It’s not just the Dubai-style chocolate you see above and on this week’s cover — pistachio is showing up in all sorts of foods and beverages. John Fladd takes a look at this popular-again nut.
Also on the cover: Prepare to get lunch (and dinner and maybe lunch and dinner again) at Greekfest at Assumption Greek Orthodox Church in Manchester this Saturday and Sunday (page 16). Also this weekend, find some new-to-you beers at Gate City Brewfest (page 16). The Actorsingers take on the puppetry of Avenue Q (page 12).
Assumption celebrates its annual Greekfest By John Fladd jfladd@hippopress.com Hospitality is at the heart of Assumption Greek Orthodox Church’s annual ...
Pistachios are beautiful, delicious and green. They make a pie crust shockingly good, and in the hands of an expert bartender they will make you completely rethink the whole concept of a mai tai.
And yet, until relatively recently, most of us rarely thought much about pistachios, or about the Emirate of Dubai. That changed with the craze for Dubai chocolate, which became suddenly famous about a year ago.
The Dubai craze
Made popular by Fix Dessert Chocolatier, an ultra-high-end chocolate shop in Dubai, “Dubai chocolate” is a style of dark chocolate filled with chopped filo pastry, tahini (sesame paste) and pistachios. Jaime Metzger, the manager of Granite State Candy Shoppe in Manchester, said customers started asking for it about a year ago.
“I think it was roughly last summer that it started to pop up all over the place,” Metzer said, “and it became a craze; it became a trend like all these new things, and then it kind of fizzled like trends do. But suddenly it came back again!”
The ingredient in Dubai chocolate that enthusiasts seem to have latched onto is pistachios. It might be their exotic green color, or their rich, slightly woody flavor, but it’s an element that customers feel strongly about, according to Trina Bird, the Head Baker at Lighthouse Local in Bedford. As it turns out, she said, pistachios can be a bit temperamental to work with.
“A lot of [makers] use pistachio cream,” Bird said. “Pistachio paste is all natural; it’s literally just pistachios, salt and a little bit of oil. But pistachio cream typically has sugar in it or white chocolate, which gives it a sweet creaminess. At first I was trying to make Dubai chocolate-treats with just the pistachio paste because I didn’t trust the ingredients in the ‘cream.’ But then what I figured out is I could use the paste and have our chocolate lady whip me up some white chocolate and I will drizzle a small amount of that in to promote emulsion, and that gives it what people want — they want that sweet spreadability.”
The key, under-appreciated ingredient in Dubai chocolate, Bird said, is the crushed filo dough, or kadayif. Because pistachios are pretty oily, pistachio paste has a tendency to leak out of whatever you’ve put it in. The threads of kadayif provide a matrix to help keep it in place.
Pistachio Butter 2 cups (250 g) roasted, salted pistachio nuts 1 teaspoon flavorful olive oil Pinch of salt
Combine all ingredients in your food processor or blender, and blend until you break their spirit. First, the mixture will grind into a floury powder, but if you keep grinding/blending/processing it, the pistachios’ oil will start to be forced out and it will form a stiff paste. It will try to play on your emotions and pretend that it has no more to give, but if you keep working it, it will eventually break down into a runny peanut butter consistency. At this point, taste it to see if it needs more salt. Alternatively, you could just buy some pistachio butter at the store.
Pralines and halvah
But clearly pistachios have a bigger role to play outside of Dubai chocolate. Pistachios have been grown in Iran for more than 8,000 years and are a critical part of food cultures throughout the Middle East. According to Master Chocolatier Richard Tango-Lowy, owner of Dancing Lion Chocolate in Manchester, while pistachios have a distinctive flavor, that flavor lends itself to a large number of applications.
A pistachio rocher from Dancing Lion, with mango, peach and dark chocolate, tossed in chopped pistachios. Photo by John Fladd.
“When you taste pistachios,” he said, “they have a fairly unique, almost like slightly woody flavor to them when you pay attention. They’re native to Iran, where some of the most interesting foods are from. Hence, it’s common in Persian food. It’s an [ingredient] that you can easily use in savory applications. We tend to sort of pigeonhole things a lot, but the reality is [that] pistachios can go in a lot of different directions. If you’re doing a fish or chicken dish with some pistachio and brown butter, or maybe some Persian lime or something, it would be really good. Or, of course, you can go in the sweet direction with it.”
“We might do a praliné,” Tango-Lowy said, “which is kind of what Dubai chocolate is, which is cooking the nuts in molten sugar to make like a brittle. You lay it out for a day or so until it completely crystallizes and it’s really nice and hard. And then you break it up and grind it to a paste, and you get this beautiful sort of caramelly, nutty [building block], and you have a lot of control of the flavors you want to bring out of it. So those sorts of techniques are actually pretty old. Pralinés go way back in France but a lot of this stuff actually does go back to Persia.”
Another classic sweet way of using pistachios, Tango-Lowy said, is in halvah, a dry, crumbly, fudge-like confection.
“We’ve been doing a lot of halvah lately,” he said. “People are used to it with sesame seeds, but it’s also very frequently made with pistachios. And there are so many different ways of making halvah, depending on where you’re talking about. You have Israeli halvah. In Iran they put flour in their halvah, which is really different — wheat flour, which completely surprised me when I learned about it. It’s a much softer thing; it’s served for dessert. You scoop it or eat it with a fork. It’s a very different take on halvah. And you have Greek halvah, which is a different thing, yet again.”
“At its most fundamental,” Tango-Lowy explained, “you’re basically toasting sesame seeds, or in this case pistachios, grinding them into a paste with whatever spices you want, then pouring over hot sugar syrup and stirring it until it crystallizes. Halvah’s pretty easy to make. But then you can do it with other nuts. We’ve made halvah with pecans and maple.”
Boil the pistachios for three minutes, then drain them and rub them with a towel, to remove the skins. Set them aside to dry. Combine the butter and about a third of the milk, and heat until the butter has melted. Add the chopped white chocolate and stir it until everything has come together. You can put the bowl over a pot of simmering water, or heat everything in your microwave, a few seconds at a time. Add the pistachios, powdered sugar, salt, and the white chocolate mixture to a blender, and blend everything until it forms a paste. Add any remaining milk to the mixture, and blend it until it reaches a consistency you like. Remember that it will stiffen up as it cools, so you can probably afford to make it a little runny.
Pistachio latte
According to Angie Castro Andrade, cafe manager and co-owner of The Moka Pot in Manchester, pistachios make a staggeringly good latte.
“It gives it more of a nuttiness,” she said. “I like that creaminess to it, so when we decided to build a latte around it, I wanted to make the pistachio element myself. It turned out to be a little tricky. It’s full of oils, which doesn’t mix well with the espresso. We tried to just use the paste and it turns out that it just destroys the milk. So it’s like super hard to use just straight up.” Ultimately, she said, she and her team deconstructed the whole idea of a pistachio syrup, and broke it down to its very basic elements.
“We blanched [fresh pistachios],” she said. “Then we let them sit, and then like pulled the skin off of them. We cooked them down with white chocolate and milk and cream. It made this thick, like, almost like, chocolate sauce.” The white chocolate acted as an emulsifier, Castro Andrade said. “It was sweet, but not overbearing. “It was really, really good on its own. We were very tempted to just take it by the spoonful and eat it. But with the coffee, it was very delicious. We made a latte with it for St. Patrick’s Day because of the color. Everyone always uses mint for this sort of thing, and we wanted to go in a different direction; we called it The Nutty Irishman.”
By the scoop
For anyone over the age of 30 the word “pistachio” brings up memories of pistachio ice cream. Today it seems like an old-fashioned ice cream flavor, like rum-raisin, that probably is a bit of a food relic. You’d think that, said Victoria Riese, manager of the Puritan Backroom Restaurant in Manchester, but you’d be wrong.
“We have a couple of super-old-fashioned flavors that have had a real resurgence in popularity over the past few years,” Riese said. “Orange-pineapple is one, and pistachio is the other. At the Puritan, we make really good ice cream. But I think pistachio overall, that flavor is very in vogue right now. I think it all plays together. People are seeing more pistachio flavor out there, and they’re coming in and they’re asking for it. And our pistachio ice cream is very good.”
Pistachio is one of The Puritan’s original ice cream flavors, probably going back to when the restaurant started in 1917, Riese said. “I asked our ice cream maker, and he makes about 30 pints of it a week to sell. That’s on top of the [pistachio] ice cream we serve here at the restaurant and for takeout.”
Pistachio Ice Cream ¾ cup (180 g) pistachio butter (see page 10) ¾ cup + 2 Tablespoons (180 g) sugar 2⅔ cups (660 g) half and half pinch of salt ⅛ teaspoon vanilla
Combine all ingredients in a blender or food processor until thoroughly combined. If you have an ice cream maker: Chill this ice cream base for several hours, then churn according to the manufacturer’s instructions. If you do not have an ice cream maker: Pour this base into a large zippered plastic bag. Lay it on its side in your freezer until it has frozen solid. Break it into chunks, then blend it in your blender. It will break down into soft-serve consistency (which is what an ice cream maker would produce). Spoon it into freezing containers, and harden it in your freezer for two hours or overnight. This is a simple classic pistachio ice cream. How green it is will depend on the pistachios in your pistachio butter.
Other treats
According to baker Trina Bird, the taste of pistachios works extremely well in baked goods.
“It’s a very pure flavor,” Bird said. “It’s not like it’s a strong flavor, but it insists upon itself.” Because of its woody richness, it’s complemented by floral flavors like rosewater, she said. It’s a classic Middle Eastern combination. “Our baker who makes all our scones,” she said, “makes a rosewater-pistachio scone and it is so popular!”
What a baker needs to keep in mind when they bake with pistachios, Bird said, is giving the pistachios the support they need. Toasted pistachios are fine sprinkled on top of baked goods, or added inside a muffin or a scone, but if someone wants to really highlight pistachios’ flavor and color, they will probably want to use pistachio paste, which means they’ll have to face the runniness issue again.
“I like to swirl it into a brownie or a blondie,” Bird said. “That way, as the base bakes super-firm; it will hold the pistachio in a sort of a matrix. That’s why [pistachio] is also a great filling for a cupcake — it’s completely surrounded by cake that keeps it from running away.”
Other drinks
Phil Mastroianni is the co-owner of Fabrizia Spirits in Salem. His company makes premium limoncello, but also pistachio liqueur.
Pistachio latte at Moka Pot.
“A lot of our customers in the North End of Boston were telling us, ‘You know, we’re getting more people that are asking for pistachio martinis. Would you consider making [a pistachio liqueur]?,’” he remembered. “And so I went into the lab and it was without a question the most challenging recipe we’ve developed. What I found out is while there’s like more or less one recipe for limoncello — lemon zest, alcohol, sugar and water — there’s no set recipe for pistachio liqueur. … At the time, I started buying some pistachios from California. We tried roasted ones. We tried fresh ones, then just dry, not roasted. And ultimately we came up with a recipe to launch a pistachio liqueur. And the only change we’ve ever made to that recipe is a couple of years in when it was doing well and we said, wait a minute, we bring our lemons in from Sicily, and Sicily is known for pistachios. We started buying our pistachios directly from one family on the backside of Mount Etna in the small town of Bronte — which is famous throughout the world but definitely in Italy — for its pistachios.”
The key to great-tasting pistachios, Mastroianni said, is toasting them.
“What people really like about pistachios,” he said, “what I’ve learned even from my own consumer standpoint is that what we like about the pistachio is as much the toasting and the taste of the charred pistachio. In our liqueur, the toasty, almost decadent pistachio flavor is, in my opinion, what really connects people’s minds with their enjoyment of our final product.”
Pistachio pesto. Photo by John Fladd.
Pistachio Pesto ½ cup (65 g) roasted, shelled, salted pistachio nuts 2 Tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice 1 clove of garlic, peeled sea salt to taste freshly ground black pepper to taste 1 1/2 cups (about 75 g) fresh basil leaves 1/2 cup (about 25 g) fresh parsley or cilantro ¼ cup or so (about 55 g) of your favorite olive oil ¼ cup (about 15 g) of grated parmesan cheese – not the dust in the green tube
Some of the measurements above are a bit vague. One of the liberating things about making pesto is that it is very much a “handful of this” and “a pinch of that.” Do you have super-flavorful basil in your garden? You might want to add less — or more — of it. Did you forget to buy actual Parmesan cheese but find a mummified lump of cheese at the back of the refrigerator that you can grate with your food processor? Cool. Add the pistachios, lemon juice, garlic, and herbs to your food processor or blender. (If you’re feeling really old-school, you could pound all this in a large mortar and pestle.) Mix/chop/grind it up, until it forms a paste. Drizzle in the olive oil, a little at a time. If you try to pour the whole amount in at once it will be too much for your pesto to deal with emotionally, and it will break into an oily mess. You know that hole in the lid or your blender, or the little holes in the insert for your food processor? This is what they are there for. Mix everything until you are happy with it. Transfer the pesto to a bowl, and mix the cheese in. If you can manage to get it to the table before it is all “tasted” away by kitchen bystanders, serve this pesto on a twisty ridged pasta that will hold onto it.
Classic heavy metal band Queensryche performs at the Tupelo Music Hall (10 A St., Derry, 437-5100, tupelomusichall.com) tonight at 8 p.m. as part of their All Sinners Open tour. Tickets start at $70.
Friday, Aug. 22
As part of its Locally Sourced concert series, the Capitol Center for the Arts hosts hard-rocking bands Doug, the Worst, and Grub Lord tonight at 7 p.m. at the BNH Stage (16 S. Main St., Concord, 225-1111, ccanh.com). Tickets are $18 , $21 at the door.
Friday, Aug. 22
Join a 120-minute DIY watch-making workshop at Skyrim Watch Studio (427 Amherst St., Nashua, 810-9528, skyrimwrist.com). Learn to assemble your own timepiece step by step, with all parts provided, and take your dream watch home. Workshops are tonight as well as Saturday, Aug. 23, and Sunday, Aug. 24, from 6 to 8 p.m. The cost starts at $46 per person; tickets are available through eventbrite.com.
Saturday, Aug. 23
The 13th Annual New Hampshire Monarch Festival takes place today from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at its new location, Canterbury Shaker Village, 288 Shaker Road in Canterbury. The day will feature exhibits and presentations about butterflies and other pollinators as well as children’s activities and walking trails, according to the event’s Facebook page. Visitors can take home free milkweed and flower seeds, according to a press release. Admission is free for children under 2 years old (and for kids ages 2 to 12 years old if wearing an appropriate costume); admission is $4 for ages 2 to 12 is $4 and $7 for ages 13+, the release said.
Saturday, Aug. 23
The Nashua Center for the Arts (201 Main St, Nashua, 800-657-8774, nashuacenterforthearts.com) hosts a night of soul-stirring music at the Devon Allman Blues Summit tonight beginning at 8 p.m. Joining blues great Devon Allman will be the legendary Jimmy Hall of Wet Willie and Jeff Beck fame, blues icon Larry McCray, and New Orleans singer Sierra Green. Tickets start at $43.
Sunday, Aug. 24
Merrimack High Schools FIRST Robotics Team hosts its second annual Cars, Robots and Coffee event this morning from 8 a.m. to noon. The event is a blend of a traditional Cars and Coffee event mixed with demonstrations from local FIRST Robotics teams. The event will take place at Merrimack High School (38 McElwain St., Merrimack).
Sunday, Aug. 24
The Summer Silent Boxing Film Series concludes with a screening of Buster Keaton’s Battling Butler (1926) today at 2 p.m. at the Town Hall Theatre, 40 Main St., Wilton. Admission is free; a donation of $10 per person is suggested. There will be live musical accompaniment by organist Jeff Rapsis.
Save the Date! Thursday, Aug. 28 Post-grunge rock band Creed will take the stage at the SNHU Arena (555 Elm St., Manchester, 644-5000, snhuarena.com) Thursday, Aug. 28, at 7 p.m. as part of their Return of the Summer of ’99 tour. Special guests Daughtry and Mammoth will open for them. Tickets start at $49.
An Aug. 18 online article by the Laconia Daily Sun and New Hampshire Public Radio reported that there are fewer loons in the state than expected. “According to the preliminary results of the 2025 New Hampshire Loon Census, numbers are down statewide,” the article read. “There were 541 adult loons — that comes out to 270 pairs — and that’s far under what we expect our population to be,” the Sun quoted Caroline Hughes, outreach biologist for the Loon Preservation Committee. “The results from the 2024 census yielded 359 loon pairs and 100 or so unpaired loons, showing a preliminary decrease of 89 pairs.”
QOL score: -1
Comment:The Loon Preservation Committee surveys New Hampshire’s lakes each year. According to its website, “lead poisoning resulting from the ingestion of lead fishing tackle is the leading cause of documented Common Loon mortality in New Hampshire, accounting for 159 (42%) of documented adult loon deaths since 1989.”
Girls and Crocs
As reported by Nashua Ink Link in an Aug. 12 online article, 160 girls from Girls Inc. in Nashua and Manchester slipped into new school shoes “thanks to a generous gift of new Crocs from Brady Sullivan Properties. The girls — 75 from the Girls Inc. Manchester Center and 85 from its Nashua Center — traveled by coach bus to the Crocs store at Merrimack Premium Outlets to select their new shoes.”
QOL score: +1
Comment: According to the Crocs website, a Classic Clog can accommodate up to 13 charms per shoe.
Keep your copy of Sunrise on the Reaping
The Manchester City Library announced on Aug. 5 that it is no longer seeking book donations for its upcoming quarterly book sale.“Due to overwhelming public generosity, we are unable to accept any additional donations at this time,” according to the library’s website. “…[P]lease visit us on Saturday, Aug. 23, from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. for our next book sale.”
QOL score: +1
Comment: The Library’s quarterly book sales fund its collection of passes that patrons can check out for reduced or free admission to museums and other institutions.
QOL score: 62
Net change: +1
QOL this week: 63
What’s affecting your Quality of Life here in New Hampshire?
The New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute will host the full-day conference “Working Hard and Falling Behind: The High Cost of Living in New Hampshire” on Friday, Oct. 24, at the Grappone Conference Center in Concord, according to a press release. The event will “examine why the cost of living in New Hampshire keeps climbing and what it will take to make the state more affordable and equitable,” the release said. Attendance costs $60 and includes breakfast, lunch and all conference sessions (with a discount for those who register by Sept. 5), the release said. See nhfpi.org/conference.
Mural ideas
The SEE Science Center, 200 Bedford St. in Manchester, is hosting a community meeting on Thursday, Aug. 21, from 1 to 3 p.m. to discuss ideas for a new mural at the Canal Street retaining wall and stairway to Pleasant Street, according to an email from SEE.
Voting stickers
New Hampshire Secretary of State David M. Scanlan and Deputy Secretary of State Erin T. Hennessey announced the 2025 “I Voted” Sticker Contest in a press release. Any fourth or fifth grade New Hampshire student in public or private school or home schooled can enter the contest, which ends Oct. 14, the release said. Four winning sticker designs will be printed to be handed out to voters during the 2026 statewide elections, the release said. See sos.nh.gov for the rules and to print out a template for the sticker and the parent permission slip.
Star volunteers
Volunteer NH is accepting nominations through Monday, Aug. 25, for the 22nd Annual Spirit of NH Awards recognizing volunteers and volunteer organizations in the state, according to a press release. Awards are given in seven categories: youth/young adult (for ages 22 and younger); adult (ages 23 through 64); senior (ages 65+); AmeriCorps; group; business and Volunteer Champion (for businesses and nonprofit/public service organizations), the release said. Eligible nominees will be awarded at a ceremony on Monday, Oct. 22, at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, the release said. See volunteernh.smapply.io/prog/spirit_of_nh_awards_2025/ to make a submission.
Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in Concord will hold a flea market and gyro lunch on Saturday, Aug. 23, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., according to holytrinitynh.org. Entrance to the market is free; the gyro lunch costs $8, the website said.
Manchester Proud will hold its CelebratED event to get ready for the new school year on Thursday, Aug. 21, from 4 to 7 p.m. at Victory Park and French Hall in downtown Manchester, according to a press release. The event will offer backpack and school supply distribution, haircuts and clothing support, a family resource fair and school registration assistance, the release said. See facebook.com/mhtproud for more on this event and manchesterproud.org for more on upcoming events.
Nashua’s Department of Economic Development will celebrate the grand opening of the newly transformed Library Walk on Saturday, Aug. 23, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., according to a post on the city’s Enjoy Nashua Facebook page. The Library Walk is located near 100 Main St. to connect Main Street to Court Street and now features overhead lighting, art including a mural by local artist Quest Nine, seating and more, the post said. The celebration will feature food, music, games and interactive stations, the post said.
Back! To! School! OK, maybe all kids aren’t as excited for the new school year but maybe some extracurricular fun will get them looking forward to fall. In this week’s cover story, we present our annual roundup of some area sports, arts, music, dance, martial arts and other activities to bring fun to the after-school hours. Know of an extracurricular we didn’t include? Let us know at adiaz@hippopress.com and we may include it in a future Kiddie Pool column.
Also on the cover, It’s a food festival weekend in Manchester with We Are One Festival serving up Latin American and Caribbean eats and Mahrajan Middle Eastern Food Festival featuring shawarma, baklawa and more. See those stories starting on page 22. For some art fun, head down to Nashua for the annual Greeley Park Art Show (page 20).
News from the local food scene • Greenleaf is closing: Beloved fine dining restaurant Greenleaf(54 Nashua St., Milford, 213-5447, greenleafmilford.com) ...
