• Dad tribute: The first song A.J. Croce recorded from his father’s catalog after doing Croce by Croce concerts for many years was “I Got A Name.” When Jim Croce died in a 1973 plane crash, his son was 2 years old. Later, one way he got to know him was by studying reels of tape for clues to his artistic process; this led him to realize that they both loved the same American Songbook artists. Thursday, Feb. 15, 7 p.m., Capitol Center for the Arts, 44 S. Main St., Concord, $53.75 and up at ccanh.com.
• Rock’s voice: When Deep Purple made the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Glenn Hughes, their co-vocalist and bassist in the mid-’70s, was among those accepting the honor. Hughes plays Deep Purple classics at a local show, with Enuff Z’Nuff opening. Friday, Feb. 16, 8 p.m., Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry, $50 and up tupelohall.com.
• Laugh time: Monthly comedy shows continue at a grand buffet Italian restaurant with Paul Nardizzi topping a lineup that also includes Dave Rattigan and Chris Cameron; arrive early for the food and stay for the hilarity. Former Boston Comedy Festival winner Nardizzi has appeared on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Comedy Central, NESN and Fox Sports’ Best Damn Sports Show Period. Saturday, Feb. 17, 8 pm., Cello’s Farmhouse Italian, 143 Raymond Road, Candia, $30 at eventbrite.com.
• Duo show: A release show celebrates Call and Response, a new EP from Matt Pond PA & Alexa Rose, who decided to connect and make music together after Rose name-checked the band in her song “Wild Peppermint.” The disc includes a lovely take on the Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” and the original “Side Eye Rolls,” a Tom Petty-esque rocker that nods to The Big Lebowski’s rug. Sunday, Feb. 18, 7 p.m., The Word Barn, 66 Newfields Road, Exeter, $16 and up at portsmouthtickets.com.
• Celtic connection: With less than a month until St. Patrick’s Day, it’s a good time to enjoy the weekly Irish Sessions at a venerable Concord pub, recently revived after a long hiatus. Settle into a six-dollar pint of Guinness or Smithwick’s, or a Black & Tan combo of the two, paired with fish and chips, beef stew or a Dublin burger, alongside a lively and frequently surprising evening of traditional music. Tuesday, Feb. 20, 6 p.m., The Barley House, 132 N. Main St., Concord, thebarleyhouse.com.
The Marvel Comic Universe meets High School Musical, sans big song and dance numbers, in Hammered: A Thor & Loki Play, to be performed by the Peacock Players youth theater group at the Janice B. Streeter Theatre in Nashua from Friday, Feb. 16, through Sunday, Feb. 18. The original work comes via Marvel Spotlight, a brand extension that aims to put a different spin on the comic book and blockbuster film franchise.
Hammered was written by two-time Tony-winning actor Christian Borle. In a 2019 video to promote Marvel Spotlight, Borle talked about liking the idea of using characters and comic tropes to get deeper into the superhero dynamic — while also shaking up the story a bit.
“In my universe, Loki is not the bad guy,” he said. “They drive each other crazy, but there’s a real fraternal bond between them. It’s brotherhood, family, and one big hammer.”
Directing the Peacock Players production is Samantha Searles, who grew up in southern New Hampshire and returned last November at the behest of Peacock Executive Director Elle Millar. Searle attended UNH’s Manchester campus and earned her undergraduate degree at Suffolk University in Boston.
“I’ve been a big fan of the Marvel Universe since I was in middle school, so to be able to work on it, with middle and high school kids, is really cool,” first-time director Searles said in a recent phone interview. “It’s fun, and we get to play around with accents, costumes and all that to bring it from big movies and TV to the stage.”
The hour-long play is set in a modern high school and revolves around a story, told by an aged Thor to his granddaughters, of life when he was a teenager.
“You travel between Earth through the eyes of some kids in the school, back through the cosmic void … to Asgard,” Searles said. “This would take place after Avengers: Endgame, but before the Loki show.”
The earthbound protagonists are a jock and a comic book nerd, patterned after Thor and Loki, but “they’re written to kind of subvert the traditional roles a little bit,” Searles observed. “The jock is actually interested in reading about Thor, which makes a lot of sense because Thor is the jock character, but he’s got a heart of gold … hopefully, audiences will get a kick out of a different take on these classic characters.”
The teenage cast “is super talented and having a lot of fun together,” Searle continued. “So much fun that last week during rehearsal my asthma got triggered because I was laughing so hard. The show is quirky, really weird, and I’ve told them to lean into that. [For example], Asgardians live for thousands of years, so even though it seems like you’re teenagers you really have thousands of years of backstory and things; play around with that.”
The current show offered a unique opportunity for newcomers reluctant to try out for musicals, like Once Upon a Mattress Youth Edition, which opens March 17, and Xanadu, which runs May 12 to May 21. “It’s just a play, and that widens the number of kids we can have,” Searles said. “Not everyone’s a singer or a dancer.”
Auditions for a teen-centric production of the Broadway hit Six will begin in June. Peacock Players welcomes new talent; the cast of Hammered also includes a first-timer.
“We can always use more kids,” Searles said. “Our tech and stage crew are largely kids too, and they get to learn about all the technology and stuff behind the scenes. There’s definitely lots of room for people to join.”
When: Friday, Feb. 16, 7 p.m.; Saturday, Feb. 17, 2 and 7 p.m., and Sunday, Feb. 18, 2 p.m. Location: Janice B. Streeter Theatre, 14 Court St., Nashua Tickets: $12 to $18 at peacockplayers.org
Featured photo: Rehearsal for Hammered: A Thor & Loki play. Courtesy photo.
To celebrate an area band’s new recording contract, the 14th New England Winter Blues Festival has a slight name change this year. It’s now A Gulf Coast Records Revue, with four acts from the venerable Nederland, Texas, label sharing the stage: Popa Chubby, Albert Castiglia, Monster Mike Welch and The Wicked Lo-Down.
The first of four shows lands at Manchester’s Rex Theatre on Thursday, Feb. 15, with the others happening across the region over the weekend. The run promises plenty of explosive guitar. Popa Chubby has been making waves in the blues world since legendary producer Tom Dowd helmed his solo debut in 1994. Castiglia is another firebrand, who one critic called the “heir apparent” to the title “America’s King of the Blues.”
Welch got his nickname as a teenager from Blues Brother Dan Aykroyd and is one of New England’s premier blues rock guitarists. He signed with Gulf Coast last year. Finally, The Wicked Lo-Down is led by festival organizer Nick David. Their lead guitarist is Paul Size, well-known for his time in The Red Devils, who worked with Mick Jagger and Bruce Willis while cementing its reputation across Texas.
The official release date for The Wicked Lo-Down’s Gulf Coast debut, Out of Line, is March 8, but the band will have advance CDs for sale and will play material from it at shows. It’s a solid collection of blues rockers, and all but two are originals. Standouts include “If I,” a love-gone-wrong burner that echoes the Allman Brothers’ “Stormy Monday,” and “The Wildest One,” a poignant tribute to Lester Butler, Size’s bandmate in The Red Devils.
“He would roll with the Stones, till that black hearted woman knocked him off his throne,” David sings, a reference to Butler’s tragic overdose death at age 38 that was later determined to be a homicide. In a similar vein, “Marchin’ On” deals with the notion that no one cheats death. Speaking by phone recently, David called it one of his favorites.
“It’s about our mortality,” he said. “No matter what, time’s gonna catch up with you and it’s just gonna keep marching on, and once you’re gone, time’s moving still.” All things considered, however, the singer and harmonica player appears to have had the most fun with one of Out of Line’s covers, a recasting of the Britney Spears pop confection “Toxic.”
“Say whatever you want about Britney Spears — it’s pop, bubblegum, whatever — but the changes in that song are cool … they’re minor and dark and edgy,” he said. “I started to hear in my head what it would sound like as a rock and blues tune. It made me think of the Stevie Ray Vaughan song “Change It.”
Unsurprisingly, David’s bandmates were incredulous. “They were like, ‘dude … what is this nonsense you’re talking about?’ I’m like, ‘man, listen, you gotta hear what I’m hearing in my head.’ I told Paul my concept; he messed around with it and he sent me a little demo of what he thought I wanted to hear, and it was exactly what I wanted to hear.”
Once in the studio, “we just turned it into this gnarly shuffle. It’s as gut bucket and Texas shuffling as you can get, but it’s a f-ing weird piece of bubble gum pop. I’m hoping it’s going to make people pay attention a little more outside of the blues world [and] redirect their attention back to the original songs that we wrote…. I think we got a bunch of killers.”
The five-piece band — David, Size, guitarist Jeff Berg (who also engineered) and the rhythm section of Brad Hallen and Nick Toscano on bass and drums — co-produced the record. Though the blues elements are apparent, The Wicked Lo-Down is looking to be more than vintage, David said.
“When people ask what kind of band we are, this is my little standard quote and I think it’s pretty accurate. We’re a very heavily blues-influenced rock ’n’ roll band. I’ll add this caveat: We’re a very, very heavily blues influenced all original rock ’n’ roll band. We’re doing our own thing.”
New England Winter Blues Festival presents Gulf Coast Records Revue When: Thursday, Feb. 15, 7:30 p.m. Where: Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester Tickets: $35 at palacetheatre.org Additional shows: Friday, Feb. 16, 8 p.m. at Blue Ocean Music Hall, Salisbury Beach, Mass. Sunday, Feb 18, 8 p.m. at Jimmy’s Jazz & Blues Club, Portsmouth
Cowgirl jazz: Come for a light supper as the weekend approaches and enjoy Hot Skillet Club playing western-infused swing jazz. The acoustic trio of friends includes Val Blachly on upright bass and vocals, guitarist Liza Constable, who also plays with Blachly in Swing a Cat, and Ellen Carlson, a fiddler Blachly began working with in Sweet, Hot & Sassy, which had a 12-year run starting in the early 1990s. Thursday, Feb. 8, 6 p.m., Daniel’s Restaurant and Pub, 48 Main St., Henniker. See hotskilletclub.com.
• Laugh along: An evening of standup comedy has Boston favorite Al Park along with a few special guests. Friday, Feb. 9, 7:30 p.m., Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester, $25 at palacetheatre.org.
• Valentine swing: Start with a dance lesson, then get on the floor with the 18-piece New Legacy Swing Band for an event dubbed Tunnel of Love. It promises moody lighting, a light food menu that starts with a glass of complimentary bubbly, and lots of chocolate and flowers paired with music ranging from Blood, Sweat & Tears, Brian Setzer and Chicago to Sinatra and Ella. Saturday, Feb. 10, 7 pm., Rockingham Ballroom, 22 Ash Swamp Road, Newmarket, $30 at rockinballroom.club.
• Sixties vibe: Conceived by New England native Brian Chartrand, Live from Laurel Canyon is a multimedia concert featuring the soundtrack of a generation, from the Byrds, Joni Mitchell, Buffalo Springfield and Mamas & the Papas to later standard-bearers like Jackson Browne, James Taylor, and The Eagles. Sunday, Feb. 11, 4 p.m., Bank of NH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord, $53.75 at ccanh.com.
• Carrying on: Closing in on four decades as a band, Big Head Todd & the Monsters is still the core trio that formed in 1986: Todd Park Mohr on guitar, keyboard, sax and harmonica, drummer Brian Nevin and Rob Squires on bass; second guitarist Jeremy Lawton joined 20 years ago. They recently dropped “Her Way Out,” from Thunderbird, their 12th album. Tuesday, Feb. 13, 8 p.m., Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry, $55 and up at tupelohall.com.
In its latest month-long themed exhibition, Mosaic Art Collective in Manchester turns to matters of the heart; fitting, given Valentine’s Day falls in the middle of February. However, the pieces submitted thus far — photos, sculptures, paintings and prints — cover the spectrum of emotions, and the depth of feelings.
“It’s not just lovey-dovey,” Mosaic’s founder and president Liz Pieroni said by phone recently. “I would say the ones that are depicting heartache are more definitely gripping.” One example of this is “Release,” a jarring graphite-on-paper drawing by Jaida Mei that depicts a woman facing a powerful wind that’s literally tearing her up.
“This is a new artist to us, so I haven’t met them,” Pieroni said, calling Mei’s work “really, really powerful and almost a little bit scary, almost surreal.”
More playful is “The Love Letter,” from New Hampshire Institute of Art graduate Andrew Freshour. The ink and watercolor print is reminiscent of a Tomie dePaola illustration. It shows a royal coach carried by two dogs in powder wigs. “It’s about self-love, self-indulgence … living your most authentic life,” Pieroni opined, calling its style “like a fairy tale but also very over the top … kind of like the Muppets meet real life.”
Yes, there are flowers as well, Pieroni continued.
“We also have some beautiful botanical paintings that are probably more palatable to some people, they’re just really beautiful,” she said. “Red Between the Lines,” from Manchester painter Susanne Larkham, is a zoomed-in pastel of a rose in many shades of red. Jonathan Pereira’s “Love in the Form of Time and Growth,” on the other hand, is multicolored and brimming with childlike innocence.
More submissions are expected for the open call event, Pieroni continued.
“We don’t really know what we’re going to get until the night before we select pieces,” she said, adding that invitational shows like the one in March with Manchester high school students to celebrate Youth Art Month are more predictable.
A Hooksett native and an artist herself, Pieroni moved back home from Vermont in the wake of the pandemic. “I have three small kids, [and] after homeschooling and trying to figure out all that, we were really in need of a little bit more help … and we wanted to be closer to family,” she said.
Searching for a gallery and realizing that the closest ones were either on the Seacoast or in Boston, she opened Mosaic Art Collective in September 2022.
“I was searching for a place to show my work locally, but I also needed an art studio,” she said. “I felt like I couldn’t be the only one in that same boat; ultimately, I was correct.”
Recently Mosaic began offering live music, and Pieroni is planning more.
“We’re trying to open up the gallery as much as possible,” she said. “The music event was one way, but then we’re also offering art talks. The Struggle Bus improv group did a performance here, and we also have run some workshops. We’re trying to find different ways of bringing people in, for all sorts of reasons.”
Art is available for purchase at Mosaic; some pieces can be acquired for as little as $36.
“The majority of things that we hang on the wall are under $500 typically, so they’re pretty reasonably priced,” Pieroni said. “Ultimately, you’re supporting a local artist, so you get good-person points.”
She urged anyone with uncertainty about ownership to consider Mosaic.
“Our biggest challenge is trying to bring people in who maybe haven’t purchased art before or considered themselves as collectors,” she said. “Finding those people and making it relevant to them and, also, a little less scary than walking into a gallery.”
ALL Heart Statuses Where: Mosaic Art Collective, 66 Hanover St., Suite 201, Manchester When: Through Wednesday, Feb. 28 (opening reception Saturday, Feb. 10, at noon
Featured photo: The Love Letter – Andrew Freshour Courtesy photo.
How to impress with fancy eats, cozy eats and a decadent dessert
Generally speaking, as a grownup on Valentine’s Day, you have four paths open to you:
(1) Sitting alone on your couch, in the dark, eating ice cream and watching kung fu movies. This will seem very familiar, as this was probably how you spent New Year’s Eve a few weeks ago.
(2) If you are young, enthusiastic and employed, there are Champagne, jewelry and optimistically intimate undergarments. These are grand, romantic gestures. They are undeniably effective, but also set expectations for the evening uncomfortably high, and at the same time make you look bad on the next gift-giving holiday, when you aren’t so demonstrative. It’s a risk.
(3) If you are older, and somewhat trampled upon by Life, there is the panicked last-minute purchase of traditional gestures of romance — grocery store roses ($15), a heart-shaped box of chocolates from the drug store ($25 for a big one), or getting a heart tattooed on your butt, with your loved one’s name on it (around $150, plus tip).
(4) Or, if you have been with your loved one for a while, a greeting card and dinner. This has some advantages:
(a) Nobody expects anything profound on a card. You can buy a generically romantic or even blank one, then look up a poem on the internet and copy a couple of stanzas into the card. Don’t try to take credit for good poetry. Cite your source, and you’ll look classy. Alternatively, you can try to be funny. Your joke might not go over, but you will still get points for trying, even if you’ve drawn a zombie holding a bouquet of dead roses, with a caption that says, “I love you for your brain.”
(b) Dinner is a winning strategy; we all like food. Even if you’ve been arguing with your loved one and things have been a little tense, we all have to eat sometime, and your sincere cooking gesture will not go unappreciated.
So if you’ve decided to cook a Valentine’s Day dinner, again, you have a few different approaches.
Grilled portabella mushroom, mashed potatoes, and grilled asparagus. Photo by John Fladd.
A FANCY DINNER
As Valentine’s Day cooking goes, this is a big swing. If you pull it off, you will look confident and accomplished. If you and your dining companion are still getting to know one another, this will hint that you have hidden depths.
Even if things go spectacularly wrong — even if there are billows of smoke from the kitchen, even if the dog races through the living room with your main course in his mouth, even if you injure yourself dramatically in some way — you can smile gamely, wipe a tear from the corner of your eye, and ask, “How do you feel about pizza?” You will still come out ahead.
You want to cook something that is legitimately delicious, grown up, and impressive, but not actually very hard to make.
Steak
If your Valentine is a fan of red meat, this is the time to double down on a really good piece of beef. Here’s the recipe for a truly excellent steak:
Go to a real butcher. Describe how you’d like your evening to go. He or she will show you some steaks. To you, they will look like most of the meat in the case. Trust the professional. Say, “Yes, please,” then ask them how to cook it. They know meat better than you ever will. Write down their directions, go home, and do what they told you to do.
This will be a Very Good Steak.
Chicken
If you are a strong and confident cook, roast a whole chicken. Stuff the cavity with lemon quarters and thyme, and baste it with olive oil and garlic.
If you aren’t quite that confident, your best bet is Chicken Piccata.
Chicken Piccata
2 skinless and boneless chicken breasts, butterflied and then cut in half –you can buy them this way at the grocery store
coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
all-purpose flour, for coating
6 Tablespoons (¾ stick) butter
5 Tablespoons (3 big glugs) olive oil
⅓ cup (75 grams) fresh squeezed lemon juice
½ cup (113 g) chicken stock
¼ cup (55 g) brined capers, rinsed
chopped parsley for garnish
Season the chicken breasts with salt and pepper. Coat them with flour, dusting off the excess.
Fry the chicken over medium heat in 4 tablespoons of the butter and the olive oil, until both sides are golden brown, about three minutes per side. Remove the chicken and set aside.
Add the lemon juice, chicken stock and capers to the pan and bring to a boil, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan to get all the little bits of fried chicken — if you want to impress people, call this fond — and incorporate it into the sauce.
Return the chicken to the pan and give it a brief spa day in the sauce, five minutes or so.
Remove the chicken again. At this point it is probably getting confused and a little frustrated, trying to figure out what you want from it. Plate it with your apologies.
Add the last 2 tablespoons of butter to the sauce and whisk it vigorously, like it owes you money. Again, if you want to use a fancy cooking term, this is called mounting the sauce. If you tried to work that term into a joke later on, who could blame you? If you whisk briskly enough that your sauce doesn’t break, you’ll probably get away with making a mounting joke.
Pour the sauce — the piccata sauce — over the chicken, and top with the chopped parsley. Congratulations, you’ve made Chicken Piccata.
This is delicious. It is a classic but went out of style 20 or 30 years ago, so there’s a good chance your dining companion hasn’t heard of this before. The acid from the lemon juice plays off the bright, salty flavor of the capers. This would be a bit too sharp, but the butter has rounded off the edges and given the sauce a richness that complements the chicken. The effort-to-deliciousness ratio of this dish is excellent.
Vegetarian
Your best bet here is an omelet or roasted portabella mushrooms. The mushrooms will have a rich flavor and a meaty texture. The eggs are dependably delicious and look good on the plate. If you mess them up it will only take a couple of minutes to redo them.
Grilled Asparagus
Some people find asparagus intimidating. Cooked properly it is probably the easiest vegetable to cook. It looks good on the plate. It tastes good and establishes your grown-up credentials.
Buy a bunch of baby asparagus, the pencil-thin ones.
Rinse the stalks, then break off the woody base of each spear. Bend it like you are going to break it in half. Surprisingly, it won’t actually break halfway across the spear, but toward the end, where it starts to get woody.
Soak the stalks in bottled balsamic vinaigrette for about an hour.
Spread the asparagus on a baking sheet, then broil it in the oven under high heat for about four minutes, until it looks cooked and the vinaigrette looks foamy.
That’s it. It is incredibly easy. The asparagus actually tastes like something, unlike when you were a child and one of your relatives boiled it for an hour or so. This is a sophisticated side dish.
Your Starch
Two straightforward side dishes are mashed potatoes and couscous.
The secret to excellent mashed potatoes is boiling the potatoes until they start to fall apart. Drain them, then return them to the pot and stir them to dry them out. They will continue to fall apart. When they look dry — well, drier — mash them with a potato masher, then add a truly injudicious amount of butter and cream. Season it, and again you look like a pro. If nothing else goes right tonight, good mashed potatoes will save you.
On the other hand, there’s couscous. It looks like rice. It’s faster and easier than rice. It’s not rice. Mix dry couscous with an equal amount of boiling water or broth and a little butter. Cover it and leave it alone for seven minutes. Stir it with a fork and boom, you’ve cooked couscous, baby!
Toasted ravioli. Photo by John Fladd.
A COMFORT FOOD DINNER
Valentine’s Day comfort tastes delicious, is bad for you and doesn’t have to be paired with anything. However, here are some notes.
Grilled Cheese Sandwich
Don’t believe what anybody has told you: Do not spread mayonnaise on the bread instead of butter. No, it is not “just as good.” Try to remember to leave butter out in the morning to soften up. Make sure you thoroughly butter each exterior side of the sandwich before you grill it in a pan. Fancy cheese doesn’t make for a better grilled cheese. Don’t let anyone shame you out of using American, if that’s how you roll. Cheddar or pepper jack are always good. Edam is about as fancy as you want to go. Serve your sandwich with a crunchy pickle.
Tater Tots
Don’t try to save time or energy by using your air fryer. That’s fine 364 days a year, but on Valentine’s Day, actually bake your Tater Tots in the oven. Cook them on a wire cooling rack that you’ve placed inside a baking sheet. This will let the hot air get to all sides of the Tots, and you won’t have to flip them halfway through cooking.
Toasted Ravioli or Pierogi
Don’t worry about thawing or pre-cooking them. Fry them — frozen — in butter over medium-low heat. By the time they are golden brown on both sides, the insides will be warm and creamy. If you’re making pierogi, spend 20 minutes beforehand and caramelize some onions to go with them.
Buttered Noodles
Follow the instructions on the box. Boil the pasta for that long; don’t depend on your memory. Drain it and add real, full-fat, salted butter. I recommend radiatori, but you know what kind of noodle your loved one likes. If you don’t, you need to do some hard thinking about your place in the World.
Ultra-rich brownie with melted ice cream and homemade chocolate sauce. Photo by John Fladd.
A DECADENT DESSERT
Maybe you want to make some kind of romantic gesture but you’d really rather not make a huge production out of it. There is a middle ground: a decadent dessert — something rich and chocolatey. You want it to be a celebration, just not with trumpets and confetti — maybe something you can share with the lights low and the music romantic.
Ultra-Rich Brownies with Malted Ice Cream & Homemade Chocolate Sauce
The Brownies
6 ounces (1½ of the big bars you find at the supermarket) 99 percent dark or unsweetened chocolate, broken up
18 Tablespoons (2¼ sticks) butter
4 eggs
2½ cups (495 g) sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon salt
1¾ cups (210 g) all-purpose flour
Preheat the oven to 350ºF.
Butter a 9”x 9” baking pan, and line it with parchment paper.
Melt the chocolate and butter together in the microwave. Heat them in a plastic or glass bowl for 30 seconds, stir, then microwave them for another 20 or 30 seconds, stir, then another 15 or so, until they have melted and combined. Set aside.
With an electric beater or in a stand mixer, beat the eggs, sugar, vanilla and salt at high speed for three minutes, until the mixture is extremely light and creamy. There isn’t any leavener in this recipe, so the air you beat in now will do any raising these brownies get.
Turn down the speed on your mixer, and blend in the chocolate mixture. Wish it luck and Godspeed. Salute it, if you feel so inclined.
At very slow speed, add the flour, a couple of spoonfuls at a time. More flour or a higher speed will cover you with flour.
When the flour is completely mixed in, stop the mixer. Stir the mixture once or twice with a rubber spatula to make sure everything gets combined thoroughly, then pour the batter into your prepared pan.
Bake for 45 to 55 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.
Set aside to cool.
The Ice Cream
Plain, store-bought vanilla ice cream is just about perfect for this dish. If you wanted to go a step further — make a semi-grand gesture, perhaps — homemade malted milk ice cream might be 10 percent more delicious.
3 cups (680 g) half-and-half
¾ cup (106 g) malted milk powder
3 egg yolks
½ cup (99 g) sugar
¼ cup (53 g) brown sugar
1 Tablespoon vanilla
Heat the half-and-half and malted milk powder, stirring, over medium heat until it comes to a simmer.
In a separate bowl, mix the egg yolks and sugars together.
When the cream has come to a simmer, very, very slowly pour it into the egg mixture, stirring vigorously. You’re adding the cream slowly to keep it from scrambling the eggs.
When everything is mixed together, return it to the saucepan and heat it again until it has thickened slightly. If you are keeping track of the temperature, this will be at around 175ºF.
Remove your ice cream base from the heat, and strain it into a one-quart container. Let it cool, then stir in the vanilla, and store, covered, in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight. It has had a traumatic day. Say something comforting to it as you close the refrigerator door.
When the ice cream base has thoroughly chilled, churn it in your ice cream maker, according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
Transfer the soft ice cream to a container, then put it in your freezer to harden up.
This is a delicious, fairly subtly flavored ice cream that will complement the rich chocolate in the brownie and the chocolate sauce.
The Chocolate Sauce
1 cup (250 g) water
½ cup (160 g) corn syrup
½ cup (100 g) sugar
¾ cup (75 g) unsweetened cocoa powder
⅓ cup (2 ounces, 55 g) chocolate chips
In a small saucepan, combine everything but the chocolate chips. The cocoa is hydrophobic, which makes it sound like it has rabies, but that just means that it doesn’t like to mix with water. It will take some energetic whisking and a stern look to bring everything together.
Keep whisking the sauce over medium heat, until it just starts to boil. Remove it from the heat and whisk in the chocolate chips. They will melt and incorporate within a few seconds.
Let the sauce sit for an hour or two to thicken and for the ingredients to get to know each other. Let’s face it; you forced the issue with your whisking. It’s only fair to give everyone time to calm down and settle in.
This is not an overly sweet chocolate sauce. It’s definitely a dessert sauce, but there’s a seriousness about it. It tastes like chocolate, not like candy. You may have noticed that there is no vanilla in the ingredients; that would have rounded out the edges of the chocolate and given it a mellowness. Without it, this sauce is a handsome man in a dark suit.
Putting It All Together
It’s pretty straightforward. Plate a brownie, top it with slightly more ice cream than you might think, and spoon your homemade chocolate sauce on top. You might want to heat the brownie for a few seconds in the microwave, but just until it is gently warm, not hot and gooey. That’s for another occasion.
This dessert is all about contrast. There are chocolate purists who insist that you should use all chocolate — the brownie, the ice cream and the sauce — chocolate, chocolate, chocolate. That would be too much here. The brownie and the sauce are two shades of very serious chocolate. They need vanilla or malted ice cream to stand out and show off their depth.
A note: These are extremely dense and rich brownies. For Valentine’s Day, especially if you’re sharing, go ahead and plate a conventional-size serving. Even the two of you might not finish it — it’s that rich — but this dessert is a Medium Dramatic Gesture (MDG), so now is not the time to start being practical. When you eat the rest of the brownies over the next few days, you’ll probably want to cut them into 1½-inch squares.
Romantic cocktail. Photo by John Fladd.
A ROMANTIC COCKTAIL
In the end, love is tricky.
Sometimes it sneaks up on you; you wake up one morning and realize that you’ve fallen like a 50-pound sack of cement. Sometimes it hits you between the eyes instantly — again, like a sack of cement. Sometimes it consumes you, filling every cell with fire and bubbles. But not cement.
So how do you express that? Love letters? Fighting a duel? A prenuptial agreement?
This year Valentine’s Day falls on a Wednesday. That doesn’t leave much opportunity to express what’s in your heart.
But a good cocktail might be a good symbolic gesture.
Unnamed Valentine’s Day Cocktail
3 ounces dry gin – a botanical gin might seem like an obvious choice for this, but you don’t want to muddy the other ingredients; a crisp London-style gin like Fords is just right for this
1 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice
1 ounce elderflower liqueur – I like St. Germain
3 drops rose water – as you add this, it won’t seem like enough, but three drops is just about exactly the right amount; you just want a subtle back-note of roses, you don’t want this to be too perfumey.
Several ounces of Asti spumante – you’ll be tempted to go up-market on this, to break out your expensive bubbly, but the spumante brings a sweetness that really adds to the finished cocktail. If this cocktail goes over well enough, you can save the Dom for another occasion.
In a cocktail shaker, combine the gin, lime juice, elderflower liqueur, and rose water over ice. Shake for 30 seconds.
Strain into two cocktail glasses, and top with spumante.
Drink together while listening to Frank Sinatra’s cover of “Fly Me to the Moon.” Warning: This might lead to dancing.
The gin is the driver of this particular limousine. The spumante and the elderflower are the couple in the back seat saying, “Keep your eyes on the road, Fords.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Fords says.
The wine is what you notice in the front end, but with a floral aftertaste. This is not an overly boozy cocktail. (With that said, three of these could lead to questionable decision-making, which in a Valentine’s Day context might be just what you’re looking for.)
After all, isn’t that what Love is? The triumph of the heart over common sense?
