but we.check them and change the position [of the pans] in the oven, just to be sure all the air is circulating correctly with each pan. We’ve made 35 pans this year.”

The Spanikopita Committee does not monitor the internal temperature of the pans while they bake, Gegas said. “It’s by eye and timing. We time them. … So after an hour, we know how it should look. It’s about the browning; if they’re not brown on top, they’re not ready. So it all works out together — the baking and the color.”

Greek Food Festival
When: Saturday, Sept. 26, from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Where: Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, 68 N. State St., Concord
More: holytrinitynh.org

Featured photo: Kids’ activities at a previous festival. Courtesy photo.

History in objects

Show and tell at the Canterbury Shaker Village

By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com

According to Garrett Bethmann of the Canterbury Shaker Village Museum, our modern conception of the Shakers — devout Protestants who lived in self-contained communities across the United States in the 1700s and 1800s — is intimately tied in with the objects they made. “I think the first thing [people think of] is certainly the more stereotypical artifacts and objects that feel very classified as Shaker and very much kind of have that Shaker aesthetic of clean lines, very efficient-looking use, very simple … look to them. So, you know, that’s kind of where you get into your furniture, your oval boxes, your brooms.”

On Saturday, Sept. 26, the Shaker Village Museum will present an interactive look at some of those objects, called “Artifact Speed Dating — Canterbury Shaker History in 10 Objects.” This event is part of “We Want More History!,” an initiative by the Organization of American Historians to present historical education at events on the same day at “libraries, parks, museums, and other civic spaces” across the country, according to the initiative’s website. “It responds to heightened public interest in history and historical interpretation. Historians and educators are positioned as scholars and teachers committed to the public good through evidence-based, contextualized understanding of the past, in order to promote excellence in scholarship, encourage wide public discussion, and advocate for history. It ensures that national commemorations reflect the full, complex story of the people and places that make up the United States.”

Which is where the Shakers and their objects come in.

Shirley Wajda, the Shaker Museum’s curator of research and collections, will lead an exploration of different Shaker objects and how we can determine when an object was made or used.

“It will be a lecture,” Bethmann said, “that allows people to see objects close up. It will be in the spirit of, ‘Check this out! Here is a little bit of history, information and context.’ It will be an interactive lecture.”

“The importance of establishing dates for particular artifacts,” Bethmann said, “is to be able to identify when a certain object was used … because that can be insightful as to how they used it and what they were using it for.”

By looking at objects the Shakers owned, Bethmann said, we gain a deeper understanding of the world around them and what kind of technology was available to them.

“I think the objects that can grab people’s attention,” he said, “are the objects that are less associated with Shakers [in particular]. For instance, one thing I always find cool when I’ve walked around the [Shaker] Village is in one of our areas we have a telephone. Seeing a telephone, electrical wires, and seeing an object that is more tied to a modern America or to kind of a contemporary outlook that doesn’t necessarily include our antiquated and kind of folkloric romanticism of them, I think people will always find those types of objects interesting because they find themselves saying, ‘Huh, really? I didn’t think this type of society would be into that type of technology or that type of innovation.’ In fact, Shakers in general were relatively welcoming and inclusive of innovative technologies and things that made their lives easier. Objects like that are more closely associated with American culture, and not Shaker-specific, and can be attention-grabbing for [modern] people.”

The objects themselves are being kept under wraps until the actual event, Bethmann said. “We’re not going to talk about the specific items because that would be a spoiler.”

Artifact Speed Dating — Canterbury Shaker History in 10 Objects
Where: Canterbury Shaker Village, 288 Shaker Road, Canterbury, 783-9511, shakers.org
When: Saturday, Sept. 26, from 2 to 3:30 p.m.
Tickets: General admission tickets are available through the museum’s website for $20, or $10 for museum members.
More: shakers.org and wewantmorehistory.org.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

A fall pudding

Traditionally the most fall-ish dish in New England was arguably this pudding. Over the past few decades it has slipped into obscurity, but it is warm and hearty and almost requires you to wear flannel. This recipe is adapted from a collection of holiday recipes that ran in the Boston Globe on Dec. 23, 1923.

  • 1 cup (156 g) yellow cornmeal
  • “A lump of butter the size of an egg” – let’s call it ¼ cup (½ stick)
  • “1 cup molasses” – Molasses was the inexpensive sweetener of choice in New England for generations. For modern tastes it is a little bitter. Let’s go half-and-half with molasses and maple syrup: ½ cup (170 g) molasses, and ½ cup (156 g) maple syrup.
  • 1 egg
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • ½ teaspoon each ground ginger and cinnamon – alternatively, 1 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice
  • 1 quart (4 cups/908 g) milk
  • 1/3 cup chopped, crystalized ginger (around 50 g)
  • Another 2 cups (454 g) cold milk
  • 1 cup (227 g) water

The original 1923 recipe recommends cooking everything on the stovetop, then baking it in a bean pot. If you cook it in an oven-proof pot, you can cook it, then move it to the oven. I like to use a 3-gallon soup pot with a tight-fitting lid.

Preheat your oven to 275°F — the 1923 recipe recommended a “slow oven.”

In your oven-proof pot, bring the quart of milk to a boil over medium heat.

Turn the heat down to medium-low, and whisk in the cornmeal, butter, molasses/maple syrup, egg, salt and spices. (If you’re worried about the egg cooking before you can get it mixed in properly, maybe stir it in with the molasses and syrup before you add them.) Whisk continuously until the mixture comes back to a boil and thickens up, then stir in the crystalized ginger pieces.

Mix the remaining milk and the water together, then gently pour them on top of the cornmeal mixture. If you pour it over the back of a spatula, it should go on top without splashing. Your goal here is to top the pudding with a layer of liquid.

Cover the pot with a lid, and transfer it to the oven. Bake it for four hours.

After the four hours are up, remove the pot from the oven, and set it aside to cool.

You can take the lid off and look inside if you want to, but be aware that at this point the pudding is the stuff of nightmares. A hundred years ago puddings were commonly made using a process called “wheying.” A pudding would be baked covered with a layer of milk — or even cream, if you were fancy. As it baked, the dairy fats and proteins would get absorbed into the main body of the pudding, leaving a layer of whey on top. It is supposed to be there. But to modern eyes it just looks wrong. It is better for your peace of mind not to look at it until the pudding has had a chance to meditate and self-actualize.

After half an hour or so, whisk the whey back into the pudding, then serve it warm, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Featured photo. Photo by John Fladd.

A twist on a famous drink, and games

Downtown Dirty Shirley Crawl brings book series to life

Alex Pellerin, the event coordinator for Bookery in Manchester, said that while it is perfectly possible to take part in Saturday’s Dirty Shirley Bar Crawl without knowing any of the cultural references behind it, there is an actual literary theme to the event.

“There is a really popular book series called Dungeon Crawler Carl,” Pellerin said. “It’s recently exploded in popularity. ln the books there’s a cat named Princess Donut who talks, and at [a bar called] the Desperado Club she finds out she really likes Dirty Shirley Temples [very similar to the popular non-alcoholic drink Shirley Temple, with grenadine and ginger ale, but with a vigorous slug of vodka]. She eventually gets cut off from them and can only have regular Shirley Temples.”

“So we are hosting this event in conjunction with [Granite State] Comicon,” Pellerin continued, “to give folks who are going to Comicon some things to do after the event. [Comicon] will end around 5 p.m. and we want to continue the celebration and community-building. We thought it would be fun to connect people to other businesses in the area while celebrating the book series and Comiccon. We’re [organizing] a Dirty Shirley Bar Crawl to find the best Shirley Temple in what we would call The Dungeon, but really on Elm Street.”

Each of the participating bars and restaurants will serve its take on a Shirley Temple, both “dirty” and traditional. Crawl participants will have the opportunity to vote for their favorites, and the bars will earn bragging rights.

Pellerin said the Dungeon Crawler Carl series is popular with readers of all ages and interests, and the Dirty Shirley Crawl will reflect that.

“It’s 100 percent inclusive,” she said, “whether you drink or not. And we know that doing a bar crawl isn’t everybody’s thing; [ Bookery] is going to actually be staying open later. Typically we’re only open till 7 p.m., but that night we’re going to be open until 9 p.m., and in the store from 5 to 9 p.m. we’ll be doing Dungeon Crawler Carl-themed activities, games, giveaways and raffles. We’ll have a bunch of fun Dungeon Crawler Carl merch for people to purchase too. So for anyone not interested in doing the Crawl there’s still stuff going on here they can participate in, or they could do both. We’re turning this whole place into a dungeon, which will be very, very exciting.”

“For instance,” Pellerin said, “we’ll have a High Rollers Roulette Wheel, which is a classic in the Desperado Club, where people can win different prizes — or maybe not win some prizes — based on what the wheel gives you. We’re going to have a photo booth, There will be some voting activities for readers’ favorite book, and we’ll build a ‘Mob’, which is like building monsters that people get to collaborate on. It’s going to be really fun. We’re really excited.”you’re satisfied, but there can always be a little bit more satisfaction.”

Dirty Shirley Bar Crawl
When: Saturday, Sept. 19, from 5 to 9 p.m.
Where: along Elm Street in downtown Manchester. A statement from Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, 836-6600, bookerymht.com) reads, “While we anticipate that most participants will visit locations individually, a larger group will depart from the bookstore at 6 p.m. following a specific route. Below is the complete list of participating bars, with the locations on the main group route being underlined/bolded.”
Diz’s
Stashbox
Without
The Shaskeen
Boards & Brews
Bad Brgr
Strange Brew
Thirsty Moose
Shoppers
Industry East
Hop Knot
Critical Mass Coffee
Manchester Distillery

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Good times at Glendi

Giant Greek food fest is a labor of love

Each fall St. George Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Manchester hosts Glendi, a Greek food festival that has come to be one of the most important food events of the year for its fans. This year Glendi will start on Friday, Sept. 18, and run through Sunday, Sept. 20. This is the Festival’s 47th year.

George Skaperdas is Glendi’s director. “It is the biggest single fundraising event for St. George,” he said.

“Glendi means ‘good time,’ though there really isn’t an English word that translates the word,” Skaperdas said. “It includes hospitality and giving, friendship, you know … I want to say being nice, but I know that that sounds so corny. But there you go. It’s about giving back and ‘here’s what we do,’ ‘here’s what we’re all about,’ it’s about our culture, our heritage. Sure, it has to do with the church and all that, but there are plenty of church fairs all over the place, but there’s only one Glendi and that’s us.”

In practical terms, Skaperdas said, that boils down to food. A lot of food.

“There’s almost 3,000 pounds of lamb this year,” he said. “And another thousand pounds’ worth of chicken. Then of course you have the gyros, the combination of pork and lamb and beef, and putting it inside the pita bread with the tzatziki, the cucumber and garlic dressing. If you start walking around our campus, our grounds, on Thursday morning at 7 o’clock in the morning, you’re going to start smelling baking lamb because they’re going to start preparing over a ton of lamb shanks on Thursday morning to have them ready for when we open Friday at 11 a.m.”

Lamb shanks come from the shin area of a sheep. Because they are made of hard-working muscles, they have a lot of flavor but also need to be cooked “low and slow” for a very long time to make them tender, so the team at Glendi starts them in ovens inside a day before they go on the grill, Skaperdas said.

“They’re baked and then they’re braised, first,” he said. “Our Greek word for grandfather is Papou. We use ‘Papou’s secret sauce.’ I can’t tell you what’s in it, but if you want to help us in the kitchen we’ll tell you how it’s made.

In addition to the lamb and the chicken and everything else from the grill, there are other stations around the festival with different Greek foods. There are sit-down meals under the big tent, but there are stations where visitors can double down on particular dishes, Skaperdas said.

“You know, our sweets,” he said. “The pastries, the baklava, the galaktoboureko, which is a Greek custard dish with phyllo dough, the koulourakia, which are the baked butter cookies.”

Skaperdas pointed out that months of planning and hundreds of volunteer hours go into pulling off a festival of this size.

“It needs to be talked about how thankful my co-chairs and I are for the hundreds of hours that the volunteers put into this,” he said. “The planning for this started in February and it continues right up until we unlock the doors. This is strictly the work of volunteers; it’s a labor of love. We’re not just about bringing our culture and our heritage, and our food and our hospitality to Manchester and surrounding areas. We do this because we love to.”

“My favorite tagline,” Skaperdas said, is, ‘You know when you’re done eating, but give it a couple of minutes and then eat some more’ — just until you’re satisfied, but there can always be a little bit more satisfaction.”

Glendi
Where: St. George Greek Orthodox Cathedral, 650 Hanover St., Manchester, 622-9113
When: Friday, Sept. 18, through Sunday, Sept. 20. Open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday. Enjoy food, dancing, live music (Friday and Saturday, 5:30 to 9:30 p.m.), vendors selling Greek items, raffles and more, according to the Cathedral’s website.
More: stgeorgenh.org/activities/glendi

Featured photo: Pastries prepped for Glendi. Courtesy photo.

The Weekly Dish 26/09/17

• Cookie news: The Girl Scouts of the Green and White Mountains, the local sales force during the upcoming Girl Scout cookie season, announced two new cookies for sale, according to a Sept. 8 release. Patch Pals, developed with BARK, is the Girl Scouts’ first cookies specifically for dogs, the release said. Girl Scout Sparkables, developed with Partake, is described as a “crunchy oatmeal cookie [that] features chocolate chips and is dotted with colorful sprinkles” and is gluten-free, nut-free and vegan and “designed to avoid the nine major food allergens,” the release said. Cookie season runs Jan. 1 to March 14, 2027, and will feature the two new cookies for sale online only. Attendees at the Saturday, Oct. 3, Expo at the NH Sportsplex in Bedford will be able to taste the Girl Scout Sparkables, the release said. See girlscoutsgwm.org.

• Beer by the river: The 2026 Manchester BrewFest will take place from 1 to 4 p.m. in Arms Park (10 Arms St., Manchester) on Saturday, Sept. 19. Expect vendors, live entertainment, and excellent beer enthusiastically served. VIP tickets are $60, general admission tickets are $50, and designated driver tickets are $20. Visit manchesterbrewfest.com.

• Tailgating in Concord: Arts Alley (20 S. Main St., Concord, 406-5666, artsalleyconcordnh.com) is bringing New England football to its Courtyard this season with courtyard watch parties beginning Sunday, Sept. 20, from 1 to 4:30 p.m. Cheer on the Patriots on a big screen. There will be lawn games and heaters. Food and drink will be available from the Rose and Rye Diner. All ages are welcome. Visit artsalleyconcordnh.com/event/courtyard-tailgate.

• Pie festival in Milton: On Saturday, Sept. 19, the New Hampshire Farm Museum (1305 White Mountain Hwy., Milton, 652-7840, nhfarmmuseum.org) will hold its 18th Annual Pie Festival from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. According to the Museum’s website, “Our judges will be ready to sample pies and award prizes in a variety of categories. The public is also invited to sample pies from local bakeries and vote for the people’s choice for best professional baker.” Admission is $15 per person, free for pie-makers, and $5 for children under 12. Visit nhfarmmuseum.org/event/great-nh-pie-festival.

• Cookie decorating in the Gate City: Local Street Eats (112 W. Pearl St., Nashua, 402-4435, local-streeteats.com) will host a Fall Cookie Decorating Night Tuesday, Sept. 22, from 6 to 8 p.m. Led by “Cookie Queen” Katie Soleau of Posy Cottage Cookies, it will be a night of cozy, creative, sugar-coated fun. Tickets are $35 each, all supplies included. Visit local-streeteats.com/events/cookie-decorating-night.

• Coffee cupping in Derry: The Derry Public Library (64 E. Broadway, Derry, 432-6140, derrypl.org) will host a coffee-cupping workshop Wednesday, Sept. 23, from 6 to 7 p.m. Presenter Rob Fitzgibbon will give you a look at where coffee comes from, how it is made, and its history. There will be coffee samples for tasting, and guidance on what to look for in coffee, from aroma to taste. This workshop is free of charge, but participants must register online.

• Farm fun: Moulton Farm, 18 Quarry Road in Meredith, will hold Mack-a-Palooza — in honor of MacKenzie “Mack” McNamara and to benefit the Mack MacNamara Scholarship for Inter-Lakes High School or Moultonborough Academy students — on Friday, Sept. 18, 5 to 7 p.m. The event will also kick off corn maze season. “Local food and beverage companies, including local breweries, will be set up throughout the farm’s four acre corn maze giving out samples of their products the evening before the corn maze opens to the public. Food trucks, music, and a huge inflatable obstacle course will also be part of the festive event,” according to a press release. “Moulton Farm’s corn maze will be open 7 days a week starting at 8 am from September 19 through November 1,” the release said. Purchase tickets and find corn maze information at MoultonFarm.com.

Stay in the loop!

Get FREE weekly briefs on local food, music,

arts, and more across southern New Hampshire!