Author: John Fladd

Tequila and community

Arts Alley hosts a celebration of agave

The tequila-themed event, called Agave in the Alley, will take place from 6 to 9 p.m. in downtown Concord.

“We’re very excited about our event on Friday,” Jen Abou Raad said. “We’re hosting a pre-Cinco de Mayo party on Friday, in our courtyard.” Abou Raad is the Director of Sales & Programming for Arts Alley, an event space on Main Street in Concord.

“We’ll have 20+ tequila vendors there who will be handing out samples,” Abou Raad said. “[Attendees will] get a memorable collective glass to use for the sampling. Tickets include three tacos as well, that people will be able to redeem out of the diner space. We’ll have a fun DJ who will spin Latin-style music. There will be a photo booth set up, which is going to be awesome, and we have some giveaways and swag and all the fun stuff.”

Abou Raad said the courtyard space at Arts Alley, which opened last August, was designed to host events like Agave in the Alley.

“[The designers of the space] wanted it to be a multi-purposeful space,” she said. “The goal was to create a space for people to come and gather and just hang out and enjoy their time together out in the summertime in the open air. The vision was to be a community-focused spot. We find the space works really well for a variety of different events. We’ve had some dance parties out there. We have people rent the space for birthday parties. Now that the weather’s been nicer again, we can put it to more use. It’s very multi-purposeful and it’s just a really relaxed chill vibe down there. The courtyard’s like a little oasis back there that people don’t even realize is there.”

This will be one of the first vendor-centered events that Arts Alley has held there. Abou Raad said Friday’s event will give tequila fans a chance to compare and contrast different brands and labels of tequila and mezcal in a way that might be difficult to do under other circumstances. “We have a nice mix [of tequila companies],” she said. “Obviously, everyone’s heard of Patron, but we also have smaller brands like Chica Chida, which is really popping up right now, G4, Ocho, Tapatio, Lost Lore, Casa Azul, Ghost, and a bunch more. We have a really nice variety, with brands you’ve heard of, but also brands you haven’t heard of, which we want to show off. Different vendors across the state will be able to represent their brands that they’ve worked so hard on.”

For extremely serious tequila fans there will be a VIP package available, Abou Raad said. “It gets you early entry into the event. You get some premium samples from the vendors. The vendors will also be giving out a swag bag for the VIP ticket holders. And then regular GA holders, it’s from 7 to 9 [p.m.]. And they still, of course, get to come and do the sampling, but without a swag bag. And premium samples are for the VIPs. These are just a little bit of a higher end, maybe a tequila that they haven’t even put on the shelves yet. Something a little special.”

Arts Alley has reserved a block of hotel rooms at the Comfort Inn, Abou Raad said.

“On our website, there is a link, if anyone did want to secure a room and kind of make it a fun night in downtown Concord. We offer a discounted rate, so there is that option as well. We want to make sure people can enjoy their time and do it responsibly too.”

Agave in the Alley
When: Friday, May 1, from 7 to 9 p.m. (VIP ticket-holders can enter at 6 p.m.)
Where: Arts Alley, 20 S. Main St., Concord, 406-5666, artsalleyconcordnh.com
Tickets are available through the Arts Alley website at artsalleyconcordnh.com/event/agave-in-the-alley. General admission tickets are $50. VIP tickets are $90. Tickets at the door will be $20.

Featured photo: Courtyard. Courtesy photo.

The Weekly Dish 26/04/30

• Fashionably wine-y: Wine on Main (9 N. Main St., Concord, 897-5828, wineonmainnh.com) will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the release of The Devil Wears Prada and this week’s release of the sequel, on Thursday, April 30, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. with a themed evening of wine-tasting, trivia, giveaways, a costume contest and more. Each ticket includes a voucher to see The Devil Wears Prada 2 at Red River Theatres, a voucher for a pre-movie styling event at Gondwana on Friday May 1, and a coupon to LDR for vintage and designer wear. Tickets are $40 through the Wine on Main website. 21+, limited to 20 people.

• Pizza and Shabbat: Join Etz Hayim Synagogue (1 1/2 Hood Road, Derry, 432-0004, etzhayim.org) Friday, May 1, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. for a family pizza dinner and Erev Shabbat services. Please RSVP to help the office plan how much pizza will be needed.

• Wine and neon: Join Birch Wood Vineyards (199 Rockingham Road, Derry, 965-4359, birchwoodvineyards.com) Friday, May 1, from 7 to 11 p.m. for an ’80s Night celebration. Channel your favorite icons with leg warmers, big hair, shoulder pads, high-waisted jeans and vibrant colors. It’s your moment to shine like it’s 1989. There will be dancing to great ’80s music, a cash bar, and food stations. Individual tickets are $35 at 80snight.tripleseattickets.com. This is a 21+ event. Reservations are required; no tickets will be sold at the door.

• Concord Farmers Market is open for the season: Concord’s first outdoor farmers market of the year will take place Saturday, May 2, from 8:30 a.m. to noon on Capitol Street in downtown Concord, adjacent to the Statehouse lawn. Visit the Market’s Facebook page at facebook.com/ConcordFarmersMarketNh.

• Horses, hats, and juleps: Local Street Eats (112 W. Pearl St., Nashua, 402-4435, local-streeteats.com) will host a Derby Day Party, Saturday, May 2, from 4 to 11 p.m. Bet Your Bite, pick your horse, and win your snacks with the fastest two minutes of the year and the loudest room in Nashua. There will be $10 mint juleps all night. Visit local-streeteats.com/events.

• Cookies and wine for mothers: Master cookie-tier Kelli Wright will lead a Mother’s Day cookie decorating class Sunday, May 3, from 10 a.m to noon at LaBelle Winery Amherst (345 Route 101, Amherst, 672-9898, labellewinery.com). You will leave the class with a set of four decorated cookies and a sense of accomplishment. Tickets start at $59 through the LaBelle website. This class will be repeated Wednesday, May 5, at LaBelle’s Derry location (14 Route 111, Derry, 672-9898, labellewinery.com/labelle-winery-derry).

• More wine, more cookies: The Keene Cookie Co. (keenecookieco.com) will hold a Mother’s Day Cookie Class, Wednesday, May 6, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Vine 32 Wine and Graze Bar (Bedford Square, 25 S. River Road, Bedford, 935-8464, vinethirtytwo.com). Each ticket includes a glass of locally made wine (or non-alcoholic drink), four cookies, all decorating materials needed, and step-by-step decorating instructions. Tickets are $50 each or two for $90 through the Keene Cookie Co. website. Children may attend if accompanied by a parent.

Lambs, lathes and lumberjacks

Lots to see and do at the NH Farm, Forest & Garden Expo

Kelly Bryer is the manager of the New Hampshire Farm, Forest & Garden Expo taking place Friday, May 1, and Saturday, May 2, at the Deerfield fairgrounds. She said the yearly Expo has changed considerably over the past several years.

“We’re in our 43rd year,” she said. “It’s put on by three agencies: the UNH Extension, the New Hampshire Division of Forest and Lands, and the New Hampshire Department of Agriculture, Markets, and Food. We were in Manchester for 40 years, as a winter event. Then, three years ago, we moved out to the Deerfield fairgrounds in the spring, and the Expo is a whole new animal now.”

“Now,” she said, “we pretty much take over an entire end of the Deerfield fairgrounds. We’ve got tractors that will be running. We’ve got running sawmills. We’ll have a team of oxen running lumber between the sawmills — it’s a really cool thing. We have free horse-drawn wagon rides. There’s a barn space for the animals. There’s an open exhibition space. … We bring in a lot of partners to hold their events within our bigger event. The Dark Horse Lumberjack Show will go off on Friday. We’ll have the Wildlife Heritage Foundation’s ‘Forever Locked’ display there — that’s the two big taxidermied moose that are engaged in battle.”

Each exhibit or demonstration at the Farm, Forest & Garden Expo will be centered around New Hampshire’s agriculture, Bryer said, from general themes to very specific topics.

“For instance,” she said, “Concord Tractor is doing [a presentation] about safe loading of tractors, which is really fascinating. … We’ll have a chainsaw maintenance and sharpening workshop. We’ll have cider making for kids and maple sugaring for beginners. Averill House Vineyard is coming to talk about growing grapes and vine management.”

“[The Department of Transportation] will have their big trucks there. We’ll have lots of different types of machinery. Kids can sit on the tractors. We have a ‘Playpen’ running so you can actually try out a tractor,” she said.

The Expo will also showcase larger issues in modern agriculture, Bryer said. “Another really popular session that always fills up quickly is the homestead food rules, so if you want to make and sell your own products.”

Other organizations will make presentations of different rural skills, Bryer said. “We have demonstrators coming in. We have rug braiders and some spinners and some chair caners who will be coming in. The Guild of New Hampshire Woodworkers will put on some demonstrations, and they’ll have an opportunity for people to join in. There will be beekeepers. And they usually bring bees with them.”

“We are jam-packed,” she said.

The New Hampshire Farm, Forest & Garden Expo
When: Friday, May 1, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday, May 2, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Where: Deerfield Fairgrounds, 34 Stage Road, Deerfield, 463-7421.
Tickets will be on sale at Gate E. Admission is $10 per person, free for children 12 and younger. Visit nhfarmandforestexpo.org.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Jam Bars

These bars involve no fancy ingredients. You don’t have to know how to temper eggs or anything. They are straightforward and will not add to your stress level.

  • 2 2/3 cups (320 g) all-purpose flour
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ¼ teaspoon fresh-grated nutmeg – OK, yes. Trust me; grating it yourself is very much better than the powdered stuff you’ve had since the Obama administration.
  • 1 cup (two sticks) butter
  • ½ cup (106 g) brown sugar
  • ¼ cup (50 g) white sugar, or as you might know it, “sugar”
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla

12 ounces (340 g) jam. It can be any jam. Whatever kind you like. If you feel like playing around, grab a small jar of something cool when you’re picking up peanut butter at the store. Check the net weight at the bottom of the label. Most small jars of jam are very close to 340 grams. “Apricot jam?” you might ask yourself. Sure, why not? “Raspberry?” That sounds delicious, but maybe get the seedless stuff. “Grapefruit marmalade?” You do you.

(For this batch, I used a small jar of ‘Orange Jam”’ that had chunks of orange peel in it, which I picked up at a Middle Eastern market. I suspect it is pretty much orange marmalade with a Lebanese accent.)

Preheat your oven to 325°F.

Crumple up a sheet of parchment paper — really wad it up like it owes you money or something. Then open it up and smooth it out. Use it to line an 8×8” baking pan. It’s easy to overthink how to line a pan neatly. With what I call the “Crump-It-and-Dump-It” method, you can check that tiny bit of anxiety off your list.

In a mixing bowl, whisk the flour, salt and nutmeg together and set it aside.

Let’s face it: You probably decided to make Jam Bars on the spur of the moment and didn’t think to leave a couple sticks of butter out to soften up, did you? This is another baking anxiety you can let go of. You’re going to cream the butter and sugar together anyway, so just beat the butter with your mixer for a couple of minutes to soften it up, then add the sugars and beat it until the mixture is light and fluffy, then beat in the vanilla.

Turn the mixer down to its lowest setting, and spoon the flour mixture into the butter mixture, and mix everything until it forms a dough. Leave a quarter of the dough in the mixing bowl, then drop the other three quarters into your parchment paper-lined baking pan. (The “Dump” stage of “Crump and Dump”* system), and smoosh it to cover the bottom of the pan. Make sure you get it in the corners.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until it puffs up a bit, then remove it from the oven.

Scoop your jam (what kind did you end up going with?) on top of the half-baked dough, and spread it around with the back of a spoon or an offset spatula. Break the remaining dough blob into tiny, fingertip-sized bits, and cover the jam with them.

Return the pan to the oven, and bake for 45 to 60 minutes, until the jam bubbles and the dough has turned golden brown.

Cool in the pan, then cut into nine pieces, tic-tac-toe style. Eat warm or cold, topped with ice cream, or buck naked. Err, the jam bar, I mean. But again, whatever reduces your stress is good for all of us.

*I should trademark that.

Featured photo: Jam bars. Photo by John Fladd.

Big hair meets tiny doughnuts

Cup of Ambition serves coffee too

The Cup of Ambition Mobile Coffee Bar (1170 Hooksett Road, Hooksett, 843-591-6146) is named after a line in Dolly Parton’s 1980 song “9 to 5,” because owner Barbara Davey is a big fan of the singer. The truck focuses on coffee and doughnuts, Davey said.

“I offer made-to-order hot mini doughnuts. I’ve got many flavors to pick from. I’ve got some all put together that are named, but you can make your own. And I do all specialty coffees, iced coffees, frozen coffees, lattes, that sort of thing. I have a doughnut machine. I come in at about three in the morning and I start my batter. And I cook small-batch batter all day; it’s all homemade. My glazes are homemade. And I make doughnuts as they’re ordered, so they come right off the fryer, and they’re decorated the way that the customer wants them, and they’re served hot.”

These are not full-sized doughnuts, Davey said. “They’re probably 2 inches — maybe an inch and five eighths — in diameter.” And each variety is named after something Dolly Partonish.

“I’m all Dolly Parton-themed,” Davey said, “so I’ve got a lot of Dolly Parton doughnuts. I’ve got ‘Smoky Mountain Home,’ which is kind of like a cookies-and-cream [doughnut]. I’ve got a ‘Dolly Dipper,’ which is doughnut glazed with sparkles. I’ve got a ‘Jolene,’ which has cinnamon sugar and glitter dust. I do an ‘Islands in the Stream,’ which is a warm breakfast blend, vanilla with cinnamon sugar. I have another one, ‘Coat of Many Colors,’ which is vanilla and chocolate glazed with rainbow sprinkles. I’ve got a ‘Gatlinburg Maple Magic,’ which is maple and brown sugar cinnamon. So I do a lot of different things.”

Like many food truck operators, Davey keeps her customers updated on social media.

“I’m on Facebook, I’m on TikTok, and I’m on Instagram,” she said. “I really keep up on my social media to let them know if I’m open 6 to 2 that day or if I’m open 7 to 2. I try to really nail down a time. Just because if people are going to work I want them to be able to plan, and I’ve got it set up where some of my regular customers have my cell phone number so they can just text me their order so when they get here it’s done. And I bring it right out to their car.”

At this point Cup of Ambition has been open about a month, so it’s still early days, but Davey said business has been good from the start.

“We’re actually doing great,” she said. “This past Saturday I had lines of customers waiting to order, so it was phenomenal. It was great. People have been talking about me on social media. They’re referring people over. They’re having great experiences, and that’s kind of what I wanted to bring. I didn’t want to just bring good heartwarming food. I wanted to bring a good vibe and just a happy, you know, a happy time when you’re there.”

“And everybody’s happy when they get coffee for sure.”

Featured photo: Mini doughnuts at A Cup of Ambition. Courtesy photo.

What does a chef want to cook for you?

The Ash Street Inn’s Chef’s Table

Nick Provencher has been a professional chef for more than 15 years. That sounds very impressive, he said, but in fact the job can be very frustrating.

“Most of the time, it’s kind of a burnout job after a while,” he said. “It’s the hours and the people and the this and that, like you just get discouraged.”

His new position as the chef at the Ash Street Inn in Manchester has restored his sense of joy in the kitchen, he said.

“It’s essentially like a chef’s table that we’re doing inside the Ash Street Inn B&B,” he said. “They don’t normally serve dinner except when you’re doing a chef’s table.” On Chef’s Table nights, 12 guests sign up to have a multi-course meal prepared for them by Provencher.

“It’s a five-course dinner that we’re doing,” he said. “The menu changes every single week, depending on regional themes or just locally inspired menus. It’s super food-oriented, which is something that gets lost sometimes in a restaurant setting. There are none of those outside distractions. There’s no employees. There’s no one running operations or a general manager or a front-of-the-house staff. It’s just me cooking and interacting with the people who are there and just trying to create a really special night for everyone.”

For instance, Provencher said, “This week’s menu is a French-Indian fusion. It’s centered around some Indian flavors and Indian concepts done through the lens of a French chef and French technique. One of the dishes is going to be a slow-roasted and braised cabbage vindaloo. So there’s kind of a mix between two techniques. It has the sauce-building of Indian cuisine. and then the high regard and respect of fresh ingredients. The cabbage gets treated like meat, and cooking it is a three- or four-hour process. The finished dish is essentially like butter chicken, except it’s going to be with French-style Parisian gnocchi. There are going to be things at every meal that people haven’t tried before, or combinations they haven’t tried, or cuisine they haven’t tried.”

Cooking for 12 people at a time has opened up opportunities to follow his creativity, Provencher said.

“It’s 12 people. It’s so small that I can realistically accomplish whatever I have in my mind. There’s no, ‘Oh, we need to make sure it scales to 30 seats. We need to do this. We need to make sure that the line cooks are competent enough to cook it properly….’ There are really no holds barred on whatever we can do.” As the chef, he doesn’t have to design menu items that would be viable to make at volume, in and out of season, he said. “It only needs to be viable for three days, so you can bring in really cool ingredients, really fresh ingredients.”

Because liquor laws don’t allow the Ash Street Inn to sell wine, Provencher encourages diners to bring their own.

“It’s B. Y. O. B.,” he said. “We send out wine recommendations with the menu for the people who make the reservations, but it’s hyper-focused on what will pair with really, really high-quality food.”

That freedom and relaxed atmosphere allows Provencher to interact directly with the people eating his food, something that isn’t usually possible in a traditional restaurant experience, he said. He can explain the choices he made in preparing their dinner, and point out how ingredients enhance or complement each other.

“There are no distractions,” he said, ”no conflict of interest, no arguments. It’s just a calm, enjoyable dinner in a common enjoyable space where the focus is just around creating amazing food and interacting with people.”

“The hope of that is what has kept me in the game so long,” he said.

Chef’s Table
There are three seatings per week of the Chef’s Table at the Ash Street Inn (118 Ash St, Manchester, 668-9908, ashstreetinn.com), on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Seating is by reservation only. Visit ashstreetinn.com/ash-restaurant.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

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