Cirque du Soleil’s The Beatles Love, which closed last July after 18 years in Las Vegas, was both a musical revue and a hallucinatory spectacle. It was also the introduction to the Fab Four for a young Harry Springer, and it left a lasting impression. When he returned from the show, Springer convinced his parents to buy him a guitar.
Though it didn’t come up in a recent phone interview, it’s a safe bet Springer, who performs as Moon Walker, was partial to John Lennon. His music is a heady hybrid of glam rock and dreamy pop, which is appropriate for a guy who also cites Marc Bolan as a guiding light. He’s also fond of psychedelia stalwarts like Jellyfish and Supergrass.
In Lennon-esque fashion, Springer uses music as a platform for his politics. On TikTok, he stitches his songs to examples of hypocrisy, such as videos that tout tough parenting, parochial thinking and petty prejudices. It’s a winning formula, as his posts have garnered 16 million likes, and his @moonwalkerband account currently has nearly 400,000 followers.
“Give the People What They Want,” from 2023’s Apocalypticism, casts a wary eye at consumerism, “We want … houses we can’t pay for, jobs we can’t stay awake for,” Springer sings. Lately, he’s lambasting religion, on songs like “Regular People” and his latest, “New God,” a bracing track punctuated by shredding guitar and spacey, layered vocals.
Like the Beatle who wrote, “God is a concept by which we measure our pain,” Springer is sharp in his critiques, but it’s not in response to the way he was raised. It’s just the way he sees the world. “A lot of the things that get me worked up politically boil down almost exclusively to religion,” he said. “Sometimes, I don’t recognize that it’s going to bother people … until it does; and it always bothers the right people.”
Springer puts his faith in music, and he’s a relentless student. A conversation on influences veers from prog industrialists Can to Curtis Mayfield, who wrote “Superfly” and “People Get Ready,” to the proto-nerdcore Modern Lovers, a Boston group that included a future member of Talking Heads, a band he positively reveres.
“The funny thing is I discovered all three of those at the same time, so in my mind they’re strangely linked,” he said. This was during the beginning of the pandemic, a time when Springer had moved from Colorado to Los Angeles with his band Midnight Club to make a name for itself on the club circuit, only to end up in quarantine.
With no gigs to play and time on his hands, Springer began writing songs for Moon Walker and in October 2021 released Truth To Power, collaborating in the studio with drummer Sean McCarthy. A second album, The Attack of Mirrors, came a year later, followed by Apocalypticism last October.
This year he’s released several singles, including the antiwar “Genocide Money” in July. Considering his studio prowess, it wouldn’t be surprising if Moon Walker hit the road as a duo; Springer, McCarthy, and a looping machine packed with samples. That’s not what’s happening, however.
For a Concord show with fellow indie rockers Moon City Masters opening, Moon Walker will perform as a trio. Springer will work with a different drummer; McCarthy will be back in SoCal, but will rejoin Nov. 13 for a tour that will hit California, Oregon and Washington.
Like the many musicians Springer admires, most of whom had their heyday before MTV hit the airwaves, Moon Walker is old-school onstage.
“We don’t do tracks, so there are certain songs we can’t really play, but it’s kind of freeing — there’s no pressure to match the record because it’s physically not possible,” he said, adding, “I love the energy of a live show. There’s something that moves you when a band is in the moment and playing well together. I think it makes for a relatively unique experience. It’s going to be entirely different every night.”
Moon Walker w/ Moon City Masters When: Friday, Nov. 1, 8 p.m. Where: BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord Tickets: $19 and $31 at ccanh.com
Popular purveyor serves food at Pembroke City Limits
For Kelly Sue Leblanc, a turning point in the direction her life was headed came in the form of a vegan cooking class.
Leblanc, who goes by KSL, was curious about plant-based foods, but was frustrated by how limited her dinner choices seemed to be. “I was definitely a carnivore,” she said. “I’d been eating that way my whole life. I honestly was like, ‘OK, I made a stir-fry and a salad and some pasta and now I’ve run out of vegetable things to cook for myself. Am I just going to be stuck eating pasta and salad and stir-fry for the rest of my life?’ I didn’t know how to cook without butter or dairy.”
A cooking class led KSL to a deeper understanding of how food is constructed — why certain ingredients go together, and what the elements were that made some dishes work, and some crash and burn. Learning about food became fascinating to her, which, in short order, led to buying a food truck.
“We bought the truck in June of ’22,” KSL said, “and that first season we kind of stuck around Manchester because of the crazy amount of different health licenses that are in the 16 self-governed towns of New Hampshire. Being a mobile food truck in New Hampshire is a very strange kind of gig because of the way that we [New Hampshire towns] manage our health licenses.” Limited by the cooking space in a food truck, she did the lion’s share of cooking in a commercial kitchen in Manchester and then finished each order on site.
She named the truck The Sleazy Vegan.
“The Sleazy Vegan got its name in a couple of different ways,” KSL said. ”I plan on living on a sailboat at some point, and I was playing with business names that began with S-V, and that came into my mind, and worked for me in that way, but it also worked because of the philosophy of food.” She remembered that when she first switched to a plant-based diet she felt like she was being judged. “I went to a couple of different places that were vegan restaurants, and I was made to feel very, very uncomfortable because I was wearing leather shoes or had a leather handbag. And the penny hadn’t dropped on me about what the word ‘vegan’ really meant and how fully loaded it could be. And Sleazy Vegan is sort of my acceptance of being an imperfect vegan and wanting to just make sure that everybody knows that about the food and about what we’re doing before they get there. The name Sleazy Vegan kind of ties together our whole concept of being a vegan food provider.”
Earlier this year The Sleazy Vegan became the food provider at Pembroke City Limits (134 Main St., Suncook, 210-2409, pembrokecitylimits.com), a multi-use entertainment venue. KSL said cooking in the new space is not too different from working from her food truck.
“The space that we have at Pembroke City Limits is smaller than what’s on my truck,” she said. She and her head cook, Trafton Hanscom, who describes himself as a “Sleaze Wrangler,” still do all their preliminary cooking at her commercial kitchen, then finish each dish to order at the brick-and-mortar restaurant. “What we have been doing at Pembroke City Limits is introducing things that we’ve done in the food truck,” she said. “I am an unruly cook because I am constantly making new items. But that’s, I mean, that’s why I’m doing this, right? If I look at our current menu — between our snacks and apps, bigger bites, drinks and sweets — we are doing over 30 items from that tiny little kitchen.”
KSL sees her new restaurant as the next stage in an evolving story.
“Being that my history is in tech,” she said, “I view everything as a prototype. We’re prototyping this idea that we can put in something that would cost about the same as a food truck or less into a small establishment and be able to run Sleazy Vegan as a busy vegan kitchen, so that maybe we can grow this idea up and repeat it.”
The Sleazy Vegan Where: 134 Main St., Pembroke Hours: Open Wednesday, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., Thursday and Friday, 4 to 10 p.m., Saturday, 2 to 10 p.m., and Sunday, noon to 6 p.m. Info: 233-5078, thesleazyvegan.com The menu is available online, as well as links to The Sleazy Vegan’s social media accounts. The Sleazy Vegan can cater occasions from weddings to corporate events.
Marina Forbes is an award-winning artist, master iconographer and art historian whose focus is on traditional Russian art forms and culture.
Forbes will give a presentation on “Traditional Matryoshka Nested Doll Making: From Russia to New Hampshire” on Thursday, Nov. 7, at Gafney Library in Sanbornville. She is native of St. Petersburg, Russia.
“As a traditional artist, I love to do traditional art inspired by the thousand years of tradition. I teach how to actually paint nested dolls as well,” Forbes said. “I work as an art historian and I also work as an artist.”
Forbes is with New Hampshire State Council on the Arts as a traditional artist and contributes in categories like health care and education. “I’ve been doing programs for the last 30 years. I came to America 30 years ago. I’ve been doing programs with New Hampshire Humanities and I have a series of programs,” she said.
Her Matryoshka Nested Doll presentation involves just as much history as art. “As an art historian, I love to talk about art’s history and culture and their interconnection. In my presentation, we will start with the history of nested dolls, which has lots of legends, and then we’ll just examine the tapestry of rich folk tradition,” she said.
More contemporary historical events have influenced this old art form. “The collapse of the Soviet Union, early 1990s, people used nested dolls as a venue to search for identity, to explore new ideas. That’s why it’s such a creative process,” Forbes said.
The old and the new are used by Forbes to illuminate the story of this craft. “I’m going to use some of my exhibits as well so people can understand the connection between the 150-year art form and icons, which is more than 1,000 years of tradition, because nothing comes from nowhere — everything is built on a tradition.”
One aspect of the interconnection of art’s history and culture in her presentation relates to why nested dolls look the way they do.
“Nested dolls traditionally depict a woman, so it’s very interesting to talk about women through their lens of history and their dress and fashion and what it took to be beautiful, because in every culture it’s different, ‘what does it mean to be beautiful?’ and we’ll talk about what it is to be beautiful in Imperial Russia,” Forbes said.
How big is a typical nested doll? “Normally the nested dolls have one piece inside, three, five, seven, 10, 11, and everything with more than 11 pieces inside is considered to be a kind of custom-made piece. People, artists, work on whatever size of doll which is convenient for them.”
“The final piece in a set of 11 can be just smaller than the size of your fingernail. …. The big doll can be 10 inches, 15 inches, 7 inches, but it’s all about what’s inside, because when you open one it reveals a smaller one, and the smallest can be really very small. And if you’re curious, the craftsmanship is all about how many dolls you can nest in a certain shape,” she said.
Nested dolls glowed with a springlike joy when they were first created in the late 19th century. “Siberia, minus 40 degrees outside, everything is covered with snow, that’s why the concept of a nested doll is a wonderful toy with bright happy colors with fabulous flowers like from paradise to cheer yourself up.”
The dolls had six distinct versions, she said. “We had six factories all over Siberia, and every factory had its own style. Probably the best way to understand it is McDonald’s. You go there, you know what to expect, and it’s kind of different from Burger King. So that’s why each factory had a distinctive style but still it was a nested doll.”
Nested Doll events Traditional Matryoshka Nested Doll Making: From Russia to New Hampshire When: Thursday, Nov. 7, at 6 p.m. Where: Gafney Library, 14 High St., Sanbornville, 522-3401
Matryoshka Nested Doll Painting: Storytelling and Hands-on Workshop When: Saturday, Nov. 16, 10 a.m to 1 p.m. Where: New England Language Center, Rochester To register: email [email protected] or call 332-2255
Jack Neary is an experienced playwright who has adapted many horror stories for the theater, like those of Frankenstein and Dracula. His resume is filled with film and television experience, including Law and Order and the film Black Mass.
Neary spoke to the Hippo about his upcoming adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher presented by the Players’ Ring in Portsmouth starting Thursday, Oct. 31, and running until Sunday, Nov. 17.
“Many people have read The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe,” Neary said, “and it’s a very dense, spooky, just the kind of story that you can take many, many different ways, and there’ve been many variations of it on film, on stage, so I decided to make it accessible to a theater audience.”
By placing the story in a familiar world Neary is able to bring the audience in at the beginning. “Which I think is very important,” he said. “By setting it in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 1930s and making it a bit of a detective thriller … I’m able to tell the story and take advantage of all the very horrific aspects of the story that Poe created.
Do not expect goblins on this Halloween opening night, but the horror will still be real.
“It’s not really a supernatural story. It’s not that kind of a Halloween story. The horror is very personal, very human,” Neary said.
His Poe adaptation had been alive for some time before Neary decided to devote time to it again. “It’s been around for a while, but I haven’t worked on it myself for about 20 years. I haven’t directed it myself for a long time.”
Neary understands the craft inside and out. “I’ve adapted. I think, because I started out as an actor and then evolved into directing, and in the meantime I started as a playwright, I think I have a pretty good understanding of how to tell a story on stage. And if the story has already been told by a writer, I think I have a pretty decent awareness of how to take what the writer had in mind, what the intention was, bring it to the stage and then provide it with the kind of tension and suspense that these stories need.”
He has also adapted a lot of children’s plays. “I think I’m more a man of the theater than I am of anything else.”
He feels at home at The Players’ Ring. “I’ve been fortunate enough to work with folks who, while they do have day jobs, they really could be professional actors. For some reason I just have been able to work with folks who are that good,” Neary said.
He mentioned The Players’ Ring’s leader, Margherita Giacobbi, who is the Executive Director. “What Margherita has been able to do at The Players’ Ring is to create a really diverse schedule of plays,” he said. “They do a lot of brand new things. She has been able in the two or three years of her stewardship to bring a variation of audience demographics to The Players’ Ring,” he said.
Neary likes to put on his plays for everybody.
“The stuff that I write is really mainstream audience oriented. I don’t go out on a limb too, too far in terms of experimentation or anything like that. Although Usher kind of does take a couple of steps in that direction in terms of the storytelling.”
The Fall of the House of Usher Where: The Players’ Ring Theatre, 105 Marcy St., Portsmouth When: Thursday, Oct. 31, through Sunday, Nov. 17. Halloween opening night: 9 p.m. Shows at 7 p.m. on Thursdays; 7:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets: $29 general admission; $26 for students, 65+, military and first responders. Info: playersring.org A Players’ Ring email described the show as PG-13.
Featured image: Jocelyn Duford and Thomas Carnes in The Fall of the House of Usher. Photo by Ben Bagley Media.
Dan Haggerty, co-owner of craft cocktail bar Industry East in Manchester, is a huge fan of gin.
“Gin is awesome,” he said. “Vodka’s main use is becoming gin.” He explained that gin begins its life as a neutral spirit — essentially vodka — before being flavored with botanical flavors: juniper berries, spices like coriander, or other, more exotic roots, stems or seeds.
“Every gin is different,” he said, ”and there are so many, so they’re fun to play with. If you’re looking for something a little bit more on the floral side, you can do that. If you want something more on the vegetal side, you can go with a gin like that. A lot of people say, ‘I don’t like gin.’ We actually had a drink on our menu that was called But I Don’t Like Gin. And it was always our goal to convince people. We’d say, ‘Hey, try this,’” Haggerty said that was a quick way to make gin skeptics into converts.
“Cocktail bartenders love gin,” said Jillian Bernat, the Bar Manager of Greenleaf in Milford. “I don’t know if I can pinpoint [why]. I just know that vodka has never done it for me. And they say that gin is the original flavored vodka. So it’s just got a little bit more substance to it and more depth. And it’s just easy. It mixes well with a ton of things.”
Bernat said that while gin has a reputation as an older person’s drink, her experience has been that gin people can be surprising: “It ranges from freshly 21-year-olds to the older crowd that just likes a basic gin martini or gin and tonic.”
Jillian Bernat of Greenleaf. Courtesy photo.
Brian Ferguson makes gin. He is the owner and head distiller at Flag Hill Distillery in Lee. He has seen a sea change in the gin world that has attracted new gin drinkers.
“[Maybe 20 years ago] most gin was what was … what is referred to as London Dry,” Ferguson said. “And London Dry gin is to gin as double IPA is to beer. It’s like the most intense, over-the-top version of the category. So up until somewhat recently if you had gin it was this really, really intense version. The way I describe it is, imagine if your first beer was a 90 Minute IPA from Dogfish Head and that was your first introduction to beer. You’d probably think that beer was gross, right? Most people don’t get to where they like 90 Minute Dogfish Head by just having that as their first drink of beer. So that’s kind of what most people’s experience has been with gin up until recently. And then … I don’t know exactly when, but around maybe somewhere between 2000 and 2010, a lot of craft distilleries started producing this kind of like new age style gin. And they’re very botanical focused.”
Unlike most distillers, Flag Hill doesn’t start with a grain spirit. “We start with a base of apples,” Ferguson said. “It’s made from apples from Apple Hill Farm [in Concord], and those apples wind up getting distilled to almost neutral, not quite neutral.” While the apple spirit doesn’t actually taste of apples, it retains a high percentage of malic acid, a natural chemical in apples that gives them a crisp, dry quality. That malic acid gets partially converted into a compound that is responsible for the flavor of butter. “So we’re able to make this kind of buttery finish,” Ferguson said, “I [describe it] like candy butter on the back of the tongue, that’s so different from normal gin.”
Christopher Burk, the owner of Cathedral Ledge Distillery in North Conway, relies on a grain spirit to build his gin from. “We are a true grain-to-glass distillery,” Burk said. “One hundred percent of our products start with us milling grain and fermenting, distilling, working it all the way through the process. Our vodka, which becomes the base for our gin, is 45 percent wheat, 45 percent corn, 10 percent malted barley. All of our products, I should say, are certified USDA organic. They’re also all certified as gluten-free.”
For Burk, one of the attractions of making gin is the latitude it gives him for creativity.
“Gin is basically a blank palette,” he said.
“When my wife [Cathedral Ledge co-owner Tracy Burk] and I wanted to develop our gin recipe, we gathered scores of botanicals from around the world,” he recalled. “We started with store-bought vodka and jelly jars with botanicals and carefully measured proportions. When we wanted a cocktail at dinnertime, we would get out our pipettes and our notebook, and it was ‘three drops of this’ and ‘two of that’ and ‘one of those’ and ‘Oh, God, that’s wretched! Write it down, never do that again!’”
Burk is especially proud of their barrel-rested gin. “It’s entirely different from our other gin,” he said. “There’s overlapping ingredients, but in different proportions. So it [has] juniper, coriander and citrus peel, like all London Dries. It has hawthorn berry in there as a mid-palate focus — it’s a wonderful botanical, a neat plant to work with. It’s the real secret sauce to Barrel Rested. When the gin comes off the still, it’s an incomplete product — kind of flabby, like an unseasoned piece of protein coming out of the oven. We put it into a recently emptied rye whiskey barrel.It gets some spice from the rye, it gets caramel and vanilla from the wood, and it just makes a wonderful, wonderful gin. I consider it a sipping gin. I’ve had it in a gin and tonic, and it’s wonderful, but it’s a gin you can make a martini out of.”
Flag Hill owner Brian Ferguson summed up the state of gin today. “If you are somebody who has tried gin in the past and didn’t love it, try gin from a craft distillery,” he suggested. “Hopefully it’s ours, but even if it’s any other craft distillery, they’re all making these really exciting new gins. “There’s just so much more complexity and depth to craft distilled gins than there are to a lot of the big brand gins.”
Mentioned here Industry East Bar 28 Hanover St., Manchester, 232-6940, industryeastbar.com Cathedral Ledge Distillery 3340 White Mountain Highway, North Conway, 730-5696, cathedralledgedistillery.com Apple Hill Farm 580 Mountain Road, Concord, 224-8862, applehillfarmnh.com Flag Hill Distillery 297 N. River Road, Lee, 659-2949, flaghill.com Greenleaf 54 Nashua St., Milford, 213-5447, greenleafmilford.com
Types of Gin
All gin starts as a neutral spirit — think vodka — that is usually made from grain but sometimes made from other ingredients. Barr Hill, for instance, distills its base alcohol from honey. After that, botanical flavors are added. One of them is always juniper, which gives gin its distinctive piney flavor, but other herbs, spices and roots can range from rhubarb to lavender to coriander. The finished product might be aged or treated in other ways before making its way into your glass. There is a great variety of gins, but they generally break down into three broad categories that you are likely to find in New Hampshire liquor stores:
London Dry Gin: This is the type of gin that most people think of when they hear the term “gin.” It is crisp and piney, with some citrus back-notes and an alcoholic kick. Your first gin and tonic was probably made with it. It is also perfect for a classic martini. Varieties include Gordon’s, Bombay Sapphire and Tanqueray.
Old Tom Gin: This gin has been played with a bit. It might be slightly sweetened, or barrel-aged. These are often sipped neat or on the rocks, or substituted for whiskey in alcohol-forward drinks like old-fashioneds. Barr Hill’s Tom Cat, Cathedral Ledge’s Barrel-Aged Gin, and Hayman’s of London are good examples of this type.
Botanical Gins: Sometimes referred to as American-style gins, these put their botanical flavors in the driver’s seat. There will still be notes of juniper and the base alcohol, but floral or spicy or herby flavors will be prominent. Hendrick’s is especially well known for its botanical gins, but Uncle Val’s, Creative Arts, and Grey Whale are examples of botanicals. They also make extremely good gin and tonics, where their flavors can shine through cleanly but are also strong team players in creative craft bar cocktails.
Gin Cocktails
A Classic Dry Martini
2 to 3 ounces London Dry gin
An ounce or so of dry vermouth
Before starting, wet a stemmed martini glass, and either fill it with crushed ice, or put it in the freezer to chill.
Bartender Jeremy Weatherby of Piccola Italia Ristorante (815 Elm St., Manchester, 606-5100, piccolarestaurant.com) pours a classic martini.
Fill a mixing glass with ice, and pour the vermouth over it. Stir it with a cocktail spoon for 10 or 20 seconds, completely coating the ice with vermouth, then strain the ice to remove any vermouth left in the mixing glass. There will still be a fine, almost imperceptible coating of vermouth on the ice and the sides of the mixing glass.
Add the gin to the mixing glass and stir it gently, until it is thoroughly chilled.
Retrieve your martini glass from the freezer, or dump out the crushed ice, and strain your cold martini into it.
The classic garnish for a martini is a large olive, speared with a cocktail toothpick. A martini garnished with a cocktail onion is called a Gibson. One with a splash of olive brine is called a dirty martini. And, somewhat surprisingly, a “perfect” martini is made with equal parts gin and vermouth.
The attraction of a properly made martini is its simplicity. It is blisteringly cold and has a clean, pure flavor that makes the drinker pay very close attention to the gin.
Aviation
Recommended by Eric Avard, Bartender at Stashbox (866 Elm St., Manchester, 606-8109, stashboxnh.com)
This classic from the very early 1900s has been making a resurgence in recent years.
2 ounces gin – traditionally, this would be a London Dry gin, but many craft bartenders swear by something more botanical; Uncle Val’s would be delightful
½ ounce maraschino liqueur
¼ ounce creme de violette – a floral, purple liqueur that adds color and sophistication; use this sparingly
¾ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
Bartender Jazmon Morgan of Stashbox (866 Elm St., Manchester, 606-8109, stashboxnh.com) serves an Aviation cocktail. Photo by John Fladd.
Combine all ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker, and shake until thoroughly chilled; your fingers should hurt from the cold, and you should hear the ice starting to break up inside the shaker.
Strain into a stemmed glass — a coupe, perhaps, or a “Nick and Nora.” Garnish with a brandied cherry.
This is one of the prettiest cocktails you are likely to order in a bar. The maraschino brings a bitter-sweet quality that plays off the acidity of the lemon juice and the flowery hints of the creme de violette. The gin provides the backbone.
Bee’s Knees
Recommended by Jeff Cole of Barr Hill Distillery
This Prohibition-era cocktail comes from a time when gin, legal or not, was the most abundant liquor available in the U.S.
2 ounces gin – made with honey, Barr Hill’s Tom Cat might be perfect for this
¾ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
¾ ounce honey syrup – 2 parts honey to one part hot water; let it cool before using
Combine the gin, lemon juice and honey syrup with ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake ruthlessly, then strain into a chilled, stemmed glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.
This is one of those cocktails where there is nowhere to hide. Use a honey you like, because it will shine through. Use a gin you like, because it will be in your face. Squeeze your own lemon juice; the stuff in the plastic bottle is fine for some recipes — cupcake frosting, for instance — but if you use it in a cocktail, you might as well be adding powdered lemonade mix.
French 75
Recommended by Christopher Burk, co-owner of Cathedral Ledge Distillery (3340 White Mountain Highway, North Conway, 730-5696, cathedralledgedistillery.com)
1 ounce gin – not surprisingly, Chris Burk recommends Cathedral Ledge Barrel-Rested Gin
¾ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 ounce simple syrup
3 ounces Champagne
Combine the gin, lemon juice and simple syrup with ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake thoroughly.
Strain it into a Champagne flute and top it with Champagne.
Without the sparkling wine, this is called a Gin Sour and is also delicious. The Champagne adds a dryness and subtlety to the finished drink.
Negroni
Recommended by Brian Ferguson, owner of Flag Hill Winery and Distillery (297 N. River Road, Lee, 659-2949, flaghill.com)
This is a classic cocktail for gin lovers who like something a little less sweet.
1 ounce gin
1 ounce sweet vermouth
1 ounce Campari – a bright red, bitter Italian liqueur
Fill a rocks glass with ice, then add the gin, vermouth and Campari. Stir gently until combined. Garnish with an orange twist.
This classic is alcohol-forward, bright red, and bittersweet, perhaps a little more bitter than sweet.
Queen Bee
Invented and recommended by bartender Sian Quinn at 815 Cocktails & Provisions (815 Elm St., Manchester, 782-8086, 815nh.com)
2 ounces gin, fat-washed with brown butter – OK, we’re already going down a rabbit hole. When alcohol is exposed to a flavorful fat, like bacon fat, or brown butter, the flavor elements in the fat can get confused and leave the fat for a new home in the alcohol. In this case, the recommended method of “fat-washing” the butter is to brown it, then mix it with an equal amount of gin. Cover it and let it rest for five or six hours, then freeze it, and remove the plug of butter from the top of the container. Strain the gin into a new container, and keep it refrigerated until use. Alternatively, use 2 ounces of barrel-rested gin.
half of a peach, fresh if possible, canned if necessary
1 ounce cinnamon-infused honey syrup – bring equal parts honey and water and several cinnamon sticks to a boil, remove from heat, and steep for half an hour
¾ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice.
A Biscoff cookie
Muddle the peach in the bottom of a cocktail shaker. This is bartender speak for smooshing it up with a stick. Add the gin, then dry-shake the mixture; this means “without ice.” The alcohol in the gin will help strip peach flavors from the fruit before it is diluted with other ingredients.
Add the lemon juice and cinnamon-honey syrup, with ice, to the shaker, and shake thoroughly. Set it aside briefly.
Crush the cookie until it is mostly dust. Spread it out on a small plate. Wet the rim of a cocktail glass, then dip it into the cookie dust. Flip the glass right-side-up, and strain your cocktail into it.
As you might expect, this is a complex drinking experience. The honey and gin play the starring roles, but with a warm-tasting-cold-drinking, buttery, cinnamony flavor.
I Should Call Her
Invented and recommended by Tristan George, bar manager at Industry East (28 Hanover St., Manchester, 232-6940, industryeastbar.com)
This is a very, very delicious cocktail with a name that hints at the kind of bad decisions you might make after too many of these.
2 ounces floral gin – Hendrick’s would be a good choice
1/2 ounce creme de violette
¾ ounce fresh squeezed lime juice
¾ ounce orgeat – a red, almondy syrup
An egg white
5 to 10 drops habanero tincture – blend 4 or 5 habanero peppers with a cup of high-proof vodka, until thoroughly pulverized. Let it sit overnight to let the alcohol pick up the flavor and heat from the peppers, then strain twice, once through the finest-mesh strainer you have, then again through a coffee filter. Be patient; this will probably take longer than you think.
5 to 10 drops Peychaud bitters
Add all the ingredients except the bitters to a cocktail shaker, and dry shake it, without ice, for at least 30 seconds. This will give the egg white long enough to fluff up and add texture to the drink. Once everything is thoroughly mixed, add ice, and shake again to chill it.
Strain the cocktail into a coupe glass, then dot the foamy surface with bitters.
This is a stunningly good cocktail where the individual ingredients do NOT present themselves. It is a sweet, floral, juicy drink, with a little heat on the back end. Not for nothing, it is also a beautiful, pale lavender color.
Pink Gin
Reformulated and recommended by Tom Lloyd, bartender at What The Pho! (836 Elm St., Manchester, 606-8769, whatthephorestaurant.com)
For decades Pink Gin was a classic staple in British India and other hot colonial outposts. It was almost always gin over ice, with bitters. This grapefruit-forward conception is less colonial and much more refreshing. It does, however, have gin, and it is pink.
1½ ounces gin
¼ ounce elderberry liqueur
¼ ounce pamplemousse, a grapefruit-flavored liqueur
2 ounces ruby red grapefruit juice
The juice of half a lime
One dash of orange bitters
1 ounce seltzer
Combine all ingredients except the seltzer with ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake thoroughly, then strain into a rocks glass. Top with seltzer and stir gently.
This is the juiciest-tasting cocktail that you are ever likely to drink. The sourness of the grapefruit and lime juices have a mouth-watering quality, the elderflower liqueur provides a floral note, and the gin sits in the back, arms proudly folded over its chest, saying, “I told you so.”
Elderflower Cosmopolitan
Recommended by Nikki Miller, head bartender at the Barley House Restaurant and Tavern (132 N. Main St., Concord, 228-6363, thebarleyhouse.com)
Cosmopolitans have traditionally been made with vodka, but in this version, the gin stands out and gives depth to the cocktail. Miller said, “Gin is a very botanical liquor, with juniper berries and few roots. Sometimes it tastes like nutmeg or lemon. This drink is just a chef’s kiss of a cocktail. It’s a really good one.”
2 ounces botanical gin – Hendrick’s would be good for this
½ ounce elderflower liqueur
½ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 ounce cranberry juice cocktail
Champagne to top – about one ounce
Combine the gin, elderflower liqueur and lemon juice with ice in a cocktail shaker, and shake until chilled. Strain into a cocktail glass, and top with Champagne.
This is a slightly less sweet, more American take on a French 75. It is slightly sweet from the elderflower liqueur, slightly sour from the lemon juice, and just a bit effervescent from the champagne. It is super-refreshing.
Tea and Lemons
Developed and recommended by Jillian Bernat, bar manager at Greenleaf (54 Nashua St., Milford, 213-5447, greenleafmilford.com)
2 ounces tea-infused botanical gin – Bernat suggests steeping a spoonful of high-quality loose-leaf black tea for 10 minutes or so, then straining it
¾ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 ounce simple syrup
½ ounce Benedictine
Combine all ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker, shake soundly, and strain into a chilled martini glass.
This has all the basic flavors of an Arnold Palmer, but condensed into a classier, more adult beverage.
Olives According to Bartender Jeremy Weatherby of Piccola Italia Ristorante (815 Elm St, Manchester, 606-5100, piccolarestaurant.com), how many olives you get in your martini is significant. “Olives in a martini should always come in odd numbers,” he said. “Serving one with an even number is considered disrespectful; it’s a sign that the bartender doesn’t like you.”
New Hampshire Distiller’s Showcase
New Hampshire’s 11th Annual Distiller’s Showcase will be held Thursday, Nov. 7.
Distillers and distributors will show off more than 600 premium and ultra-premium alcohols from around the world. Mark Roy, the Director of Marketing, Merchandising, and Warehousing for the New Hampshire Liquor Commission, has been part of the yearly Showcase since the beginning. He said it is the climax of a week of events.
Courtesy photo.
“We’ll have some in-store bottle signings and tastings with some of the VIPs and distillers and brand ambassadors coming in,” he said. “We’ll also be hosting a Wednesday evening event at the Manchester Country Club in Bedford. It’s a showcase where people can come in to a more intimate venue and they can go around and … talk to brand ambassadors or people from the [liquor] companies directly.”
Roy said the focus this year will be on premium ready-to-drink cocktails, “which is one of the fastest-growing categories in the country right now.”
“[I]t’s an evening where people can come together. We have our high-end Penn Stock room, which is the old restaurant located within the hotel where we have some select products and people in there showcasing their wares. Inside the main expo itself we have over 600 different spirits from every category that you can name, again with some VIP distillers and brand ambassadors coming in. We also partner with some of the best restaurants throughout New Hampshire. There are 25 different restaurants that will be there offering out samples throughout the evening,” Roy said.
In spite of the liquor bigwigs on site, Roy said, the Showcase is designed so ordinary drinkers can learn more about the choices of alcohol available in the state and introduce themselves to new drinks.
“The target audience is our consumer,” he said. “We have every category represented from vodkas to cream liqueurs to tequilas to high-end scotches and everything in between.”
Jillian Anderson is the Director of Tamworth Distilling (15 Cleveland Hill Road, Tamworth, 323-7196, tamworthdistilling.com).
“The Distiller’s Showcase is one of our favorite events to attend every year,” Anderson said. “We find it really brings a focus on all the different people who are really into spirits, who have been kind of following trends, and also people who are very new to the world of spirits and are excited to try a bunch of new things.”
Two of those new things are Tamworth products that focus on local ingredients.
“At one of our tables,” she said, “we will be representing our eight-year-old Chocorua straight rye whiskey, which is [made from] 100 percent rye that’s all grown on a local farm in Maine. We have a black trumpet mushroom and blueberry cordial, which showcases black trumpet mushrooms that are locally foraged right in Tamworth by the New Hampshire Mushroom Co. (153 Gardner Hill Road, Tamworth, 323-0097, nhmushrooms.com). I actually learned something very interesting recently, which is black trumpet mushrooms are one of the only mushrooms that can’t be grown. They have to be foraged. So it’s something about the way that they grow in a tree that you can’t actually try and farm them.”
Anderson is excited to introduce people at the Showcase to Tamworth Distilling’s products, and part of that is the packaging.
“The labels are quite creative,” she said. “We pride ourselves on creating interesting, fun, boundary-pushing spirits, but the packaging always has a story to tell about any of the Tamworth distilling products also.” She used her company’s Siege of Wolves rum as an example. “The Siege of Wolves Is actually an event that happened in Tamworth in the 1800s,” she said. “The story goes that the farmers went out and took on the wolves in the middle of the night because they were eating all of their livestock. And when they succeeded in scaring the wolves off, they celebrated with a barrel of rum.”
For Chris Burk, owner of Cathedral Ledge Distillery (3340 White Mountain Hwy., North Conway, 730-5696, cathedralledgedistillery.com), the Distiller’s Showcase is an opportunity to meet customers and shift his perspective. “It’s a great chance for me to get away from the still,” he said, “and get out, meet customers and answer their questions.Their questions are all over the place. It’s a pretty savvy group, generally speaking. They know quite a bit about spirits, and some of them want to get really into some details about the grains in our whiskeys or our aging procedures. It could be the botanicals in our gins. They are there to learn, which is why it’s such a great event. It’s a great way for customers to explore and be able to learn and try a bunch of things without having to make a full-bottle commitment.”
The proceeds from the Distiller’s Showcase will benefit the New Hampshire Food Bank.
“This is their biggest fundraiser throughout the year,” Mark Roy said. “They provide critical service to many of the local soup kitchens and food banks throughout the state for people that have food insufficiencies. We also have the Crown Royal Bags for Our Troops program, so when people are waiting in line queuing up to go into the event they can help pack some of the bags and these bags get sent over to our troops.” —John Fladd
NH Distiller’s Showcase When: Thursday, Nov. 7, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Where: Doubletree Expo Center, 700 Elm St., Manchester Tickets: $75 through distillersshowcase.com. Food and nonalcoholic beverages will be available. The Showcase has partnered with Brown Forman and Grace Limousine to offer free rides home to guests who live within 20 miles of the event. The event’s organizers encourage guests to drink responsibly.
The general election is Tuesday, Nov. 5. Find information about registering to vote, which can be done at the polling place on Election Day, as well as what identification to bring and information about accessible voting at the NH Secretary of State’s website, sos.nh.gov. The Voter Information Lookup page (app.sos.nh.gov/viphome) allows you to search for your voting registration status and tells you your polling place, with hours.
Chief retires
Manchester Police Department Chief Allen D. Aldenberg announced his retirement effective Nov. 29 earlier this week. “After 27 years as a law enforcement officer, it is without reservation that I submit my formal letter of retirement,” Aldenberg said in a letter to Manchester Mayor Jay Ruais on Oct. 28. “Over the years, I have had the honor to work beside the committed and professional men and women of New Hampshire law enforcement. During the course of my career, I have experienced many challenges and difficult times. However, there have been many great moments along the way and I have been extremely fortunate throughout my career,” the letter said.
Aldenberg also praised the Manchester Police Department, saying the officers and staff “who serve you do so with dedication and courage. It’s easy to point out flaws from the outside, but true progress happens when we all engage in solutions together. Never forget that a law enforcement officer will lay down his/her life in a moment’s notice so that others don’t have to, and to me there is no more profound commitment.” He also encouraged the city to “continue to invest in the mental health and overall wellness of our employees. The Mental Health and Wellness Program that is currently in place at the Manchester Police Department serves as the standard bearer across New Hampshire.” And Aldenberg wrote, “The retention of our employees must be the number one priority. They have invested in Manchester and we share a collective responsibility to respect their commitment through competitive wages, safe workplace conditions, and a strong investment in their overall well-being.”
The letter also thanks former Mayor Joyce Craig and the Board of Mayor and Aldermen who appointed him chief and his wife Emily and their children as well as Chief Steven Monier of the Goffstown Police Department, where Aldenberg started his career in 1998, and Chief John Jaskolka in Manchester, who hired him in 2003.
Library for sale
The Boscawen Select Board is selling the 1913 Library at 248 King St. in Boscawen. The library building was designed by American architect Guy Lowell, was picked as a Seven to Save by the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance in 2013 and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981, according to boscawennh.gov. The property is “offered for $350,000 ‘as-is’ … Covenants would include maintaining the exterior facade of the building and would prohibit demolition,” the website said. The town’s current public library is at 116 N. Main St.
Work recognized
The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Information Technology won the state an Outstanding Achievement Award for “exemplary work in Health and Human Services in the Center for Digital Government’s 2024 Digital States Survey,” according to a press release on the DHHS website, which said New Hampshire was one of three states to receive the award. “The Center for Digital Government recognized New Hampshire for the state’s efforts to improve its technology infrastructure and security features, a commitment to transparency, and an enhanced and consistent web presence. … The State’s most significant technological achievement has been establishing relationships with local, state and county government; schools; technology advisory sources; the private sector, other states; and most importantly, the residents of New Hampshire,” the press release said.
Hospital recognized
The Foundation of Healthy Communities, a New Hampshire nonprofit “that builds healthier communities for all by leading partnerships, fostering collaboration, and creating innovative solutions to advance health and health care,” gave its Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Award to the Concord Hospital Health System, according to a press release. The Concord Hospital Health System “focused on improving outcomes due to a strong culture of safety, including launching a skilled and restorative care program to provide a new level of post-acute skilled care within its system; reducing health disparities among specific patient populations; and promoting transparency among care teams, with patients, families and community stakeholders,” the release said. See healthynh.org for more on the Foundation.
Toy season
Liberty Tax in Manchester is partnering with Toys for Tots of Southern New Hampshire in November for a national effort called “Torchie’s Toy Drive,” according to a press release. (Torchie is the Liberty Tax mascot; see libertytax.com/torchie.) Bring new, unwrapped toys to Liberty Tax, 245 Maple St. in Manchester, Tuesdays through Fridays from noon to 6 p.m. and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon throughout November (closed Thanksgiving), the release said.
The Squam Lakes Association will hold a “Let’s Go Nuts!” program with Lakes Region Conservation Corps member Meg at Chamberlain-Reynolds Memorial Forest in Center Harbor on Tuesday, Nov. 5, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The easy 2-mile walk will highlight “anything nut-related: mast years, trees, seeds and more” according to a press release. Sign up at squamlakes.org or call 968-7336.
The Craftworkers’ Guild shop in Bedford (3a Meetinghouse Road, down the hill in the Library parking lot) will open for the holiday season on Friday, Nov. 1. The shop will be open in November Thursdays through Sundays (plus Veterans Day) from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and in December Wednesdays through Sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. through Sunday, Dec. 22. See thecraftworkersguild.org.
The Derry Public Library, 64 E. Broadway in Derry, will hold a program about retirement planning with financial advisor Dan Blakeman on Wednesday, Nov. 20, at 6 p.m. Register at derrypl.org.
The United Way of Greater Nashua will hold Care-E-Oke at the Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., on Friday, Nov. 15, at 7 p.m. Tickets cost $27 for adults, $10 for ages 14 and under, at tinyurl.com/Care-e-oke24Tickets. Sign up to sing at tinyurl.com/SinginCareEOke.
The Southern NH Ukulele Group relaunches its Sunday Jam Socials at Milk Street Studios, 6 Milk St. in Dover, starting Sunday, Nov. 10, from 2 to 4 p.m. Sign-ups are first come first served on the group’s Meetup page and at the door, according to a press release. See dovernh.org/news.
