Jody Donohue knew she was on to something as she watched a woman funnel a two-pound whoopie pie into her mouth.
Donohue’s company Great New England Craft and Artisan Shows (gnecraftartisanshows.com) is in charge of the Great New England Food Truck Festival (gnefoodtruckfest.com) Saturday, Aug. 3, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Hampshire Dome (34 Emerson Road, Milford, 673-8123, hampshiredome.com). Fourteen food trucks will be set up outside the Dome, with 35 vendors inside. There will be live music, a children’s area, and a whoopie pie eating contest.
Which brings us back to the whoopie pie woman.
Donohue’s company was putting on a similar event on the Seacoast in July.
“Someone brought a gallon zip-lock bag,” she said. “As soon as the timer started and they said ‘go,’ she took the whoopie pie, stuffed it into the gallon bag, squished it all up, ripped a hole in the corner, and was squeezing it into her mouth. Is that insane or what?”
Although this is the first year the Food Truck Festival in Milford will include a whoopie pie eating contest, it is the seventh year for the Festival itself. Donohue is especially excited about the venue.
“We’ll be inside and outside the dome,” she said. “It’s a 94,000-square-foot dome! It’s an air-supported structure; there aren’t any beams inside. It’s beautiful.”
Most of the vendors inside the dome will be artisan craftspeople. There will be jewelry-makers, hot sauce vendors, and pet product designers. Donohue emphasized the variety of crafters in attendance.
“We have someone that makes cards out of aluminum cans,” she said. “She cuts aluminum cans up for her designs and makes her own cards. We’ll have 3D printing materials there. There’s a sticker booth with thousands of stickers. We have Make Your Own Teddy Bear [station] this year. You can pick out the fabric and then go through the experience of stuffing it, choosing accessories for it if you want, and naming it.”
The main draw for a food truck festival, of course, is the food trucks, which will be parked outside the Dome.
“We have 14 different food trucks here this year,” Donohue said. “You’re going to find anything from trolley dogs, popcorn, fresh squeezed lemonade, Mexican food like burritos and tacos. We will have sausage, peppers, onions. We’re doing a cannoli truck. We have Kona ice there. We’ll have a Jamaican truck, a pizza truck, Chinese, a coffee truck [and a] barbecue truck.”
When not eating food truck food, attendees can play cornhole and listen to live music. In the KidZone, there will be bounce-houses, face-painting, bubble play and chalk-drawing activities. “We’ll have a raffle,” Donohue said. “It’s a scratch ticket raffle. You have a chance to win $100 in scratch tickets and those proceeds benefit a local lacrosse program.”
Donohue is looking forward to a good turnout this year.
“It’s open to the public, and it’s a great way for everyone to come together, enjoy themselves for a day, and hopefully forget about life for a while,” she said.
And enjoy the drama of the whoopie pie contest.
The Great New England Food Truck Festival Where: The Hampshire Dome, 34 Emerson Road, Milford When: Saturday, Aug. 3, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Info: gnefoodtruckfest.com Admission: Adult tickets are $8 each, children age 14 and under attend free. Parking is free.
See crafts take to the sky — and the river — at the Hot Air Balloon Rally
By Zachary Lewis zlewis@hippopress.com
Get ready for the 42nd Annual Hot Air Balloon Rally in Pittsfield, which will showcase 10 hot air balloons for the festivities from Friday, Aug. 2, all the way through Sunday, Aug. 4.
“The money that we raise through our vendors, donors, and buying things from the Rotary food tent and T-shirts, all that money goes back into the communities that we serve,” said Fallon Reed, President of the Suncook Valley Rotary Club and Chair of the Balloon Rally. These communities include Barnstead, Chichester and Pittsfield.
The shindig launches on Friday at 3 p.m. and there will be carnival rides and live music. Dusty Gray and The Bulkheads are two different bands slated to perform on Friday.
Hot air balloons will be launched.
“Certainly all of our launches are weather-dependent, so if the winds and everything cooperate we’ll have our first launch. The balloons will be on the field about 5:30. They do their pilots’ meetings to look at weather conditions and make a determination if they are able to launch,” Reed said.
Smaller and chiller balloons will be available through Mr. Joe and his Silly Solutions Balloon Entertainment. “The gentleman coming down to do that does these things down at Fenway so we’re excited to have him. He came a couple years ago.”
The night sky is the perfect backdrop for the hot air balloons.
“At dusk, we’ll have what we call our Night Glow and so that’s where the balloons inflate on the field and they change the … combination of oxygen to propane or however they make it work … the balloons essentially light up. They look like fireflies on the field. Big ol’ fireflies. It’s a great thing and they do a little show there.”
Saturday starts early with the Rotary Pancake and Egg Breakfast at 6 a.m. and a possible launch of hot air balloons, depending on the weather.
“We also have a free sunrise yoga that our local yoga business Powerful You Yoga puts on … so you can see the balloons and be a part of all that.”
A giant touch-a-truck event occurs later that Saturday morning involving the Home of the Brave RC Balloon, a smaller hot air balloon controlled by hand.
“This year, this is a new activity for us, but during touch-a-truck, if folks want to bring a teddy bear or a stuffie, we’re doing teddy bear tethering so they can put their stuffie in the basket and it can go up on a little tethered flight, maybe 30 or so feet in the air, so we’re excited to have that,” she said. Another fun kid event is the Brushes and Balloons paint event at the Rotary Tent.
That’s not all.
“We have our annual Craft Fair which is sponsored by the Pittsfield Historical Society. They are full of crafters and vendors to sell various things. That’s always a good time.”
Anything that Floats River Raft Regatta Race is another rally favorite.
“Folks can make their own raft or vessel out of anything they can find around their house, it just can’t be a regular boat or have an engine and then they race in the river to a certain point and then come back to the shore and the first three teams that win, win a cash prize and bragging rights for the next year.”
There are also helicopter rides and performances by the Granite State Disc Dogs as well as a hot air balloon pilot meet and greet.
“Folks will be able to meet them. They have trading cards they’ll be handing out so they can collect those, check out the baskets, meet the pilots … get an opportunity to ask them all kinds of questions about hot air balloons, which is great.”
Remember to bring your spare change to the Hot Air Balloon Rally.
“And my favorite thing for this year … we got a penny press machine with balloon images and we partnered with the library in town, the Josiah Carpenter Library. During the Balloon Rally the penny press machine will be at the field, but the other days of the year it will be at the library so folks can bring their quarters and a penny and pick your design and get some pressed pennies…. My daughter loves them so we’re very excited about that this year,” Reed said.
There is also the possibility of doing ‘tethering’ in the Re/Max balloon in the evening hours, where brave participants can experience the hot air balloon in action.
“They only go up a set amount…. I actually went up for the second time last weekend with my daughter, so it was her first time going up, she’s 8 and she loved it…. It’s an amazing experience. You truly feel like, ‘if I could float on a cloud, that’s how I would describe it.’”
If the ground is closer to comfort, there’s even the Victory Workers 4-H Cow Chip Bingo, which is exactly how it sounds.
“Folks can buy tickets with random numbers on it. We have a couple cows that come down onto a gridded area and where the cow drops their patty is whoever wins. There’s a $500 cash prize.”
Float on over to this spectacular event.
“Hot air balloons are not necessarily something you see every day…. It’s a great kind of low-key, fun fair. Hang out, lots of great things to do for kids and families, and spend time together. Everyone enjoys it.”
Hot Air Balloon Rally Where: Drake Field in Pittsfield When: Friday, Aug. 2, to Sunday, Aug. 4 Admission: free More: nhballoonrally.org
For 11 months of the year, zucchini stays in the background. Then, suddenly in August, it’s everywhere. Whether it’s you or a neighbor or a coworker who has planted way too much, you may find yourself struggling to find something to do with five or six zucchini. Per week! Per bush!
Addie Leader-Zavos is a pastry chef and the co-owner of Eden’s Table Farm and Farm Store (240 Stark Highway North, Dunbarton, 774-1811, facebook.com/EdensTableFarm). She is all too familiar with the dangers of going into the growing season with a cavalier zucchini attitude.
“I think a single plant just produces a lot of zucchini in a short period of time,” she said. “So you end up with just too much. And then the worst part is, if you fall behind, the zucchinis just get bigger, so you just end up with more. You have to stay on top of it, but even staying on top of it, you’re getting too much. So you get lazy about picking it, but then you have even more.”
As opposed to the many, many varieties of heirloom tomatoes Leader-Zavos and her husband, Michael Williams, planted this season, they only planted three varieties of zucchini.
“We grow Haifa zucchini,” she said, “which is a Lebanese type. And we are growing Dark Star zucchini, which is like a more traditional dark green zucchini that we’re harvesting a little bit smaller. This year we’re trying a new one called Reinau Gold, which is a gold zucchini. They are a little bit smaller and they have a little bit more of a delicate flavor.”
Her advice for cooking with zucchini is to think about its specific qualities and what it would bring to a dish.
“I would definitely say zucchini adds moisture to baked goods,” she said. “It can be a little vegetal, if you’re cooking a savory thing; it can be a little sweet if you’re baking it into something sweet. But a lot of what it’s doing is adding moisture and a little bit of texture. By the time you finish baking like a muffin, there really isn’t a lot of texture for your zucchini left. But if you’re doing something like a fritter, then you do get some nice texture from it.”
So what to do with zucchini?
1. Something sweet
Brown Butter Zucchini Muffins with Crystalized Ginger
These muffins are inspired by one of Chef Leader-Zavos’ favorite uses for zucchini.
Dry ingredients
1½ cups (188 g) all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon kosher or coarse sea salt
¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
½ cup (55 g) candied or crystalized ginger, finely chopped
Wet ingredients
½ cup (1 cube) butter
½ cup (100 g) brown sugar (I know; it’s weird, but sugar is often considered a wet ingredient in baking. When you see how easily it dissolves into solution, this will make more sense.)
½ cup (100 g) white sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
1½ cups partially peeled, shredded zucchini (about 1 medium zucchini, maybe 8 inches long) – leaving a little zucchini skin gives the finished muffins a few flecks of green
Brown Butter Zucchini Muffins with Crystallized Ginger. Photo by John Fladd.
Preheat your oven to 425°F, and line nine muffin cups with paper liners. Grease the top of the muffin tin, so when the muffin blooms over the top, it won’t get trapped in a dead-end relationship with the muffin tin.
Brown your butter, which is a lot simpler than it sounds. Unwrap a cube of butter, and put it in a small saucepan, then cook it over low or medium-low heat. First it will melt, then it will spit a little as the last of the water cooks out. Swirl the saucepan a little to stir the butter. If it ever seems like things are moving too quickly, just lift the pan off the heat for a few seconds. When the butter starts to foam, you are getting close. Swirl and lift, swirl and lift, until the butter has darkened to a golden brown color. Remove the pan from the heat, and let it cool. It will darken a little more, even after you’ve taken it off the stove. That’s normal. Don’t worry; you didn’t make a mistake.
Combine all the dry ingredients in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Stir everything to combine, making sure that all the ginger pieces get coated with flour; this will keep them from clumping together or sinking to the bottom of each muffin.
Combine all the wet ingredients in a separate bowl and stir to combine. Make sure the brown butter has cooled enough that it won’t cook the egg.
Pour the contents of one bowl into the other, then stir to combine. Spoon the batter into the lined muffin cups, filling them to the top. Unlike cupcakes, you want these to expand into a bigger-on-top mushroom shape. Bake at 425°F for five minutes, then drop the heat to 350°F, and bake for another 13 to 15 minutes. When the muffins look like muffins and a toothpick comes out clean, remove them from the oven and let them cool for a few minutes, before gently twisting them and removing them from the muffin tin.
These are outstanding muffins. They taste a little butterscotchy from the brown butter and brown sugar, and the coarse salt and candied ginger give little pops of flavor. The zucchini keeps everything beautifully moist. These may be the ultimate book club muffins.
2. Something smoky
Sarasin-Grilled Zucchini
Sarasin-Grilled Zucchini. Photo by John Fladd.
I grew up not liking zucchini very much and have retained a certain amount of zucchini dread into my adulthood.
Keith Sarasin, Chef and operator of Farmer’s Table, Aatma, and Aatma Curry House (keithsarasin.com), thinks exposure therapy is a good way to get over that.
“Zucchini is one of those wonderful, super versatile and abundant things that we get in the Northeast,” he said. “And honestly, it actually has a lot more purpose than just kind of that dish that maybe a family member made that you kind of just went ‘Meh’ with.”
He advised really embracing the zucchini’s essential zucchininess, by cooking it on the grill.
“It’s one of the simplest ways that people can use zucchini, and I guarantee everyone’s going to like it,” he said confidently.
Several small to medium-sized zucchini, 6 to 8 inches long
Approximately ½ cup olive oil
4 to 5 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
Coarse salt and freshly shaved or ground Parmesan cheese for garnish
In a small saucepan, heat the olive oil and the garlic over low heat for half an hour or more, to let the garlic thoroughly infuse the oil.
Chef Sarasin said to cut the zucchini in half lengthwise, then cut shallow cross-hatching across the flesh of each zucchini.
“Cross-hatching sounds fancy, but all you’re doing is you’re making shallow diagonal cuts on one side, and then you’re going on the other side to make a diamond pattern,” he said. “You don’t want to cut all the way through the zucchini; you really want to cut about a quarter inch tops down, really more like an eighth of an inch.” A good way to do this is with a utility knife with the blade extended to the first, shallowest setting.
Brush the face of the zucchini liberally with garlic oil, then cook face-down on the grill. (If you have a gas grill, you’re shooting for somewhere around 350°F.) Grill the zucchini for four minutes or so, then flip them over to see how seared and caramelized they are. If they need a little more time, brush them with more garlic oil, then flip them back over.
With your tongs or a fork, squeeze or poke the backs of each zucchini. If the cut faces are cooked enough but the back side still feels a little too firm, flip them on their backs and cook for another two to three minutes.
Take the zucchini back inside, and scoop them out of their skins before serving. Chef Sarasin suggested topping them with coarse salt and freshly grated Parmesan cheese. “It’s just a wonderful smoky addition [to your plate],” he said. “You’re getting smoky and sweet and savory all at the same time. It’s just a wonderful way to use zucchini.”
He’s right.
3. Something sippable
Zucchini-tini
Zucchini-Tini. Photo by John Fladd.
You will need to make zucchini water for this recipe:
Wash and then cut two or three unpeeled medium-sized zucchini into chunks, then blitz them in your blender until they look like slightly wet hot dog relish. Drape a tea towel over a mixing bowl or a large measuring cup, then pour the contents of the blender onto the towel. Twist and squeeze the towel-wrapped zucchini, until you have enough zucchini water (which just sounds better than “zucchini juice”) to use for a round of cocktails.
Using zucchini in a cocktail seems like a bit of a stretch, but it’s not unprecedented. Search the internet for “zucchini cocktail” and you will find a surprising number of recipes, some from reputable sources. This particular drink uses zucchini water for a jade green color and a subtle vegetal background flavor. Vodka allows that to assert itself without covering it with botanical flavors.
2 ounces skull-shrinkingly cold vodka from the freezer
2 ounces zucchini water (see above)
½ ounces fresh squeezed lemon juice
½ ounces orgeat (almond syrup)
Pour all ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker, and shake ruthlessly for a minute or so, until you hear the ice breaking up inside. Strain into a chilled martini glass. Sip while listening to Oscar Peterson. His music, some of the best piano jazz ever recorded, doesn’t have any immediate connection to zucchini, but more people should listen to Oscar Peterson.
The first thing you’ll notice about this cocktail is its vibrant green color. The next thing will be the interplay between the ingredients.The lemon tries to take over as the dominant flavor, but the zucchini makes itself known. It gives a green, slightly bitter quality, which is balanced out by the almond syrup. This is a good answer to that friend who is always bragging about their juice fast.
4. Something spicy
Zucchini Salsa
Zucchini Salsa. Photo by John Fladd.
A good salsa is a surprisingly delicate dance. Acidic tomatoes play off chiles of varying intensity. Even more acidic lime juice keeps chopped onion from being too assertive. Throw a salsa together thoughtlessly, and it will be out of balance. Overthink it, and you’ll end up with a muddled flavor profile that doesn’t really taste of anything in particular. And that’s before we even get into the controversial topic of cilantro.
Where even good, thoughtful salsas fall down a lot of the time is on the texture front; they are missing a crunchy element. Zucchini brings a crunchiness, color and a green flavor to this salsa, which is inspired by a recipe from food-blogger Nikki Dinki.
2 ripe tomatoes, cored and peeled
Half of a medium zucchini (about 130 g), peeled and diced
¼ of a red onion (about 60 g), finely chopped
A large handful of cilantro leaves and tender stems, finely chopped (see below)
¼ cup (about 5 g) fresh mint leaves, minced
The juice of one lime (about 40 g)
¾ teaspoon coarse salt
1 clove garlic, minced
½ cup (about 75 g) pickled jalapeño slices, chopped
Mix all ingredients together in a nonreactive bowl, and stir to combine. Cover and let the salsa ingredients get to know each other.
This is a solid, dependable salsa. The ingredients all complement each other, and the zucchini provides just enough crunch. If the crunchiness is a little too pronounced, next time, chop it finer.
If you are making this salsa for someone who hates cilantro, try subbing it out with a quarter cup of minced basil. Basil goes well with mint and has a passionate romance with tomatoes. It’s not traditional, but it’s just as good on a taco.
5. Something savory
Zucchini and Feta Pancakes
These are a sort of a cross between vegetable fritters and egg foo yung. With a salad, they make a good lunch, or a pre-workout meal that won’t weigh you down.
Pancakes:
2½ cups partially peeled and shredded zucchini (1 to 1½ medium zucchini) – I like to leave a few stripes of peel, to add a little color and texture to the finished pancakes
½ (about 75 g) red bell pepper, finely chopped
½ cup (25 g) fresh dill, chopped
8 ounces (225 g) feta cheese, crumbled
1 bunch (4 or 5) scallions, chopped
3 eggs, beaten
½ cup (60 g) all-purpose or rice flour
1 teaspoon dark sesame oil
½ cup vegetable oil for frying
Zucchini and Feta Pancakes. Photo by John Fladd.
Mix everything together in a large bowl.
Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat, until it shimmers slightly. Spoon ¼ to ⅓ cup of the batter into the hot oil for each pancake, and pat it flat with the back of a spoon. Don’t overcrowd the skillet. Cook for two or three minutes on each side, and drain on paper towels. Serve with dipping sauce on the side.
Dipping Sauce:
Tangy mayonnaise – Cains or Duke’s
Vietnamese chili-garlic paste – I like the Huy Fong brand. You can find it at an Asian grocery store or online, but surprisingly more and more mainstream supermarkets carry it.
Mix the mayo and chili paste together in a roughly 2-to-1 ratio. Adjust for personal taste.
These pancakes are tender and herby, with just a little bit of crunch from the vegetables. The hint of sesame oil gives them a savory background flavor, which goes really well with the dipping sauce. The moisture from the zucchini keeps the pancakes from ever getting crisp, but they are excellent the next day, heated in an air fryer.
6. Something CHOCOLATY
Chocolate Zucchini Bundt Cake
As Addie Leader-Zavos pointed out, baked goods generally use zucchini to slowly release water during the baking process to keep the finished product moist. This extremely fudgy cake, which I adapted to a bundt cake from a King Arthur Baking recipe, is very moist. In addition, the traditional espresso powder normally used to brighten dark chocolate cakes has been replaced with cayenne pepper — just enough to remind everyone who eats the cake who they are dealing with.
8 ounces (1 stick) butter, softened
½ cup (99 g) vegetable oil
1¾ cup (347 g) brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla paste, or 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon coarse salt
2 eggs
½ cup (113 g) sour cream
¾ cup (64 g) unsweetened cocoa powder, plus more for dusting the Bundt pan
2½ cups (300 g) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
3 cups (about 2 medium) peeled and shredded zucchini
½ cup (85 g) chopped dark chocolate
Preheat your oven to 325°F.
Prepare your Bundt pan by buttering it thoroughly, then sifting cocoa powder into it. Make sure the entire surface of the inside of the pan is coated. If there are any spots where the cocoa didn’t stick, rub a little more butter on them, and coat with more cocoa powder.
Chocolate Zucchini Bundt Cake. Photo by John Fladd.
Using a hand mixer, or in a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar together. When they have completely joined together, add the oil, vanilla, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Beat the eggs in, one at a time.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder and cayenne pepper. Spoon the flour blend into the mixer, alternating with the sour cream.
Stir the zucchini and chocolate chunks into the mixture by hand. Spoon the batter evenly into your prepared Bundt pan, then bonk it against the counter a couple of times to eliminate any air bubbles.
Bake for 45 to 50 minutes. You can test the cake’s doneness with a toothpick, but the depth of the Bundt pan and the moisture from the zucchini might make the toothpick test unreliable. If you have a probe thermometer, bake it until it has an internal temperature of 200°F. When it does, remove it from the oven and cool on a wire rack for about 20 minutes, before flipping it onto a plate. I find that when I do this I stand on my toes and bring the pan and plate down as sharply as possible. I like to cry out like I am completing a devastating martial arts move. Leave the cake to cool completely.
This is not a pretty-good-for-a-zucchini-cake cake. It is a really good cake — deeply chocolatey, with a subtle kick of cayenne. As per its brief, the zucchini has released its moisture during the baking process, then all but disappeared, leaving a moist, slightly decadent cake in its wake. This is excellent served warm, with vanilla ice cream, or cold, with slightly sweetened sour cream.
7. Something fried & baked
Zucchini Parmesan
Several medium-sized zucchini (8 inches or so), peeled
1 5.5-ounce (158 g) can of Pizza Flavored Pringles
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 eggs
½ cup (60 g or so) all-purpose or rice flour for dredging
5-6 slices provolone cheese
Jarred marinara sauce – I like Bove’s
Another ¼ cup of grated Parmesan
1 8-ounce bag (about 2 cups) of shredded mozzarella cheese
½ cup vegetable oil for frying
Zucchini Parmesan. Photo by John Fladd.
Cut the zucchini lengthwise into thin slices — no more than ¼ inch thick. Salt the slices, and leave them to drain on paper towels for half an hour or so. Rinse the salt off, and pat them dry.
Pulverize the Pringles in your blender or food processor, mix with ¼ cup of Parmesan, and pour into a shallow dish. Beat the eggs thoroughly and pour into another shallow dish. Pour the flour into yet another shallow dish. Leftover frozen dinner containers work really well for this.
Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat, until it shimmers.
Flour and coat four or five slices of zucchini. Dredge each slice in flour, so it has two completely dry surfaces. Eggs don’t stick well to anything damp, so the flour will prepare the zucchini slices for the next step, which is to coat each side with beaten egg. The egg is feeling very good about itself at this point and would like to stick to something else dry and powdery — in this case, the Pringles-Parmesan mixture.
Fry four or five coated zucchini slices in the hot oil, turning after a minute or two. Do not be alarmed if they start looking like trout filets. As each zucchini slice finishes cooking, remove it to drain on paper towels. Keep dredging, frying and draining, until all the zucchini has been cooked.
Spoon enough marinara into a 9”-by-9” baking dish to coat the bottom. Place a layer of fried zucchini on top of it. Spoon enough marinara to cover each slice, but don’t drown them. Cover the sauced zucchini with slices of provolone. Place the rest of the zucchini in a second layer and cover with more sauce. Sprinkle the other ¼ cup of Parmesan cheese over the top, followed by the entire bag of shredded mozzarella.
Bake at 325°F for half an hour, or until the mozzarella layer has completely melted and is just starting to look a little toasty. Remove from the oven and let it cool for 10 minutes before serving.
Like all good Parmesans, this is very cheesy, with just a bit of crispness mixed through it from the coating on the fried zucchini slices. While fairly neutral in flavor, the zucchini stays firmer than eggplant, which can sometimes dissolve into mush. The flavor from the fried Pringles lies in the background but deepens the overall taste of the dish. The zestiness of the tomato sauce plays off the three types of cheese. It is just saucy enough, without being soupy. This would be a good second-date dish.
8. Something like pasta
Zucchini Noodles with Chickpeas and Pistachio Pesto
Many of us have a spiralizer in the back of a kitchen drawer or cabinet that we bought in a fit of optimism a few years ago when we heard that you can make noodles out of vegetables that taste like the real thing. Like many promises in our youth, this one turned out to be an empty one; a carrot still tastes like a carrot, no matter what its shape. The same is true for zucchini. That doesn’t mean that zucchini noodles don’t taste good; it just means that they will never taste like linguini. Cooked just until slightly tender, and sauced thoughtfully, they can be very nice, indeed.
1 medium zucchini, half peeled – again, I like to have a few specks of green in the final dish
½ can (140 g) chickpeas, rinsed and drained.
3 Tablespoons pistachio pesto (see below)
1 Tablespoon vegetable oil for frying
Shredded Parmesan cheese and more pistachios for garnish
Olive oil for drizzle
Pesto:
2 packed cups (45 g) pesto leaves
½ teaspoon coarse salt
¼ cup (35 g) roasted, salted pistachios
½ cup (106 g) extra virgin olive oil
¼ cup (60 g) grated or shredded Parmesan cheese
Zucchini Noodles with Chickpeas and Pistachio Pesto. Photo by John Fladd.
In your blender or food processor, blitz the above ingredients into a mostly smooth paste. If you have a Magic Bullet or another small blender for making smoothies, it will be just the right size for this.
Use your spiralizer to turn the zucchini into noodles. If you only make vegetable noodles once in a while, an inexpensive, hand-held model will be fine.
Heat the oil in a medium skillet over medium heat until it shimmers.
Fry the chickpeas until they brown slightly. Do not be alarmed when they start popping like popcorn. If it freaks you out, cover the pan with its lid. Just don’t forget to check up on the chickpeas every 20 seconds or so. Add the 3 tablespoons of pesto, stir everything together, and let it cook for another two minutes or so.
Add the “zoodles” to the pan and cook them for another two minutes or so, stirring constantly. Do not overcook them or they will turn mushy. They should be tender but with a little bit of crunch left in them.
Serve immediately, topped with more pistachios and Parmesan cheese, and drizzled with a little more olive oil. Chopsticks work well with this dish.
The pesto and the noodles play equal roles in this dish. The pesto has a more dynamic flavor, but the noodles provide just a little crunch and a subtle vegetable taste. Depending on your personal preference, you might want to cut the noodles to a shorter length before cooking them. It turns out that a spiralizer can turn a zucchini into shockingly long noodles, but that can be useful for recreating the spaghetti scene from Lady and the Tramp.
According to a press release, Gov. Sununu signed SB 393 into law, which makes an appropriation to the Department of Environmental Services to fund regional drinking water infrastructure of $6.5 million, which brings the total the state has spent on clean drinking water to more than $350 million since 2017.
The funding provided by SB 393 initiates Phase 2 of the Southern New Hampshire Regional Water Project, according to the press release, and includes the design of all ancillary projects needed, construction of chemical feeds at existing water storage tanks in Derry and Salem, and potentially increasing the amount of water available from Manchester Water Works’ drinking water reservoir, which is a major source of water for the region.
Communities and water systems in southern New Hampshire have cooperated in the regional management of water resources and collectively coordinated to construct Phase 1 of the Southern New Hampshire Regional Water Supply Interconnection Project, which provides one million gallons per day of drinking water supply to southern New Hampshire communities, and now the communities have an agreement in place to increase water supply to 3.13 million gallons per day as part of the project’s second phase, according to the release.
In a statement, NHDES Commissioner Rober Scott said that “investing in regional drinking water infrastructure in southern New Hampshire is critical to address the occurrence of widespread PFAS contamination, reoccurring droughts and increased water demands.The state and water systems in southern New Hampshire have worked very hard to improve the resiliency and reliability of water supply in southern New Hampshire by cooperating in the regional management of water resources. This additional funding is critical in continuing this work.”
Visit des.nh.gov for more information.
Space news
According to a press release, the University of New Hampshire announced the launch of a Space Technology Hub, a first-of-its-kind center in the region that will provide cutting-edge space expertise and equipment to the burgeoning commercial space sector.
In a statement, Réka Winslow, director for the Space Technology Hub, said, “We are thrilled to be launching the Space Technology Hub, which will connect the resources at UNH with the rapidly developing New Space industry, thereby accelerating the growth of the space economy in the Northeast.”
The Space Technology Hub will help fulfill critical needs in the rapidly growing commercial space sector, and UNH has already partnered with Hanover, N.H.-based engineering and research firm Creare to test space instruments that are ultimately destined for Saturn’s largest moon. The company needed access to a local facility that could simulate the space environment, and UNH’s thermal vacuum chamber met their stringent requirements, according to the release.
The thermal vacuum chamber along with other cutting-edge equipment, clean rooms, skilled engineers and specialists who can lend their space mission expertise are all part of the Space Technology Hub, according to the release.
UNH researchers have partnered with NASA and other agencies over the past 60 years on more than 100 space and rocket missions to investigate space phenomena such as gamma rays and neutron stars, as well as to learn more about the sun’s influence on Earth and its atmosphere, according to the release.
According to a press release, Gov. Sununu has proclaimed Sunday, Aug. 4, to Saturday, Aug. 10, “Smokey Bear Week” in the Granite State coinciding with Smokey’s 80th birthday on Friday, Aug. 9, highlighting the importance of wildfire prevention across New Hampshire.
Events and programs are taking place statewide to help celebrate Smokey’s milestone birthday and to continue sharing his well-known message that “only you can prevent wildfires,” according to the same release.
On Aug. 7, Smokey will throw out the ceremonial first pitch for Youth Camp Day when the New Hampshire Fisher Cats play the Erie Seawolves at Delta Dental Stadium in Manchester, according to the same release.
In a statement, Forest Ranger Nathan Blanchard of the New Hampshire Forest Protection Bureau said “we’re also very excited that this summer the Forest Protection Bureau has teamed up with the New Hampshire State Library and libraries across the state to help Smokey promote the joy of reading while teaching children about wildfire prevention.”
The Forest Service’s Smokey Bear’s Reading Challenge provides a reading list of books for all ages that address not only wildfire prevention but also science and outdoor recreation. The list, along with activities and incentives for achieving self-set reading goals, can be downloaded from smokeybear.com/individuals-reading-challenge, and the national program runs through Nov. 28.
New Hampshire has experienced an average of 285 wildfires affecting 221 acres annually over the last 20 years, according to the release. Anyone wishing to have an outdoor fire in New Hampshire must obtain a state fire permit in advance from their local fire department; they may also be obtained online at nhfirepermit.com, the release said.
NH Antiques week kicks off Sunday, Aug. 4, with the Granite State Antiques Show from 8:30 a.m. to noon at Granite Town Plaza in Milford. On Monday, Aug. 5, the Deerfield Antiques Show runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Deerfield Fair Grounds. On Tuesday, Aug. 6, head to the Americana Celebration Antiques Show at the Everett Arena in Concord from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Antiques in Manchester fair runs Wednesday, Aug. 7, and Thursday, Aug. 8, at Saint Anselm College and then the big show, the 67th Annual New Hampshire Antiques Show, kicks off Thursday, Aug. 8, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and runs through Saturday, Aug. 10, at the Doubletree By Hilton Manchester Downtown. Get all the information for these events at antiquesweeknh.com.
Join author Cathy Stefanec Ogren and illustrator Alexandra Thompson for storytime for the launch of their new book The Little Red Chair at Bookery, 844 Elm St. in Manchester, on Saturday, Aug. 3, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Visit bookerymht.com
The Driven to Read Bookmobile will be at Livingston Park in Manchester on Monday, Aug. 5, from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. The Bookmobile, hosted by Manchester City Library and Manchester School District, will be making stops throughout the city until Aug. 9. Visit manchester.lib.nh.us or call the library at 624-6550, ext. 7628, for details.
With new music, MB Padfield returns to New England
It’s a quiet Monday for musician MB Padfield — she has only two shows. The New Hampshire-born singer, songwriter and guitarist is back for her summer sojourn, something she’s done since moving to Los Angeles a while back. This season, she’s booked 130 dates, including a run of 11 gigs over six days at the end of June — a personal record for her.
“I’m not far off from being an endurance athlete,” Padfield said by phone. “I’ve been doing a lot of physical training outside of music to be able to make these shows happen. Doing a lot of nutrition, learning so much about just the body and health and science and how it relates to live performance.”
Though Padfield plays mostly covers at places like The Goat, Wally’s and Margaritaville in Boston, such rigor extends to her original music. Take the video she made for “Waverider,” released earlier this year and part of an upcoming EP. In it, Padfield sang in an ice bath, and she had to repeat the process three times to get the right take.
At the end of the clip, she’s visibly quaking from what looks like hypothermia.
“Yeah, that was an experience … it was great and horrible at the same time,” she recalled. “I filmed over the winter in New Hampshire, in Bedford with my friend Ben Proulx, who is a really incredible videographer. He’s worked on some massive projects. He’s Grammy nominated.”
Impossibly, she managed to lip-sync all the song’s words. “That was a really tricky part … but I drilled it so many times,” she said. “I started with cold showers, and I did cold baths. Then I found a cold plunge in Los Angeles, and I’d sit there the whole song. I just tried to keep my head on straight.”
The song itself is a gem, an electronica-infused slow burn with bracing confrontational lyrics reminiscent of Taylor Swift’s recent work. It addresses the challenges of being an independent musician and facing a world where big acts have massive organizations behind them.
“It can be quite intimidating as an artist just getting started … that’s a bit of what ‘Waverider’ is about,” Padfield said. “It’s funny, everyone is asking me if it’s about a jet ski. It’s not, but I guess a jet ski wouldn’t be a bad analogy. I think everyone has their own Waverider. We all have our own ups and downs and do our best to try to navigate. It’s not necessarily about trying to keep calm waters, but just drive right in the waves where you’re at.”
Padfield’s latest release is “Into the Grey,” a song about letting go that became more poignant when her 96-year-old Meme passed away in May.
“We hospiced her at home, and I was there to the end; it was a wild experience,” she said. “There are people I’ve known who’ve had a hard time functioning through grief…. With the small experience I had, I learned that you have to pick the right memories to hold on to. That’s a big part of what ‘Into the Grey’ was about.”
Two more songs, “Lost at Sea” and “I’ll Be,” will be released in the coming months to complete a four-song EP. Padfield has a full-length album in the works as well and plans to make videos for the forthcoming songs.
“I’ve really come to see the value in communicating not only the music but also the visuals,” she said. “To explore not just what sound sounds like but also what it looks like … which has been a really fun creative adventure.”
In performance, Padfield is a one-woman powerhouse, using looping pedals and samples to produce a full band sound. It makes the most sense for her at the moment, keeping overhead low and her mobility flexible.
“That being said, I do love live looping, there’s such freedom in it,” she said. “I have my recipes for songs and how I make them. The cool part is, at least with the current setup I have, almost no two performances are identical. They’re similar for sure, but not identical, and that is a lot of creative freedom.”
MB Padfield When: Sunday, July 28, 7 p.m. Where: The Goat, 50 Old Granite St., Manchester More: Full schedule at mbpadfield.com/tour
Attractive people chase tornadoes in Oklahoma in Twisters, an, I guess, in-universe but otherwise sort of unrelated follow-up to the 1996 Twister.
When we meet college-age buddies Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones), Javi (Anthony Ramos) and friends, they are chasing a storm to try out an experiment: putting barrels of moisture-absorbing material in the path of a tornado in hopes that the material will draw water out of the tornado and the lack of water will cause the tornado to collapse. It’s the non-toxic particles used in diapers, one girl explains. (Except if you’ve ever accidentally put a diaper in a washing machine you’ll know that what you have is a bunch of slippery, impossible to clean up blobs and are people really going to want those in their wheat fields? Never addressed.) But on this day, the tornado they try it out on is a, whatever, category five tornado (it’s called something else but let’s just go with cat 5) that eats these diaper science particles for breakfast and then proceeds to come roaring after the buddies, eventually vortexing away everyone but Kate and Javi.
Five years later, Kate is working at NOAA in New York City and avoiding anything to do with tornadoes and Oklahoma. Javi searches her out and asks her to join his new company to chase tornadoes. His company makes three-dimensional maps of tornadoes which something something profit and helps people. As little sense as what he says he’s doing makes, what he’s actually doing is a viable, if slimy, business that doesn’t require close storm-monitoring at all but you can only pull so many threads of this plot before this whole movie unravels.
And anyway, what he’s doing makes more sense than what rival (sort of) storm chaser Tyler (Glen Powell) is doing. While Javi and his well-equipped, uniform- and tech-sporting team seek to gather storm data, Tyler and his crew, sporting kind of a post-apocalyptic cowboy pirate look, are YouTube stars. They drive into tornadoes and shoot off fireworks and somehow this — well, this plus merch sales — brings in the dollars. For what? I’m not sure.
Anyway, it allows for inter-group antagonism and Tyler calling Kate “City Girl” and the two groups chasing after the same storms. Though Kate is still working through her trauma from the whole “friends dying in a tornado” thing, her overall purpose in joining Javi’s work is still, somehow, to use the data to find a way to protect people from the increasingly frequent, increasingly powerful storms.
I realize how grumpy, how “old man yells at cloud” this will sound but I don’t find Glen Powell handsome and charismatic as much as I find him to be a product being sold to me as Handsome and Charismatic TM. The salesmanship is so aggressive, so “embrace this next-gen Tom Cruise, embrace him!” that it gets in the way of my actually relating to any character he is playing. His character here comes off as like 73 percent grin and cowboy hat. It’s as if I were watching an ad for, I don’t know, Arby’s or Chili’s on a loop, something where the food might look plausibly intriguing on first watch but looks more suspicious the longer I have the same pitch yelled at me.
Powell’s Tyler is thus a prickly irritant that kept me from just letting the dumb action and pretty cinematography of this movie wash over me. The wide-open spaces of the Midwest can be beautiful and director Lee Isaac Chung (who also directed the excellent Minari) truly shoots this movie for maximum wonder. Even crumbly farms and oil storage tanks have landscape loveliness. The twisters of Twisters are also fine — perhaps it is a function of the theater I saw the movie in (just a regular screen) that they didn’t have a greater wow factor. I feel like if you want to see this on the big screen probably go for the biggest, most total-attention-getting screen you can.
Beautiful images plus one half of the lead actor duo who needed to dial it down gets me to a movie I didn’t enjoy as much as I wanted to but I didn’t find actively loathsome. I feel like this movie never fully found its footing, never really decided what it wanted to be — straight-faced action? 1990s near-camp action? something else entirely? — and as a result always felt like it was running at half strength. C+
Rated PG-13 for intense action and peril, some language and injury images, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Lee Isaac Chung with a screenplay by Mark L. Smith, Twisters is two hours and two minutes long and distributed in theaters, where it made $80 million its opening weekend according to media reports, by Universal Studios.
