Author: John Fladd

News from the local food scene

• Another Friendly Toast: On Monday, Aug. 26, there was a grand opening of the newest branch of the Friendly Toast, at 18 Via Toscana in Salem. The new Salem location spans approximately 4,500 square feet and seats up to 170. The Friendly Toast has 13 locations across New England, including, in New Hampshire, Portsmouth (its original location), Bedford, Nashua and Salem.

• Pumpkin martini and cupcake: September’s martini and cupcake pairing at the Copper Door (15 Leavy Drive, Bedford, 488-2677; 41 S. Broadway, Salem, 458-2033; copperdoor.com) will feature a pumpkin martini made with vanilla vodka, rumchata, pumpkin liqueur and cream, with a caramel and cinnamon sugar rim, for $14. It can be paired with a pumpkin streusel cupcake made with pumpkin spice cake, a streusel crunch topping, cinnamon cream cheese frosting and caramel sauce for $11.

• Try this cooking challenge: The Nashua Public Library (2 Court St., Nashua, 589-4600, nashualibrary.org) will host Cooking with Kendra on Thursday, Aug. 29, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Meet at Soel Sistas, where Chef Kendra Smith will coach you as you prepare a meal from low-cost mystery ingredients. Park in the lot at 30 Temple St. No registration is necessary. Open to ages 18+.

• Make a charcuterie board: Wine on Main (9 N. Main St., Concord, 897-5828, wineonmainnh.com) will host a Charcuterie Board Making Workshop & Wine Tasting Wednesday, Sept. 4, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. This workshop is $65 and includes all materials; register online.

If you’ve ever gotten ambitious with your cooking or baking and have tried to share something new that you’ve made with friends or acquaintances, you’ve probably seen a visible reluctance on their faces to take the food you’ve offered.

“It’s OK, I’m fine,” they’ll say.

“I didn’t ask if you are fine,” you might say, if you weren’t restrained by politeness. “I asked you to accept this gift of food that I made myself, as a symbol of how much I like and value you.” But you don’t, and at the end of the day you end up bringing your miso brownies back home with you.

The frustrating fact is that most people don’t want interesting food. They want comforting food.

Here is a really interesting food that — assuming you can get them to try it — will become their new comfort food:

Charcoal-Grilled Corn Ice Cream

• 6 leftover corn cobs from eating fresh sweet corn
• 1 quart (946 ml) half & half
• 1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk

As ice creams go, this one is remarkably straightforward. You don’t have to worry about tempering egg yolks, or melting chocolate in a double boiler, or ordering Bolivian bee pollen, or anything. There are three ingredients, and four or five steps, and the level of technical knowledge involved is about the same as in making a grilled cheese sandwich. The most daunting part of making this ice cream is deciding to do it.

Whisk the cream and condensed milk together and pour it into a medium-sized airtight container. Snap the lid on, and store this in the refrigerator.

Set up your grill, light the charcoal, and get your grilling equipment — a plate, tongs and a beer — ready. Wait until the coals are roughly half gray, half black, then grill your corn cobs. Treat them like you would sausages; turn them from time to time, until they are consistently grilled — golden brown, with just a little bit of char. This should take just about long enough to drink your beer. If you are a fan of grilled foods with a heavy char, leave the cobs on the grill a few minutes longer. Remove them to the plate, and take them back into your kitchen.

(It would be a shame to waste the still perfectly good coals, so you might want to grill some actual sausages or Almost Burgers at this point.)

Put the grilled corn cobs in your cream mixture. Completely cover them with liquid, if possible. If not, put the top back on, and swirl to completely cover the cobs. Return the container to the refrigerator to rest for 24 to 48 hours, swirling occasionally. The fat in the cream is really good at absorbing flavors. Remember that time the butter tasted funny after your brother-in-law left mackerel in the fridge after his fishing trip? Same concept. The corn and smoke flavors of your grilled corn cobs will infuse into the cream. Because this is going on in your refrigerator, you don’t have to worry about gently heating the cream or anything. Shake it and leave it.

After the cream mixture has infused for a couple of days, remove the cobs from the container. There will be suspiciously less cream left than you think there should be. Everything delicious comes at a price. In this case, the corn cobs have absorbed some of the cream as a sort of souvenir. If there are any distressing bits of char in the cream, strain it through a fine-mesh strainer.

Churn the mixture in your ice cream maker until it has pulled together into a stiff, soft-serve consistency, then transfer it to freezing containers, and harden it off for a day or so in your freezer.

While this looks like vanilla ice cream, it is very much its own thing. It is sweet and slightly smoky, with a rich, corny aftertaste. You wouldn’t think that sweet and smoky would go together, but grilled peaches or pineapples are delicious, to say nothing of barbecue sauce, so it shouldn’t be surprising how delicious this is. If you wanted to complicate things, you could top it with a spoonful of lime marmalade (lime goes extremely well with smoke and corn) but one of this ice cream’s biggest assets is its delicious simplicity.

And , of course, how interesting it is.

Featured Photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Assumption Greek Orthodox Church in Manchester holds its annual Greekfest

If this weekend’s Greekfest has a theme, it is hospitality.

It is time for Assumption Greek Orthodox Church in Manchester to hold its annual festival of Greek food and culture. According to Costa Georgopoulos, President of the Parish Council and chairperson of the festival, the timing for the event has been carefully worked out. There are three main Greek church food festivals in the area each year, he said.

“In our Manchester community, we have St. Nicholas Church, which does their festival in June. And then there’s Glendi of St. George. They do theirs in September. And then we do ours in the middle of it. So it’s kind of special, because St. Nicholas does a one-day festival, we do a two-day festival, then Glendi wraps up the events with a three-day festival.”

“We coordinate with the churches,” Georgopoulos continued, “and it worked out really well for everybody. We don’t want to interfere with other churches. We do communicate with one another and make sure that each event is successful. We support them and they support us.”

The Assumption Greekfest follows a familiar tradition, sharing with the community.

“We serve Greek food,” Georgopoulos said, “our traditional Greek food and pastries and many, many other items for our locals and all our visitors that come in for our festival. It’s a showcase of our traditional Greek food, our Greek hospitality, and our multicultural event for our community.”

This Greekfest will feature several aspects of Greek culture, such as dancing, religious iconography, and Greek music played by a Greek DJ, but Georgopoulos said the big draw is the food.

“We provide a little bit of taste of [a Greek] experience,” he said. “But it’s really to enjoy our food. That’s kind of the main reason people come: to enjoy our traditional Greek dishes.”

It goes without saying that a centerpiece of any Greek food festival is lamb — in this case, lamb kabobs cooked on a rotisserie.

“We have a couple of machines that cook it on skewers and we serve it with rice and a Greek salad,” Georgopoulos said. “Then we have our roasted chicken with Mediterranean seasoning. We have stuffed grape leaves. And we have meatballs. We have our Greek meatballs that we make ourselves.”

Another Greek dish that guests can expect is pastichio, which Georgopoulos described as a sort of Greek lasagna. “That is ground beef with the Greek macaroni and our bechamel sauce. It’s like a creamy sauce that goes on top and it’s one of our specialties that goes very well.” There will also be loukanikos, a type of Greek sausage, souvlaki (marinated pork), and, of course, gyros — Georgopoulos’ personal favorite. “We have a gyro station,” he said. We have our gyro cones and we put it on a rotisserie and we slice off the gyro and serve it in pita bread. It’s a combination of beef and lamb. It’s a very hot item that goes very well during the festival.”

When Greek Americans talk about “pita” it isn’t always clear whether they are talking about pita bread, or a dish made with dozens of layers of crispy filo dough. The most familiar pita is spanakopita, made with spinach, feta cheese and eggs, but there will be a second pita at this Greekfest. “We also have a cheese pita without the spinach,” said Georgopoulos. “Some people don’t like spinach, so we have a little bit of a variety of that as well.’

For many Greek food fans, though, the highlight of any festival is the sweets.

“We make our rice pudding at the church,” Georgopoulos said. “We have loukoumades, which is the fried dough balls. We have a station for that as well. We have a big machine that drops the dough and people can see them cook as they order. They’re very popular. It’s funny because every town has their own little spin on them, depending on which part of Greece that you visit.” Other desserts will include baklava, finikia (Greek honey cookies soaked in syrup), kourabiedes (butter cookies) and kataifi (pastries made with shredded filo and honey).

According to Georgopoulos, it’s all part of the Greek tradition of hospitality.

“The Greek foods, the Greek religious items and hospitality, we provide a little bit of taste of that experience.”

Greekfest
Assumption Greek Orthodox Church, 111 Island Pond Road, Manchester
Saturday, Aug. 24, from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sunday, Aug. 25, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Admission and parking are free. Visit assumptionnh.org.