Cookie road trip

Tour inns, eat cookies at a Currier and Ives Cookie Tour

It is time for one of the most delicious holiday challenges, the Annual Currier and Ives Cookie Tour. Each year, inns, B&Bs and small businesses around the Monadnock area lure guests to visit them with homemade cookies. This year 17 local businesses will serve cookies to Tour participants who have purchased tickets and a tour map. At each stop along the way, each cookie tourist will get a cookie, the recipe for the cookie, and a stamp on their map. Participants who collect at least 10 stamps will be entered into a drawing to win a gift certificate that can be redeemed at any of the stops along the tour.

One of those stops is the Benjamin Prescott Inn in Jaffrey. Chris Neilson, the inn keeper and manager of the inn, said that aside from raising money for a good cause — The Helping Hand Center in Troy — the Cookie Tour brings people to the inn who might never visit otherwise. He said the 2023 tour was an eye-opening experience.

“We ran out of cookies last year,” Neilson said, “and I was giving tours all the way past the deadline of 4 o’clock last year because there were just so many people that just wanted to come in and see this place.”

Running out of cookies was a bit of a feat, because Neilson and his family had baked 800 of them. “So … we’re going to [bake] 1,200 to 1,400 cookies this year,” he said. “I’m not going to actually say what kind of cookies they are going to be yet, because a couple of those are still under consideration. We already have the dough made for roughly about 200-ish of the cookies already made up. It takes a little while to get the dough made for that many cookies, especially in a small establishment like what we have here at the Inn.” Neilson said baking that many cookies is a group effort. “It’s a family thing here. I have both of my daughters participating in it, I’m doing it, my girlfriend’s doing it, my mom’s doing it — it’s a family endeavor here at the inn to get the cookies made for the cookie tour.”

Tour participants can buy their tickets at three locations. One of those is the Park Theatre in Jaffrey, where Christine Witham is the box office manager. She said the staff at the Park is enthusiastically throwing itself into the Cookie Tour this year.

Currier and Ives Cookie Tour
When: Saturday, Dec 14, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Tickets: $20 per person and are available at the following locations:
Park Theatre (19 Main St, Jaffrey, 532-9300, theparktheatre.org)
Frogg Brewing (580 Sawyers Crossing Road, Swanzey, 547-7639, froggbrewing.com)
Inn at East Hill Farm (460 Monadnock St, Troy, 242-6495, east-hill-farm.com)
Cash and checks will be accepted. For a list of stops on the Cookie Tour, visit currierandivescookietour.com/participants.

“We’re actually a unique stop on the Cookie Tour,” Witham said. “We have 12 volunteers making 12 different kinds of cookies. We’re anticipating 400 to 500 people coming through. We’ve had as many as 800 in the past.” She hopes the cookie tourists will exercise self-restraint when they visit. “Visitors can “show us the map and pick one cookie out of our varieties,” she said. Like Neilson, she is tight-lipped about what kind of cookies the Park will serve. “I don’t think I want to say. It will definitely have something to do with the Park Theatre and its history,” she hinted.

Debbie Byrne Jonson is the owner of The She Shed in Swanzey, a home and garden decor business. This will be her first year on the Tour.

“We’re really excited,” she said. “We’ve heard about it and we’ve been told about it, so we’re really looking forward to it.”

Because this will be Jonson’s first year, she is a little unsure of how many cookies the She Shed will need. “We’re anticipating something like 350,” she said. “One of our teammates is going to be baking the cookies herself, and she’s actually doing two cookies, chocolate chip cookies and snickerdoodles. The other teammates have volunteered that they’ll finish them if need be.”

More cookies
Make a weekend of cookie adventures with the 27th Annual Holiday Inn to Inn Cookie Tour on Saturday, Dec. 14, and Sunday, Dec. 15, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day at nine White Mountain inns stretching from Jackson to Eaton, with inns at least 15 minutes apart. See countryinnsinthewhitemountains.com/annual-holiday-inn-to-inn-cookie-tour.

The Weekly Dish 24/12/05

News from the local food scene

Holiday wine tasting: WineNot Boutique (25 Main St., Nashua, 204-5569, winenotboutique.com) will host a Holiday Wine Tasting Party, Thursday, Dec.5, from 4 to 7:30 p.m. featuring 15 wines and light appetizers. Tickets are $20.

Wine and glitter: Enjoy an evening of Tipsy Tree Making on Thursday, Dec. 5, from 5 to 7 p.m. at Barrel and Baskit (377 Main St., Hopkinton, 746-1375, barrelandbaskit.com). Decorate your own boxwood tree while enjoying wine picks and an appetizer bar. Tickets are $85.

Strings and spirits: Canterbury Shaker Village (288 Shaker Road, Canterbury, 783-9511, shakers.org) invites you to a Merry, Merry Canterbury Concert + Cocktails, Saturday, Dec. 7, from 4 to 7 p.m., featuring a concert by the Symphony New Hampshire String Quartet in the Dwelling House Chapel. A festive reception will follow, with appetizers and drinks in the Hubbard Gallery. Tickets are $35 per person.

Poinsettias and pinot noir: December’s wine class theme at Wine on Main (9 N. Main St., Concord, 897-5828, wineonmainnh.com) will be Pairing Wine with Holiday Food. There will be five new wines and four new pairings. Each ticket includes a welcome sparkling wine followed by four bites paired with a carefully chosen complementary wine. These pairings will illustrate some of the techniques used to artfully pair food and wine. The wines featured will also be great choices for the holiday table. There will be classes Tuesday, Dec. 10, and Wednesday, Dec.11, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Tickets are $40.

Winter Wine Spectacular returns: Tickets are on sale now for the New England Winter Wine Spectacular on Thursday, Jan. 23, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at the DoubleTree By Hilton Manchester Downtown (700 Elm St. in Manchester). Early bird tickets for this event, which raises funds for New Hampshire Food Bank and features more than 1,700 wines, cost $65 for general admission, $85 for admission with early entry (at 5 p.m.) and $125 for access to the Bellman’s Cellar Select Room at 5 p.m. (as well as early admission to the main tasting room). Prices go up after Dec. 15. See nhwineweek.com.

In the kitchen with Jonathan Buatti

Jonathan Buatti, owner and head baker at Bearded Baking Co. (819 Union St., Manchester, 647-7150, beardedbaking.com)

Jon started his culinary career at a family friend’s restaurant in Hampton Beach. Jon was typically a bus boy at the restaurant but volunteered to take a plated dessert shift in an attempt to switch it up. From there, he graduated from Salem High School’s Culinary Tech program, earned his associate’s degree in Baking and Culinary Arts from Southern New Hampshire University, and his bachelor’s degree in Culinary Management from SNHU. In 2019 Jon purchased the Bearded Baking Co. (formally known as Michelle’s Gourmet Pastries and Deli), where he is currently providing customers with breakfast, lunch, pastries and custom cakes. In the fall of 2020 Jon was selected to compete on Food Network’s Holiday Baking Championship.

What is your must-have kitchen item?

A super-sharp knife. I’ve learned that cooking is much safer with a sharp well-cared-for blade than not … .

What’s your must-have kitchen item?

It’s a combo of cake-decorating tools for me — a bench scraper and an offset spatula. With those two things, I can do anything. The bench scraper is brilliant because it allows me to get cakes perfectly at 90 degrees — perfectly flush with the board and level on top. And then the offset spatula allows me to pull the edges cleanly on top, so if you look at a cake head on, it looks like a square.

What would you have for your last meal?

It would have to be barbecue — ribs or brisket or something, just a good barbecued meal. It’s sweet and smoky. Barbecue, wings, barbecue chicken pizza, pulled pork, the list goes on and on.

What is your favorite local eatery?

For my wife and me, the Crown Tavern is our crown jewel. It’s our go-to spot. We had our wedding shower there and a lot of our big life events.

What celebrity would you like to see eating something you’ve baked?

I am obsessed with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. It would be funny because he’s obviously very health-conscious, so I would see him eating a cupcake or something. It would be a wild moment.

What is your favorite thing on your menu?

Our Bismarcks at the shop are awesome. Just a long-john, a yeast doughnut with raspberry jam filling, whipped cream and powdered sugar.

What’s the biggest baking trend you see in New Hampshire right now?

It’s not a thing in particular, but in the wake of Covid everybody wants things in like single servings and smaller portions — individual serving sizes of any sort. Cookies and brownies and cupcakes — anything that you can get packaged on its own is really popular. There seems to be an attitude of, ‘Oh no; I don’t want my stuff touching anyone else’s stuff.’

What’s your favorite thing to cook at home?

My wife and I like to make a Sopa Toscana, like a take on the soup at Olive Garden. It’s a kale soup with a creamy base and potatoes and all the Italian spices — oregano, basil and everything.

You can really take these in any direction by changing what you stuff them with … Try it stuffed with peanut butter and topped with some sea salt or chopped pistachios.

Once you’ve settled on your definition of done, you can pop them in the fridge or the freezer. I really like them from the freezer. They are like a Riesen texture that way, only dairy-free. The chilled dates taste like caramel.

Punk rock Indian cuisine

Aatma Curry House offers your Saturday dinner

By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com

According to Chef Keith Sarasin, opening a restaurant can feel a lot like a bad break-up.

For the past two and a half years Sarasin and his team have been running Aatma Curry House as a pop-up restaurant. For one or two nights they would cook and serve their food at specific events, but they didn’t have a permanent home. During that time, Sarasin was looking for a location for a brick-and-mortar Indian restaurant.

“We found three different locations over the course of those two and a half years,” he said, “and each time something would happen that was out of our control. And by the third time this happened, we were looking at a place in Kittery, and when it fell through, it was a lot like a heartbreak or a breakup in a relationship where you just go through these deep emotions of, ‘I’m so close!’ Ultimately I used that frustration and anger and angst to come up with the concept of Atma Curry House.”

Aatma represents an unusual restaurant concept. Customers place their orders throughout the week, then pick it up at a predetermined time each Saturday. One of the advantages of this system is that it gives Sarasin and his staff an opportunity to connect with customers individually.

“We get to have interaction with every single person and talk about our passion and feed them little extra things,” Sarasin said. “We love throwing surprises and handwritten notes in every single solitary order.”

That passion is reflected in Aatma’s very ambitious goal. “It’s punk rock,” Sarasin said. “It’s turned-up food; the flavors are there and super traditional. A lot of times the food that we eat in the West when it comes to Indian food is muted or toned down, not just from a spiciness standpoint but from a spice and flavor standpoint. We decided on Day 1 that Curry House was going to bring the best Indian comfort food that exists in the entire Northeast.”

Part of that mission involves giving customers food that they are familiar with, but at the same time trying to expand their understanding of what Indian cuisine can be.

“We have our staples,” Sarasin said. “For instance, we have our Aatma Butter Chicken, and our butter chicken is based off of the original premise of the dish in Moti Mahal in Delhi, but we add a couple of secret ingredients to it that makes it very New England.” (Moti Mahal is a respected chain of restaurants in India that originally introduced iconic Indian dishes to the West, butter chicken being one of them.) “So we have our staples like butter chicken, dal, things of that nature, but every week we add new menu items and change dishes out to encourage people to try things that are different beyond just what they’re used to.”

Another way the staff at Aatma challenges preconceptions of Indian dishes is by “putting a New England spin” on them. Sarasin used gulab jamun, an Indian dessert spiced with cardamom, rose water or saffron and served in a sugar syrup, as an example. “We have a classic gulab jamun that stays on the menu all the time and they’re made the exact same way, very traditional. Sugar syrup is added just like it typically is with a little bit of cardamom but then our spin on it is we actually add maple syrup to that syrup and it is absolutely mind-blowingly good how well it works.”

Sarasin said his vision for Aatma is to marry tradition with rebellion; it has been a tricky needle to thread. “That’s where I was at personally after feeling defeated, but also the spirit of India is based off of these things. When you think about Indians kicking out the British Raj, or the story of how tea was forced upon them and they created something beautiful out of it, you realize that this is a very Indian attitude. I hope this is an homage to that tradition.”

Aatma Curry House
75 Mont Vernon St., Milford
Aatma takes orders online Sunday through Thursday, for pickup between 1 and 3 p.m. on Saturday. Visit the website, aatmacurryhouse.com, to order and to find out what dishes are on the menu in a given week.

The Weekly Dish 24/11/28

News from the local food scene

Last bit of recipe: In the Nov. 21 issue of the Hippo, the last chunk of the recipe for “Paper Bag Apple Pie” was sliced off. The missing instructions read:

“Fasten with paper clips. Bake at 425°F for 1 hour. Split the bag to open.”

New salad source: A branch of the fast-casual restaurant chain Sweet Green has opened in the Market and Main shopping complex off River Road in Bedford. The menu focuses on fresh, light dishes like salads and protein bowls. Sweet Green is at 7 Market St, Suite 2, Bedford, 978-650-3965, sweetgreen.com, and is open seven days a week, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.

New supermarket: A new Whole Foods Market will open in Nashua, Tuesday, Dec.10. The 44,600-square-foot store will be located at 272 DW Highway The store will open at 9 a.m. on opening day. Regular store hours will be 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.

New coffee: Nashua-based company Rare Breed Coffee (2 Pittsburgh Ave., Nashua, 578-3338, rarebreedcoffee.com) has released a limited-time seasonal coffee called Sleigher. Rare Breed describes the coffee blend as “indulgent” with “notes of brown sugar, orange spice, and vanilla.” See rarebreedcoffee.com.

Rescue and recreation: Tickets are on sale now for the Winter Carnevale and $2,500 Holiday Shopping Spree Raffle to benefit the Salem Animal Rescue League (4 Sarl Drive, Salem, 893-3210, sarlnh.org). The SARL Winter Carnivale will be held at the Castleton Banquet and Conference Center (58 Enterprise Drive, Windham, 898-6300, castletonbcc.com) on Friday, Dec. 6, from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. The event will feature artisan chocolate tasting by Loon Chocolate, food and drink, dancing, live and silent auctions and more. Tickets are $100 per person or $1,000 for a table of 10 and can be purchased through the SARL website.

Gingerbread houses: To Share Brewing (720 Union St., Manchester, 836-6947, tosharebrewing.com) will host a gingerbread house workshop Sunday, Dec.1, at 4 p.m. Build and decorate your own gingerbread house. The price is per house; sharing is recommended. Each house will have sugar windows and the base will include battery-powered lights. Tickets are $55 through oopsiartedagain.as.me.

One more pie

At its best, Thanksgiving is the most relaxing of holidays. You wake up, watch the parade, offer to help whoever is cooking the turkey — but only after you’re certain the actual work has been done — and then do some sort of football-related activity, before eating a truly unconscionable amount of food.

And then there’s the reality — political arguments, the rehashing of childhood grudges, dry turkey and judgmental relatives.

On the other hand, there is pie.

Before we talk about how excellent this pie is — and be under no illusions; it is truly outstanding — we need to talk about the pastry elephant in the room.

Pie crusts.

There is a certain type of baker — not you, of course, but somebody with unresolved pie issues from their childhood — who gets very judgmental about pie crusts. We both know who we’re talking about.

Here’s the thing: If you find yourself cowed by the idea of making pie dough from scratch, and are reluctant to make a pie because of it, there is no shame in buying premade pie dough from the grocery store. None.

Would you rather not have pie because it doesn’t pass some sort of virtue test, or would you like some pie? I put it to you that pie is better than no pie.

If you’re in charge of the pie this year and you buy a roll of frozen premade dough, all you have to do is let it thaw on the counter for a few minutes, unroll it into a pie pan, crimp the edges and get on with your life. If anyone asks what the secret of your consistently excellent pie crust is, you can either hold your head high, stare them down and tell the truth, or answer, “Ritual sacrifice.”

Don’t let your in-laws throw shade on your pie.

Sour Cream Pie with Chocolate

  • 2 large eggs
  • ½ cup (60 g) all-purpose flour
  • ½ cup (107 g) white sugar
  • ½ cup (107 g) brown sugar
  • ½ tsp kosher or coarse sea salt
  • 1 cup (227 g) full-fat sour cream
  • 4 ounces (114 g) chopped dark chocolate – the darker the better; 75-80 percent; you’ll want a little bitterness in the finished pie
  • 1 unbaked pie shell

Preheat oven to 325°F.

With a hand mixer, or in a stand mixer, beat the eggs until they are very foamy, two minutes or so.

Beat in the flour, sugars and salt.

Beat in the sour cream.

Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, and give the mixture a quick stir to make sure everything is mixed together.

Mix in the chopped chocolate, then pour into the pie shell.

Bake for 1 hour.

Serve with lightly sweetened whipped cream or ice cream.

When you slice this pie you’ll notice that it has separated into two layers, a top, cookie-like layer on top, with a melty chocolate layer underneath. The flavor has a lot in common with a chocolate-chip cookie, too, but the dark chocolate and the sour cream prevent its sweetness from being cloying. This is another “the-flavor-comes-at-you-in-stages” dessert. The chocolate seems very dominant at first, but then there are little pops of salt, and the sourness of the sour cream comes in at the end.

This is an easy sell to someone who is distrustful of new foods. “It’s like a chocolate chip cookie!” you’ll say. “But for grown-ups,” you’ll mutter under your breath, as you pass them their plate and the whipped cream.

Featured Photo: Sour Cream Pie with Chocolate. Photo by John Fladd.