Author: John Fladd

In the kitchen with Jason Duffy

Bistro 603 (345 Amherst St., Suite 1, Nashua, 722-6362, bistro603nashua.com)

Jason Duffy is the executive chef of Bistro 603. Born in Brighton, Mass., and raised on Cape Cod, Duffy got his start in the industry at the age of 14 as a dishwasher at the Chart Room restaurant before moving up the ranks there over the course of a decade. He and owner Jeff Abellard are also part of a close-knit restaurant team that has run Bistro 781 on Moody Street in downtown Waltham, Mass., since 2015. Like its predecessor, Bistro 603 features an eclectic menu of items out of a scratch kitchen, ranging from small shareable plates to larger meals with optional wine pairings.

What is your must-have kitchen item?

Dry towel folded in my pocket, tongs on hand and at the ready, and always a notebook and pen. With all the moving parts, I need to be able to grab and handle whatever’s needed with the tongs and towel, and keep track of priorities and fleeting thoughts with pen and paper.

What would you have for your last meal?

Whole roasted duck, tight scored and rendered for crispy skin tender meat. Herbs, potatoes, vegetables, demi glace or some kind of fruity compote…. For the flavor of it all and also to appreciate the perfection of it.

What is your favorite local eatery?

Unwined on Milford [Oval] in Milford. Opened recently by some friends of mine, great bar and food menu, great atmosphere, and I enjoy and applaud the people who made their vision become a reality.

Who is a celebrity you would like to see eating your food?

I’m a sci-fi geek. Maybe Patrick Stewart? Been on a Star Trek kick of late and been doing a full re-watch. Make it so.

What is your favorite thing on your menu?

I’m a big fan of our Buddha Bowl. Not the flashiest item on the menu, but delicious and healthy in its own right. More delicious/less healthy if you pair it with a piece of our braised short rib to pull apart it as you dig into it.

What is the biggest food trend you’re seeing in New Hampshire right now?

Not sure if this is exactly answering the question, but I always look for the oddball items and order that. Something that was clearly someone’s passion project, a fusion of styles and intentions, something I probably wouldn’t have thought of. I like to try people’s creations and expand my horizons.

What is your favorite thing to cook at home?

Soups. Sounds simple, but I love building them out of whatever I’ve got to work with on hand and there’s always leftovers to go back to. I could be into any kind of soup with a crust of bread, but given a choice I make a killer chili. —John Fladd

Red Pepper Pesto Cream Sauce

4 Tablespoons butter
1 Tablespoon minced garlic
2 teaspoons minced shallot
1 Tablespoon flour (or GF flour)
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup roasted red bell peppers
1 Tablespoon finely chopped fresh basil
4 Tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon grated black pepper

Pre-roast your peppers, then cover and set aside to steam. When cooled, remove the skin and seeds.
Saute the garlic and shallot in the butter until soft, then add the flour and mix on low heat for a minute to create a roux.
Stir in the rest of the ingredients, bring to a simmer for a few minutes, then run it through a blender.
We use this on our scallop dish, but it’s a great sauce for any protein or even pasta.

Featured Photo: Chef Jason Duffy. Courtesy photo.

Watermelon Sherbet

There are two issues that need to be addressed right off the bat:

(1) Watermelon really, really seems like it should be spelled with two Ls. It’s just weird. Similarly, sherbet only has one R. (If you listen to a British person pronounce it, they do say “shuh-bet,” though it turns out that they aren’t talking about the same thing; their “sherbet” is flavored sugar powder, the type you find in Pixie Stix.) Every one of us grew up saying “Sher-Bert” and I’m willing to fight anyone who tries to correct me.

(2) How do you pick a decent watermelon? Ideally, you buy it at a farm stand and ask the person on the other side of the table to pick one for you. But if you are on your own in the produce department of a supermarket, look for one that has a dramatic pale spot on one side, where it lay on the dirt as it was growing. The sun never got to that spot, so it never greened up. Also, look for wide stripes, hopefully with two fingers-width between them. After that, just buy a lot of melons until you figure out which ones taste good to you.

Watermelon Sherbet
(See? Now that you’ve noticed it, doesn’t that just seem wrong?)

  • 1 quart (32 ounces, 950 ml) watermelon juice – from about half a medium-sized watermelon (see below)
  • a pinch of kosher or coarse sea salt
  • 1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
  • 1/3 cup fresh squeezed lime juice (about three limes’ worth)

Cut your melon in half and scoop out just over a quart of flesh with an ice cream scoop. This is another case where a kitchen scale will be useful. Put your blender jar on the scale, tare (zero) it out, then transfer 35 ounces, or 1,000 grams, into the jar.

Blend the watermelon, slowly at first, then more vigorously, until it is completely liquified. Strain it through a fine mesh strainer, and you will be left with about a quart of juice.

Return the juice to the blender, and add the other ingredients. Blend it thoroughly a second time, then put it in the refrigerator to chill for a few hours. If you don’t have an ice cream machine, pour the sherbet base into a sealed plastic bag, and freeze it solid, and send it on another trip through your blender or food processor.

Churn the sherbet base in your ice cream machine, according to manufacturer’s instructions, then when it has reached soft-serve consistency transfer it to freezing containers — 1-pint, plastic takeout containers are great for this. Freeze for a couple of hours to firm up.

The sherbet is a bit of a revelation. It has a mellow, not-too-sweet watermelon flavor. The limes — which, let’s face it, will enhance any other fruit — brighten it up and make it taste exceptionally refreshing.

t he should have.

Featured Photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Rock ’n’ roll on a bun

New burger place downtown

A frustrating afternoon as a broke musician was a turning point for Ian Tufts, the creator and owner of BAD BRGR in Manchester.

“I had a fast food shake melt into the floorboard of my truck once,” he said. “I couldn’t get it out for the life of me.”

The lesson? Fresh, high-quality ingredients are really important. If you can’t dissolve it with cleaning fluids, you probably shouldn’t be eating it.

Or, in the case of BAD BRGR, serving it.

Tufts, a long-term passionate musician and burger fan, described the food and atmosphere at BAD BRGR as something that would appeal to someone like his younger self: “Burgers, fries, shakes, and rock ’n’ roll! I love being on the creative front; there’s a certain magic that comes from it.” This is a spirit that encapsulates burgers as much as music, he said.

This struck home to him during this month’s Taco Tour, when his restaurant had barely opened officially yet.

“We had live music playing the whole time, and non-stop service for four hours straight,” Tufts recalled. It was exactly the vibe he was looking to create. “We’ve got a young staff,” he said, “and keeping it cool and working together was great. We had people telling us that we had the smoothest service.”

BAD BRGR’s Manchester location is its second one, launched on the success of the first BAD BRGR, in Hampton Beach, which he opened three years ago. “This is 2.0,” Tufts said, adding that plans are in the works for additional locations.

BAD BRGR’s menu only offers seven or eight types of burgers.

“We like to keep it simple,” Tufts said. “Too many options paralyzes people. It takes away from the specialness. We’re always shooting for clean, specific flavors. To me, they’re like stars; I don’t want to muddy them up. I’ve always been a burger guy — a broke-musician-burger-guy — so I took notes of all my favorite burgers and combined the high points.”

What he ended up with was a type of burger sometimes described as a “smash-burger” — where the burger patty has been pressed thin onto the griddle at the start of cooking to give it a seared crust. This was something he didn’t even know was a thing.

“I’d never heard of smash-burgers,” he said, “but I started with what kind of burger I wanted, reverse-engineered it and ended up in the same place.”

The buns are grilled in butter, but after that BAD BRGR’s Build Your Own option lets customers decide exactly how their burger ends up.

“People like what they like,” Tufts said, but added that overwhelmingly, the most popular burger they serve is the eponymous BAD BRGR. It was conceived as the perfect messy, post-gig burger for hungry, tired musicians. “It’s our meanest, late-night burger,” he said. “It’s liquidy-cheddary, with jalapeños. It’s our most popular, our namesake.” To get around the inconsistency of fresh jalapeños in New Hampshire, they use pickled ones, which adds a vinegar-y bite to cut through the liquid cheddar.

Tuft’s favorite burger, though, is the Belle, which comes with peaches and bacon. “I used to make this for friends, and they were always blown away,” he said.

And, of course, the shakes, which BAD BRGR calls milk slushes, are all-natural. “We won’t serve any plastic shakes here,” Tufts said.

BAD BRGR
1015 Elm St., Manchester
606-8806
Hours: Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to midnight

The Bennington Rhubarb Festival

Where everything is about rhubarb

At the Bennington Rhubarb festival: “We’re ‘All Rhubarb, All the Time’,” said Festival coordinator Molly Eppig. You should expect to eat, drink, and be immersed completely by rhubarb. Every event at the festival is rhubarb-themed.

Eppig said this is partially because of rhubarb’s community-themed social history.

“One of its nicknames is the Neighbor Plant. Going back to Colonial days, [if] you’d move into a new place, the neighbors would give you rhubarb. You might show up with just the clothes on your back, and the neighbors would say, ‘Let me give you some rhubarb to grow in your own garden.’”

But why a rhubarb festival?

“In 2013 my neighbor and I took it upon ourselves to start a festival for two reasons,” Eppig said. One reason was that Bennington didn’t have a festival at the time, and the other was to raise money for the town library’s Building Fund. “Looking at other festivals in towns around us, we noticed that they tended to be later in the summer — and that meant rhubarb. It’s [ready to pick] before the strawberries; it’s before the blueberries.”

The people in charge of The Festival, including Eppig, have put a great deal of thought into the different ways in which rhubarb can be celebrated, and over the years the number of events has grown, all with rhubarb as a priority.

“The very first Rhubarb Festival we ever held [in 2013] was basically a bake table, and we’ve grown from there,” said Eppig. The Bake Table continues to be the most popular attraction at the Festival.

“I’ve had people call me at seven in the morning and ask me if there will be pie to buy,” Eppig said, then answered rhetorically, with forced patience, “Yeeess.” This is the area where local bakers have really let their imaginations take flight. There are rhubarb pies for sale, of course, but bars as well, and coffee cakes, muffins and more.

The most prestigious event, though, is the pie contest.

“I can’t go a spring without making [rhubarb] pie,” Eppig said. “Everyone loves pie; I can’t imagine what kind of person wouldn’t.”

There is also a Rhubarb General Store at the Festival, where different rhubarb products are sold: fresh rhubarb stalks, jams, jellies and rhubarb crowns, “if no neighbor has given you any rhubarb to plant in your own garden,” Epping said. There is also a Drink Your Rhubarb tent in the afternoon, where people can buy or sample rhubarb-orange juice, rhubarb soda, rhubarb beer and rhubarb wine.

“That’s always an eye-opener,” said Eppig. “People are so surprised that such good wine can be made from rhubarb.” There is a rhubarb wine contest the preceding day with entries from New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts. “As far as I know, we have the only rhubarb wine contest anywhere,” Eping said.

A crowd favorite is a traditional “Hollering” contest. “Hollering is an old New England farming tradition,” Eppig said. “In the old days, the men and the older sons would be out in the fields, and women needed to be able to call out to them.” There was a certain prestige in the day to being a strong hollerer. The Festival has divisions for husband-hollering and wife-hollering, but Eppig says the children’s division is far and away the most popular — “Apparently, we have some very loud children.”

Bennington Rhubarb Festival
When: Saturday, June 1, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Where: Sawyer Memorial Park, 148 Route 202, Bennington
Admission: free, with free parking.
Schedule of events: townofbennington.com/rhubarb-festival

The Weekly Dish 24/05/30

News from the local food scene

• Herbal infusions class: The Cozy Tea Cart (104A Route 13, Brookline, 249-9111, thecozyteacart.com) will hold a class on herbal infusions on Thursday, May 30, from 6 to 6:30 p.m. Participants will learn the difference between herbal infusions and tea, the health benefits of herbals, and the historical significance of healing herbs. They will also learn which parts of the plants to use, how to create their own blends, and how to properly prepare herbal infusions. Throughout the class they will sample four different herbal blends. The cost is $30 per person.

• Books and berries: The Friends of the Library of Windham will present their 38th annual Strawberry Festival and Book Fair on Saturday, June 1, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Windham High School (64 London Bridge Road, Windham). Homemade strawberry shortcake will be served, and the festival will have live music, raffles, local vendors, games and more. Visit flowwindham.org.

• Gate City gustation: The Taste of Downtown Nashua, presented by Great American Downtown, returns to the Gate City on Wednesday, June 5, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. More than 30 restaurants, shops and other local businesses will have temporary food service set up inside their establishments, where samples will be served to ticket holders. Tickets start at $39.99 per person and include access to samples from all of the event’s participating vendors. Visit downtownnashua.org/taste.

Bicycle Thief

The first time I had my bicycle stolen was in the Army, when a platoonmate of mine with a drug problem “borrowed” most of my stuff while I was in the field — including my bike — and thoughtfully stored it for me at a pawn shop just off-base. Later, after my effects had been retrieved, he made a big deal of telling everyone what a gentleman I was. I think he was happy I didn’t punch him in my face, but you’d think I was David Niven.

A year or so later, now out of the Army, I rode the same bike to the dining hall of the school I was enrolled in and popped in to grab some breakfast, only to find that I’d forgotten about the switch to Daylight Savings Time and had missed breakfast. I came out to discover that I’d also forgotten to lock my bike up, and it had taken the opportunity to start a new life with somebody else. I indulged in some non-Nivenish language.

The third time I had a bike stolen, I did not forget to lock it up, and only the front wheel was taken. I wasn’t sure why, until I considered the possibility that perhaps someone had stolen the thief’s front wheel, to replace the one that a third person in this train of wheel abduction had taken from them, etc., stretching back to sometime in the ’70s when somebody broke their front wheel by absentmindedly driving into an open manhole or something. I tried unsuccessfully to display some David Niven-like aplomb, but did decide to end the chain of front-wheel abscondtion.

All of which has nothing much to do with anything, except that this week’s cocktail is a classic take on a Negroni called a Bicycle Thief.

Bicycle Thief

  • 1 ounce gin – Wiggly Bridge is a good choice
  • 1 ounce Campari
  • 1½ ounce unsweetened grapefruit juice
  • ½ ounce fresh-squeezed lemon juice
  • ¾ ounce simple syrup
  • club soda to top
  • an orange slice for garnish

Combine the gin, Campari, juices and simple syrup over ice in a cocktail shaker.

Ask your digital assistant to play “Tale of Brave Ulysses” by Cream. Granted, this song is neither Italian nor bicycle-themed. It is, however, slightly psychedelic and dreamy. It tells a story of being in a situation beyond your control, where everything is delightful and nobody would think of stealing your bike. The rhythm of this song isn’t particularly conducive to shaking a cocktail, but it evokes the right mood for imagining yourself as the protagonist of a really good story.

Regardless of what Cream tells you, shake your cocktail thoroughly, until the ice just starts to break up.

Pour the drink, ice and all, into a tall glass. A Collins glass would work well for this, but personal experience has shown me that the Foghorn Leghorn promotional glass I rescued from a flea market last summer works equally well.

Top with club soda. How much is a personal judgment call. You might have had a day that calls for extra bubbles and a lighter hand on the “Full Speed Ahead” lever. You might just want something a little less frivolous. It’s up to you.

Stir it gently, and garnish with an orange slice. It might be tempting to slice the wheel of orange halfway through and slip it over the edge of your glass — and that’s fine! a classic! — but you might want to roll it and shove it into the interior of your glass instead. It will make even a Foghorn Leghorn glass look slightly fancy.

The reason you can get away with a whimsical glass is because a Bicycle Thief is a fully mature, confident drink. It’s not intense and “I will have my revenge for my stolen bicycle”-y, but coolly sophisticated, in a “Should we have Carlos bring the boat around?” vein. Campari and grapefruit share a bitterness that gets a backbone from the gin. The lemon and syrup are fruity enough to blunt the bitterness, but still leave it at an adult level.

I don’t know if David Niven ever drank this, but he should have.

Featured Photo: Photo by John Fladd.

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