With a blend of Celtic, American bluegrass, and a Nordic fiddle tradition designated by the UN as an “intangible cultural heritage of humanity,” Frigg is truly a world music band. As St. Patrick’s Day approaches, a show in Manchester will dip into their Irish roots while showcasing the lively Nordgrass style that’s made their reputation.
Fans of Nickel Creek will enjoy Frigg’s lively all-instrumental sound. The band was founded in 2000 by sibling fiddlers Alina Kivivuori and Esko Jarvela and mandolin player Petri Prauda. The current lineup includes Juho Kivivuori on double bass, guitarist Topi Korhonen and fiddler Tero Hyväluoma, who played his first Frigg gig in 2005.
In a recent phone interview, Prauda, who along with mandolin also plays cittern and bagpipe, discussed the band’s swing through New England and their music.
“The sound of Frigg comes from a fusion of different musical cultures,” Prauda said, “but especially the Kaustinen fiddle tradition.”
That’s the style selected by UNESCO for its singularity, named after the village in Finland that both Kivivuori and Jarvala hail from; Hyväluoma grew up nearby. It originated in the 17th century and has been passed down for generations, music characterized by a rhythmic sound that’s driven by syncopated bowing.
Their latest album, Dreamscapes, released in February, finds Frigg delicately moving in a new direction. On “Västkusten Twist,” the mood is bouncy, atmospheric, rising symphonically, while “Valsette” has a contemporary flow influenced by the American bluegrass bands they’ve long admired. “Troll’s Twilight” offers chamber music elements.
Some of the change is due to a reconfiguration of the original four fiddle band, due to the departure of Tommi Asplund.
“It was a hard decision for him, and of course, hard for us to let go of him,” Prauda explained, “but we decided we try to continue with three fiddles now only…. There’s some arranging work to be done, but we have been touring every now and then a few times with just three fiddles previously.”
The work on the new record began a couple of years ago with informal composition camps.
“We were thinking, what can we do that we haven’t tried yet, so we tried this time a bit more experimental approach,” Prauda said, adding with a laugh that he felt, after a recent relisten, “it just sounded like Frigg to me. So maybe these experiments are quite subtle.”
The band’s name comes from the Nordic goddess of love and wisdom. “Which I think are really great values today … look at the news; it seems like we need more love and wisdom in the world,” Prauda observed. “But the name got picked out just simply. We were looking in a dictionary and it was one of the first names that somehow stuck out there for us.”
Initially they were unaware of how people in the U.S. use the word, but there’s a song on 2017’s Frost on Fiddles called “Friggin’ Polska,” and Prauda acknowledges “there are many things in the world connected to Frigg … yoga, hippie things or cafes, but we didn’t think of that at the time at all. We just thought it’s a cool name.”
Frigg has many Polska dance songs in its repertoire. The lively style had its heyday in the 18th and 19th centuries and is usually played in three-quarter time, “but there are many different kinds,” Prauda explained. “Slower and faster, and the rhythmic phrasing can be very different…. It became a very popular dance in Sweden, and Finland, especially.”
Though it’s true no one sings in Frigg, Prauda notes, “We have put a lot of effort in thinking and planning and practicing how the energy in the music flows in which direction, so that when you make purely instrumental music, it still has some kind of feeling, a storyline, mental landscapes, images. I think that is quite characteristic to Frigg’s music.”
Frigg
When: Friday, March 14, 7:30 p.m. Where: Dana Center (Saint Anselm College), 100 Saint Anselm Drive, Manchester Tickets: $45 at anselm.edu
Robert Pattinson plays a man who agrees to be killed over and over again in service to an interplanetary colonization mission in 2054 in Mickey 17, a sci-fi comedy from Bong Joon Ho.
Because he first agreed to participate in some scheme involving macarons proposed by on-the-make friend Timo (Steven Yeun, having fun being wonderfully sleazy), mid-21st-century goober Mickey Barnes (Pattinson) owes a lot of money to a sadistic, well-connected loan shark. He can’t pay so he decides to flee Earth entirely and join a space mission to Niflheim, which is being touted as a, like, big beautiful planet that humanity will populate with the true believers of Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), a failed politician who is a mix of petty man-baby and tech weirdo. Mickey agrees to serve as an Expendable — someone whose physical body is scanned and whose mind and soul are downloaded into a backup drive. He does dangerous work, mostly for experiment purposes, like going out in the highly radioactive environment of space to see how long it takes him to die. When he does die from radiation or intentional poisoning to test a new chemical or whatever, a new Mickey body is printed out from a 3D printer that uses the ship’s organic waste as the printing material. His soul is uploaded to it, making him a seamless Mickey with basically all of the previous lives’ memories.
Though being sold as some kind of “pure” paradise, Niflheim is actually an ice- and snow-covered planet that is home to a highly lethal virus and to large, rolly tardigrade-meets-millipede-like creatures. After scientists kill Mickey with the virus over and over to create a vaccine, the humans can set out to explore the planet, which is how Mickey 17, that is the 17th iteration of Mickey, comes to fall through some ice and is left for certain death.
But Mickey doesn’t die. He’s found and rescued by the Creepers, as the people have taken to calling the wormy but rather cuddly creatures. He trudges back to the ship that is still serving as everyone’s home base and learns that he, 17, has been so written off that the scientists have already printed out a Mickey 18, a Mickey 18 who is hanging out in Mickey’s apartment waiting for the Mickeys’ girlfriend, Nasha (Naomi Ackie).
Robert Pattinson really does seem to be having maximum fun with Mickey. I need to stop being surprised by what a great job Pattinson does with playing weirdos. He fully dives in to the Mickeys, who are similar but not quite the same. OG Mickey is twitchy and desperate not to be sawed in pieces by a loan shark. Timo describes Mickey 17 as “the soft one.” Mickey 18 has a hair trigger and is full of righteous, if not entirely focused, rage. Pattinson makes these Mickeys, especially 17 and 18, the two we spend the most time with, distinct oddballs.
Also going big is Ruffalo, who is, however consciously, doing a Trump riff — Trump with a side of Musk and I felt sort of pre-exhausted at the notion that a good chunk of culture for the next four years will likely be wrestling with these personalities. Marshall, setting off to be ruler of his planet, is joined by his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette), a deranged political wife of the old school (the canny member of the pair) who is obsessed with ideas of refined civilization. They are A Lot, these characters, and the movie maybe does more “do you Get It?” with them than it needs to.
Ultimately, Pattinson saves this movie from just being, like, cheap sketch comedy about This Moment We’re In. He keeps the action nicely off-kilter and helps add heart to the story. B In theaters
Last year was a rough one for maple syrup makers. For many sugar houses, production was down by 90 percent compared to typical years. A dry summer, followed by a harsh freeze in November, and then an early, warm spring combined to stress maple trees and seriously limit the amount of sap syrup makers could harvest.
This year is much better.
“We have more of a traditional year this year,” said Andrew Chisholm, President of the New Hampshire Maple Producers Association (nhmapleproducers.com). “We’ve had a really cold winter, which is one of the big ingredients for having a good maple season. We have a fairly good snowpack out in the woods, which is another good ingredient. The forecast here for the foreseeable future is these perfect warm days and freezing nights. It looks like we are going to be producing maple syrup in New Hampshire through the month of March. I think some of our North Country maple sugarhouses will get into an April sugar season this year.”
Syrup makers depend on being able to harvest a large amount of maple sap to boil down and concentrate its natural sugars into syrup. They depend on warm days and cold nights to keep the sap running from the trees’ roots to their branches and back again, to be able to harvest the most sap. Chisholm said having snow on the ground in the woods is a very good sign.
“One of the most damaging things that we can have from a maple industry point of view is not having snowpack in the woods. Having early snow in the woods will insulate the roots so you don’t get the root system into a hard freeze. And then when we do get the hard freeze, the snowpack will keep us insulated. But then also, this time of year, when we start to get the warm-ups, the snow pack will cool the woods down a bit at night so we don’t get a thermal runaway, if you will.”
Chisholm said that while it’s tricky to depend on nature to stick to a schedule on the calendar, this year’s sugaring season has come at exactly the right time for Maple Weekend.
“Maple Weekend is the Super Bowl of the New Hampshire maple industry,” he said. “It’s when our maple producers throughout the state of New Hampshire open their doors and welcome neighbors, friends, family and customers in to experience a New Hampshire maple tradition that dates back generations on some of these farms.”
Sap buckets. Photo courtesy of Maple Producers Association.
Even among maple syrups, New Hampshire maple syrup is something special, Chisholm said. “Our maple is potentially some of the best maple in the world,” he said. “USDA statistics put New Hampshire as some of the highest-priced maple in the world, so maybe there’s a correlation there. Price demand would suggest that maybe we are some of the best. Also, I always try to point out the fact that in New Hampshire, if you go to a sugar house in New Hampshire, the trees where your maple syrup came from are not far away. I always say, ‘Show me a bottle of New Hampshire maple and I can show you where the trees are that produce that maple.’ That is not something you will find in Canada or really some other places. It’s unique to New Hampshire.”
Maple Weekend Events
On Saturday, March 15, and Sunday, March 16, maple producers across the state will open their doors to visitors. Here are some of the sugar houses participating according to the New Hampshire Maple Producers Association at nhmapleproducers.com, where you can find more locations across the state.
2 Sappy Guys (324 Joppa Hill Road, Bedford, 860-7992) will be open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days with tours of the maple sugar bush and sugar shack, according to their Facebook page.
Ackerman Brothers (137 Amherst Road, Merrimack, 714-9784) will be open 4 to 8 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
Babel’s Sugar Shack (323 Hurricane Hill Road, Mason, 878-3929) will be open for visitors on Saturday, March 15, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday, March 16, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Ben’s Sugar Shack (8 Webster Highway, Temple, 924-3111, bensmaplesyrup.com) Ben’s is open every weekend in March, Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with tours and samples, according to a Facebook post. The Temple location also has a deli/cafe selling breakfast and lunch.
Blue Roof Sap Camp (6 Carter Hill Road, Canterbury, 234-5067, sugarbonesfarm603.com) will be open during Maple Weekend.
Blueberry Hill Sugarworks (31 Blueberry Hill Road, Raymond, 300-6837, wickedsappy.com) will be open both days, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Briar Bush (160 Briar Bush Road, Canterbury, 809-6393, briarbushfarm.com) will be open Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. according to its website. All available grades of syrup will be available for purchase as well as goat’s milk products. There will also be a small goat-petting area.
Brookview Sugar House (154 Gage Road, Wilton, 731-5214) will be open to the public during Maple Weekend.
Charmingfare Farm (Route 27, Candia; visitthefarm.com) will hold its “Maple Express” event this weekend and next (March 22-23) with horse-drawn/ tractor rides, sugar shack tour and more. See website for admission cost and hours.
Clarkridge Farm (31 Martin Farm Road, Goffstown, 620-0406, clarkridgefarm.org) will be open during Maple Weekend.
Dill Family Farm (61 Griffin Road, Deerfield, 475-3798, facebook.com/DillFamilyFarm) will be open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
Hillcroft Farm (266 South Hill Road, New Boston, 487-5047).
Ice Mountain Maple (276 Queen St., Boscawen, 341-4297, icemountainmaple.com) will be open during Maple Weekend, according to the NHMPA website.
Journey’s End Maple (295 Loudon Road, Pittsfield, journeysendmaplefarm.com) will be open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. both days. Activities will include a vendor pop up event, a menu of maple items and more. Journey’s End will be the site of the Governor’s Tapping on Friday, March 14, at 3:30 p.m., according to their Facebook.
Just Maple (475 School St., Tilton, 520-2373, justmaple.com) will be open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, and from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday with maple concessions (including maple boiled hot dogs, maple baked beans, maple bean soup, etc), live music and educational tours, including a visit to a working sugar shack.
K & O’s Saphouse (83 Bumfagon Road, Loudon, 848-0044) will be open during Maple Weekend.
Kaison’s Sugar House (75 Forest Road, Weare, 660-6019) will be open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday only so the owners can visit other sugar houses on Sunday. Sugar maker Mike will eagerly answer any questions about maple production. Maple products including maple syrup, maple lollipops and maple drops (small hard candies) will be available for purchase. Cash only.
Lamb’s Maple Syrup (228 Shaker Road, Canterbury, 783-9912) will be open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Maple products will be available, cash only.
Ledge Top Sugar House (25 Oak St., Boscawen, 753-4973) will be open Saturday, March 16, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and closed Sunday. Visit for treats including maple milkshakes and homemade old-fashioned doughnuts.
MapleSaint (28 Lang Road, Deerfield, 235-7167) will be open Saturday and Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Mt. Crumpit Farm (207 Lull Road, New Boston, 325-5900).
Munson’s Maple (44 Blueberry Hill Road, Raymond, 303-8278).
North Family Farm (341 Shaker Road, Canterbury, 783-4712, northfamilyfarm.com)
SMD Maple Syrup (6 Falcon Drive, Merrimack, 978-815-6476, facebook. com/SMDMapleSyrup)
Sugar House at Morningstar Farm (30 Crane Crossing Road, Plaistow, 479-0804) will be open both days, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. There will be a pancake breakfast both days, fresh cider doughnuts, maple dogs, farm animals and syrup production.
Windswept Maple Farm (845 Loudon Ridge Road, Loudon, 435-4003, windsweptmaples.com)
New Hampshire Maple Weekend
Saturday, March 15, and Sunday, March 16 For a directory and a map of sugar houses holding open houses during the weekend, visit nhmapleproducers.com. Gov. Ayotte will open the weekend, ceremonially tapping a maple tree in a ceremony at Journey’s End Maple Farm (295 Loudon Road, Pittsfield, 435-5127, journeysendmaplefarm.com) on Friday, March 14, at 3:30 p.m.
Featured photo: Boiling. Photo courtesy of Maple Producers Association.
“Sean’s Red Scarf” is a playful story about a greedy man who lets a leprechaun fool him into opening an accessory shop. Simon Brooks has been spinning such tales for more than 30 years, and it may be among those he’ll tell after a dinner at a Nashua gastrobrewery hosting the latest in its Legends & Lore storytelling series.
Or maybe, Brooks said recently, it’ll be a darker yarn.
“A lot of people think that folk and fairy tales are mostly for kids, but when you actually listen to a lot of them they’re really deep.” he said. For example, “The Lonely Boat Man” is about using imagination as a defense against life’s hardships, with an ending that lands differently depending on the listener.
In it, a fisherman named Hagen runs from a socially awkward moment; all the guests at a public dinner have been asked to perform for their share, and his entertainment skills are nonexistent. Outside, he finds a beautiful woman in need of a boat ride to her home. He obliges, and falls in love along the way to the mysterious island where she lives.
In Brooks’ capable hands, the Scottish folk tale, also called “The Fairy Bride,” is magical, its denouement both beautiful and devastating. Hagen’s escape is redemptive and life-affirming, even after things change and he’s once again alone, with the memory of brief happiness the only salve for a solitary existence. However, he now has a story to tell.
Just the basic bones are provided here, so as not to spoil it for anyone who’d like to hear the whole tale on Brooks’ website (diamondscree.com).
Brooks has appeared frequently at the Nashua venue, and the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day event will be his third one there.
“It’s one that both Rambling House and I get very excited about,” he said. “I have Irish ancestry, and so I tell mostly Irish stories. There might be a Scottish or Welsh story thrown in because it’s Celtic.”
The evening will include a farm-to-table meal with an Emerald Isle feel — “the chef is absolutely incredible, it’s some of the best-tasting food I’ve ever had,” Brooks said — followed by dessert and, perhaps, a mug of their Oscar F.O.W. Wilde Nitro Stout. After the tables are cleared, tale-spinning begins.
Rambling House has designated Brooks as the evening’s Seanchaí (pronounced, shan-a-key), described as “a storyteller tasked with keeping alive the Irish myths, folklore and legends that inspire a people. In ancient Ireland, the seanchaí was held in high esteem and would regularly attract large crowds to hear the long-form poems and tales they had to tell.”
Opened in 2012, the Factory Street restaurant is named after the Coosane Rambling House, a rural family home in County Kerry, Ireland, that served as a gathering place for locals to gather and share conversation, song, dance and storytelling. It was a favorite spot of Maurice Gleeson, scion of the family that runs Rambling House and nearby TaleSpinner Brewery.
Born in England, Brooks is well-versed in many storytelling traditions and is vigilant about properly honoring all of them. As he’s keenly aware that his interpretation of a story may not hew exactly to its original telling, he’s careful to understand the cultural norms informing each one.
“I try to [tell a story] as authentically as I possibly can so that I’m not homogenizing it,” Brooks said. To that end, he spent years transforming the anglicized version of a Japanese folk story he’d found in a children’s book into something that felt genuine, even availing a fellow storyteller from Japan to translate websites he couldn’t read.
“She gave me insight into how to tell the story and not Europeanize it, but actually keep it in the way a Japanese storyteller might tell it,” he said. “Having done all this digging and delving, I was able to then tell that story properly, from a place of authenticity, rather than just taking a Japanese story and making it mine.”
Brooks has also written a book aimed at young readers that encourages both children and adults to “take these stories and make them your own … make them relevant to your life experiences and the life that you live. Because that makes it more personal. It makes it way more fun for both the teller and the listener.”
Legends & Lore Storytelling Series: Tales from the Seanchaí When: Sunday, March 16, 6 p.m. (dinner seatings begin at 4:15 p.m.) Where: Rambling House Food & Gathering, 57 Factory St., Suite A, Nashua Tickets: $20/person at ramblingtale.com. Ticket price includes entry to performance and does not include dinner, drinks, or gratuity. Adult content, not for children.
When you think of maple syrup, you are much more likely to think of pancakes or waffles than smoked fish, but Michael Williams would like the opportunity to change that.
“Maple-smoked fish is very, very good,” Williams said. “A maple-smoked sturgeon would be mind-blowing.”
Williams, who operates Eden’s Table Farm in Dunbarton, a farm and market dedicated to high-end, locally produced foods, with his wife, Pastry Chef Addie Leader-Zavos, believes that American eaters have always looked at maple products too narrowly, particularly in New England.
“New England has always been a step behind, culinarily speaking,” he said. “I think it stems from the Puritans’ distrust of any kind of pleasure.”
Northern New England leads the nation in maple syrup production — according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA.gov), New Hampshire produced 149,000 gallons of syrup last year. (An impressive achievement, considering what a rough production year it was, although it pales in comparison to Vermont’s 3.1 million gallons.) But, until relatively recently, the region has taken a conservative approach to how maple has been used in food and drink.
In recent years, however, chefs and brewers in New England, and especially New Hampshire, have become more adventurous in their uses of syrup and have found a demand for them.
Photo courtesy of Concord Craft Brewing.
Dennis Molnar is the co-owner of Concord Craft Brewing in Concord. He said that in recent years maple-forward beers have become a regular part of his brewery’s seasonal rotation. This year he and his team have focused on Maple Bourbon Brown Ale, as opposed to last year’s Logger Lager.
“We kind of alternate,” Molnar said. “We did something a little bit different this year, but we also used maple. We [made] our brown ale and we aged it in maple bourbon barrels and added a little bit of maple syrup at the tail end to get just a touch of sweetness back into it.”
Molnar said that, compared to some other ingredients, maple syrup is fairly easy to work with. “We need to have it uncontaminated because any bacteria or wild yeast will change the character of the beer,” he said. But a simple heat-up of the syrup, or buying material that’s already pasteurized is the fix. The bourbon barrels that the beer is aged in come from a producer in Maine, he said. “Maple was already used in the bourbon,” he said, “[but it] doesn’t tend to impart much flavor to the barrel; we end up getting sort of the char and the burnt-y flavor, but it doesn’t change the alcohol content. There’s not sort of an alcohol shiver at the end or anything. So we get mostly bourbon [notes] from that, and then we add back a little bit of maple to sort of restore some of that sweetness.”
Sweetness, of course, is one of the primary characteristics of maple syrup, but Chef Keith Sarasin, chef/owner of The Farmer’s Dinner pop-up restaurant (thefarmersdinner.com) and of Aatma Curry House in Milford, says it’s maple’s musky, perfumy notes that make it such a versatile ingredient to pair with other strong flavors.
Maple Gastrique Recipe by Keith Sarasin Ingredients ½ cup maple syrup (preferably Grade B or dark amber for deeper flavor) ½ cup apple cider vinegar (or balsamic for a richer gastrique) 1 Tablespoon shallots, finely minced (optional, for added depth) ½ teaspoon black pepper (optional, for mild spice) ½ teaspoon salt 1 Tablespoon butter (optional, for a silky finish)
Instructions Reduce the Vinegar: In a small saucepan over medium heat, add the vinegar. Let it simmer until reduced by about half (5-7 minutes), concentrating the acidity.
Add the Maple Syrup: Stir in the maple syrup and bring the mixture to a gentle simmer. Allow it to reduce for another 5-8 minutes, stirring occasionally, until it thickens slightly. The consistency should be similar to a thin syrup—it will continue to thicken as it cools.
Season and Finish: Stir in the salt and black pepper. If using, whisk in the butter for a silkier texture. Remove from heat and let it cool slightly.
Strain (optional): If you used shallots, strain the gastrique through a fine-mesh sieve to achieve a smoother sauce.
“It’s funny,” Sarasin said. “At Curry House we use maple in two different dishes. We actually use it in our butter chicken, which is one of our secret ingredients. We use smoked maple syrup from Ben’s Sugar Shack. We add a little bit of that just as a quick touch, kind of our signature little special thing. Maple syrup works a lot like jaggery.” Jaggery, a raw sugar used in Indian cooking, has many similarities to maple syrup, he said.
“And since we study food from the subcontinent,” Sarasin continued, “we’ve learned that it’s a beautiful replacement for jaggery. Well, you know, jaggery’s got that little, that sourness to it, that kind of earthy quality.”
“That depends on where the jaggery comes from, too,” he said. “South Indian jaggery is a lot more like that. North Indian jaggery is floral, and so it reminded me of the different grades of maple syrup, like that dark amber kind of [syrup] mimics South Indian jaggery,” he said.
The theme of Sarasin’s pop-up restaurant The Farmer’s Dinner focuses on fine-dining applications of local and seasonal ingredients, so maple is prominent in many of his white-tablecloth dishes, he said.
“I think everyone thinks of maple syrup as this sweet dessert-based thing, but one of the things that we like to do is to use it in gastriques. A gastrique is basically a kind of a sauce or a glaze, with a soured, vinegar-like property. It’s like a reduction of a sauce. So I’ll do a maple gastrique with duck quite a bit because it works so darn well together. Anytime you have fat, you need to balance it with a high level of acidity.” And maple syrup helps round out that acidity, he said.
This is a use that Chef Chris Viauld of Greenleaf Restaurant in Milford puts maple to as well.
“I just did a maple-gochujang glazed duck breast for a dinner,” he wrote in an email. Gochujang is a traditional fermented salty chili paste from Korea. “And Emilee has a maple semifreddo on the current menu at Greenleaf and has done a maple creme brulee in menus past.”
Emilee is Viaud’s wife, Emilee Viaud, the pastry chef at his restaurants, and owner of Sweet Treats by Emilee (facebook.com/EmileesSweetTreats), a bespoke baking business. She said that maple syrup pairs well with the cream in a semifreddo. “It’s a frozen dessert,” she said. “It means semi-frozen. So really all it is is whipped cream and whipped cooked eggs and sugar. And then you can add really any flavoring to that, but I like adding maple because of the sweetness and how the richness of a dark maple complements that heavy cream.” She leans toward dark grades of maple syrup. “It’s got a more intense maple flavor. Yeah, and then really when you’re cooking with maple syrup, it is just so sweet. So you really want to try and find the balance, not make a dessert that ends up being overly sweet.”
Chef Viaud likes to pair maple with contrasting flavors. “One of the ingredients that I like to pair with maple is miso,” she said. Even though it’s a surprising combination, she said, “that’s actually probably my No. 1 thing I like to pair with maple. People always think of nuts, like a walnut or a pecan maple dessert, but with miso the fermentation and the saltiness really balances well with maple. If you just make a simple sugar cookie and want to put a maple glaze on it, you just add the miso. You can cook down miso to get it more flavorful — it’s very salty, where if you cook it down a little bit it actually gets more concentrated. You can add it to glazes. You can add it to fillings. It can go well in a caramel. You could also make a miso-maple ice cream.”
Miso Caramel by Emilee Viaud “This is good to have on hand to add to ice cream or as a glaze to pies, cookies, and with coffee.”
Ingredients 1 cup pure NH maple syrup 2 Tablespoons room-temperature unsalted butter 1/2 teaspoon miso paste (add more for more salty taste) 1/3 cup room-temperature heavy cream
Instructions Bring maple syrup in a medium-sized pot over medium heat to a boil. Simmer maple syrup until candy thermometer reaches 230°F. Turn heat down to low, add room-temp butter and whisk until incorporated. Add heavy cream and whisk until combined. Add miso and whisk in. Pour caramel through a fine mesh strainer and let cool at room temperature
Pastry Chef Addie Leader-Zavos of Eden’s Table Farm agrees that maple syrup’s sweetness makes it an obvious choice to use in sweet applications. She likes to use it in European dishes, where it is nontraditional and adds an unexpected complexity.
“I like to base caneles around it,” she said. “They’re a French custardy pastry made with beeswax. They aren’t very common here, but there was a war fought over them.”
The two other applications Leader-Zavos uses maple syrup for are a little more traditional. One is her Maple Sticky Buns.
“We also sell a Maple Nut Pie,” she said. “It’s like a pecan pie, but with walnuts.” Again, the earthy notes of dark maple pair well with the slightly bitter flavor of the walnuts, and the velvety texture of the syrup contrasts with the crunchiness of the nuts. “During the holidays,” she said, “I bake it as a hand pie.”
Emily Sliviak is the Marketing Manager for Ben’s Sugar Shack in Temple, one of the largest producers of maple syrup in New Hampshire. She said that while much of the maple syrup Ben’s sells is widely used in traditional ways she has seen it used more and more in recent years paired with savory dishes.
“We literally glaze all of our bacon, all of our sausage, all of that stuff with maple syrup,” Sliviak said. “So, as far as savory things go, salmon is great; we do an entree here with the maple glaze on it. And then we have rotisserie chickens here. We use a maple glaze and then we stuff the chicken with a bunch of fresh rosemary and it comes out really good. That’s one of my favorites.”
Maple’s affinity for smoke has become widely recognized in recent years by the grilling and barbecue communities. Steve Chase is the owner of Steve’s Original Sauces in Belmont. He said that while one of his sauces is spicy, with a maple background flavor, he wants to be very clear that he makes it with barbecuing in mind.
Crispy Maple Dijon Panko Crusted Salmon from Ben’s Sugar Shack Serves 4.
4 salmon fillets, skin on 1 cup panko bread crumbs ¼ cup Ben’s Maple Sugar 1 teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon garlic powder ½ teaspoon black pepper ⅓ cup butter, melted ⅓ cup mayonnaise 2 tablespoons of Dijon or whole-grain mustard
Preheat oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Place salmon fillets on the prepared baking sheet, skin side down. Combine the mayonnaise and mustard in a small bowl. Combine the breadcrumbs, maple sugar, salt, garlic powder, black pepper, and melted butter in another bowl. Spread the mayo/Dijon mixture evenly on the tops of the salmon. Gently press the bread crumb mixture onto the top of the fillets, fully coating each one. Bake in a preheated oven for 12-15 minutes. The thickness of each fillet will determine cooking time, the crust should be golden brown and the salmon should flake easily with a fork. Serve immediately with your favorite sides.
“I’ve been teaching people for years that I’m not a hot sauce guy,” he said emphatically. “Because people come and they say, oh, they look at the name, you know, ‘SOS,’ and they think it’s hot. So I kind of just, over the years, I said, ‘OK, let me come up with something for these folks.’ So I took my sugar shack maple sauce as my base. I took that into the kitchen and redid it a little bit to make it hot for them. It created a little smoky maple. And because it’s maple, I added a little bit of cinnamon to it as well to go with it. Cinnamon is a spice that has some heat to it as well. I just used a cayenne pepper powder as my heat in that, and it just developed into just a really beautiful, like little sweet maple with the cinnamon, and then the back end gives you that nice heat hit that people love to have, and it’s just turned into just a wonderful flavor sauce that people love.”
For Chase, maple is a natural pairing for smoky flavors, which makes it well-suited for barbecued meats.
“[My sauces] have a very subtle smoky maple flavor,” he said. “It’s not overly sweet; the maple just enhances what is in the bottle. Some people really love the smoke. If you’re not able to do any smoking, you can marinate your meat, your chicken, your pork, your beef — you can marinate it in this sugar shack maple and it will give it a nice smoky flavor.”
That sounds fine for a home cook, but what about professionals? Do competition barbecuers look at maple sauces as a cheap trick and avoid it, or is it something you might actually see at a high level of smoking?
Maple Glazed Ribs from Dan DeCourcey, owner of Up in Your Grill Food Truck (493-3191, upinyourgrill.com)
Maple Glaze 1 cup NH maple syrup 2 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar 1 Tablespoon coarse salt 1 Tablespoon paprika 1 teaspoon granulated garlic 1 teaspoon granulated onion ½ Teaspoon of finely ground black pepper ½ Teaspoon of cayenne pepper (or more for extra kick)
Mix glaze ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat stirring frequently. Turn down heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes. Smoke ribs as you normally would. If you wrap the ribs during the smoking process add a half cup of glaze to the wrap as a braising liquid. Glaze unwrapped ribs during the last 20 minutes of your cook. Enjoy!
Jayna Todisco is the head cook of the championship barbecue team A Mazie Q. She is a World Barbecue Championship competitor and the Grand Champion of the Back to BAYsics (Ironman) BBQ Competition. She said maple is her go-to special ingredient.
“In a competition environment,” Todisco said, ”maple to me lends itself with so many benefits over other sweeteners, so I use it in my injections. I use it in my sauces. I use it as a finishing sauce. It does really well. I just, I can’t sing its praises too much because to me it’s probably the one finishing glaze on most of my meats. We compete majorly, and … of my four meats three have it. I have a world champion recipe because I did win a world championship on that one alone. And when people are asking, like, ‘What is that? What makes it so well? And I’m like, ‘It really is maple syrup. It really is. Like, that’s what it is. That’s all it is.’ I just literally take a paintbrush and I paint it with maple syrup and that is it.”
Todisco said maple often takes judges by surprise.
“No one is expecting it,” she said. “And when you put it on hot meat, the way it mixes with the juices, you really can’t identify it because during the cooking process somehow it executes such a different flavor than when it starts. You can still tell it’s maple if you’re looking for it, but for the most part everybody’s like, ‘What is that?’ Because when you do barbecue, people are looking for honey or brown sugar or something like that, but no one’s expecting maple. I love it.”
Ultimately, Michael Williams of Eden’s Table Farm said, the growing use of maple in different cuisines and applications is a reflection of a sea change in the way the public thinks about its food. “Slowly,” he said, “we’re moving toward an awareness of eating locally and being more aware of where our ingredients come from. Maple definitely has a part in that.”
Maple Margarita. Photo by John Fladd.
Maple Margarita by John Fladd 2 ounces jalapeño-infused blanco tequila – I like Tanteo 1 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice ½ ounce dark maple syrup
Pour the tequila, lime juice and maple syrup over ice in a cocktail shaker. Seal the shaker and shake it vigorously until you hear the ice start to break up. If you were to ask your digital assistant to play “Tequila” by The Champs, who could blame you? Strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass, and drink while considering that while the world is a messy and suboptimal place in many ways, there are compensations. Many bartenders will limit their use of maple syrup to a Maple Old-Fashioned, because its sweetness often overwhelms other ingredients. Tequila has enormous strength of personality, however, and is not easily overwhelmed. Maple goes exceptionally well with acidic fruits, and lime juice, as has been observed on many occasions, is everybody’s friend. This cocktail is juicy-tasting, with a residual jalapeño heat. It goes down very easily. It’s something of a constant in life that one margarita can easily become two, then a party. This margarita could usher in a relaxing weekend, or perhaps a lost one.
According to a press release from March 7, the New Hampshire Department of Health & Human Services and the Manchester Health Department identified a person with tuberculosis who was at the Families in Transition Adult Shelter and the 1269 Cafe in Manchester while infectious. “Anyone who visited these facilities from October 1, 2024, through January 31, 2025, could have been in contact with the individual and testing is available to find out if they were exposed to the bacteria that causes TB,” the release said. “People who believe they may have been exposed can also contact their primary care provider to request TB testing. Anyone without a primary care provider can call 211 to establish care.” On average, 12 people are diagnosed with TB in the state each year, the release said. Call DHHS at 271-4496 or visit dhhs.nh.gov/programs-services/disease-prevention/infectious-disease-control/tuberculosis-tb.
Scam restitution
Homeland Security Investigations with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Hampshire are seeking to identify victims of a gift card fraud scheme for victim restitution purposes, according to a U.S. Department of Justice press release. “In December 2023, Homeland Security Investigations, the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigations, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), and the Concord, New Hampshire Police Department (CPD) began investigating a sophisticated gift card fraud scheme that is perpetuated by criminal organizations in China. This network has established a base of operations in New Hampshire due to the State’s tax-free retail environment and is responsible for millions of dollars in consumer losses,” the release said. The filing period for victims is open until June 30. “Potential fraud victims who had gift card funds stolen or used without authorization between October 1, 2023, and January 11, 2024 … are asked to provide the gift card number(s) and receipt or proof of purchase to [email protected]. Please also include the victim’s name and contact phone number,” the release said.
Baby shower
United Way of Greater Manchester is asking for donations for its annual Community Baby Shower on Wednesday, April 23, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the United Way of Greater Nashua office, according to a press release. The United Way is accepting new and gently used baby items including strollers, high chairs, carriers/backpacks, pack & plays, cribs (mattresses not accepted), diapering items, feeding supplies, clothes and more, the release said. Donations can be dropped off at 20 Broad St. in Nashua between 9:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. weekdays by April 18, the release said. The United Way also has a donation registry: tinyurl.com/2025BBSHWR. Email [email protected] or see unitedwaynashua.org.
“Moving Parts,” an exhibit of kinetic energy in art, will open at Mosaic Art Collective (66 Hanover St. in Manchester; mosaicartcollective.com) on Saturday, March 15, with a reception from 4 to 8 p.m., according to Mosaic’s Facebook page. See Saw Art, a gallery space within Mosaic, will also open an exhibit on March 15: “Here & There” featuring artwork by Heather Morgan, Eleanor Croteau-LaBranche, Samantha Johnson and Mark Abercrombie, which will also have a reception from 4 to 8 p.m. The exhibit will be on display March 14 through March 30; see seesaw.gallery.
The Andres Institute of Art (106 Route 13 in Brookline; andresinstitute.org) will hold its annual Spring Iron Melt on Saturday, May 10. Purchase a mold now for $45 to carve at home and return to the Andres Welcome Center for the pour. See andresinstitute.org.
The March Science Cafe at Soel Sistas Cafe (30 Temple St. in Nashua) will meet on Tuesday, March 18, at 6 p.m. to discuss “Mindful Insights: Unraveling the Science of Meditation.” Attendance is free.
The Nashua Public Library Friends Annual Book and Media Sale runs Friday, March 14, through Sunday, March 16. Friends members (you can join at the door) get Friday access; the general public can attend Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, noon to 4 p.m. Most items are 25 cents to $2. See nashualibrary.org.
