Author: John Fladd

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.

Apple takes on Key lime and more at Once Upon a Pie

It sounds like a nice problem to have, but according to Evelyn Redmond, one of the most challenging aspects of organizing Goffstown’s yearly Pie Competition and Auction is keeping the judges from being completely overwhelmed with pie.

“This year, we’re actually going to have nine judges,” she said. “We decided to try to go a little easier on them because last year we had 70 pies to judge. [The] six judges that we had in attendance had to each test little tiny samples, but that’s still 35 different types of pies!”

Redmond is the organizer of the Once Upon a Pie baking competition and pie auction scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 23, in the Goffstown High School cafeteria (27 Wallace Road, Goffstown, 497-4841). “We actually had to move our event from a smaller venue at the Congregational Church, because we had so many attendees that people were standing. We’re expecting at least 200 people this year, which was our attendance last year.”

The yearly pie event, which raises funds for the Goffstown Public Library (2 High St, Goffstown, 497-2102, goffstownlibrary.com), is a combination baking competition and auction.

“It’s also a social event,” Redmond said. “During the day, in the morning, we accept pies for judging, up until noon, and then we tally the scores and come up with the first place. We award best in category, runner-up, and other designations besides first place, second place, third place. Then in the evening, starting at 6, we sell tickets to the public for $3. Anyone can get a slice of pie and a beverage. It’s really a social hour. During the evening, we have the runners up on a stand for silent auction, then at 7 p.m. we go to a live auction for the top-placed pies.”

Individuals from the community can submit pies, as well as various departments in the town government. Redmond said there is a long-standing grudge-match between the Goffstown Police Department and Parks and Recreation. “Their award has gone back and forth between the two groups multiple times over the last several years,” she said.

Which brings us back to the judges.

“We solicit judges from the community,” Redmond said. “In the past, we tried to keep the judges secret up until the time of the event. I believe this year we will announce who our judges have been at the end of the evening just before we start our auction. I actually asked someone to be a judge this year; he says, ‘I’m diabetic!’,” she remembered with a laugh.

“We have changed it up a bit,” she said. “We’ve got three different judges judging sessions and nine judges. We’re hoping we have just as many pies to judge, but we’re also hoping to go a little easier on their taste buds. We provide them with water and we have saltine crackers to cleanse their palates. But you can imagine it’s a fairly fast-paced process because we have to get through that many different pies.The judges judge first the pie on its appearance, and then we go ahead and take the little slice out of it and they have to judge it on five or six different attributes.” The pies are judged blind. “We have a coding process so that we can identify whose pie is which and the judges never know whose pie is whose,” Redmond said.

The pies themselves cover an entire pie spectrum from traditional apple pies to quiches to savory meat pies. “I know that one of the contestants is very proud of his Key lime pie,” Redmond said. She herself is a serious baker and submits pie to the competition every year. “I haven’t decided what I’m baking this year, yet,” she said. “It’s probably a few. I did four last year.”

Once Upon a Pie Baking Competition and Pie Auction
When: Saturday, Nov. 23
Where: Goffstown High School, 27 Wallace Road, Goffstown
Entrants should bring their pies and a completed entry form to the high school cafeteria between 9:30 a.m. and noon. Pie sales and auctions will begin at 6 p.m. Winning pies in each category will be sold to the highest bidder. Entry is $3 per person.
Entry forms are available from the Goffstown Public Library Foundation at gplnhfoundation.org.

Featured Photo: Courtesy photo.