Category: Food

Holidays on tap

Local breweries celebrate the season with holiday flavors

Andy Day loves holiday beers. For a very short time.

“It’s one of those things, for me,” Day said, “where you want to see a very limited release and then you want to see it disappear and then move on and move forward.” Day is the brewer and co-owner of Daydreaming Brewing Co. in Derry. He said there can be a tendency in the brewing industry to feature a seasonal beer too long.

“Take the pumpkin thing for example,” he said. “You’ve started to see that creep into July releases. By the time you get to mid-October it’s kind of played out and people are not really interested anymore and there’s a whole bunch of beer that just sits there.”

December is when many breweries roll out special releases of holiday beers, many of which are very dark — stouts and porters — with a high alcohol-by-volume percentage (ABV), sometimes as high as 10 or 12 percent, about the same as wine.

“Generally speaking,” Day said, “for the winter months, you’re going to have your imperial stouts and things”

This year Daydreaming Brewing Co. (1 1/2 E. Broadway, Derry, 965-3454, cask.life/daydreaming-brewing-co) is featuring a special holiday beer: The Noggy Elf.

“Two years ago, a friend of ours came into the brewery and she asked — this was probably in August — ‘Can you make a beer that tastes like eggnog?’ We mostly focus on English-style ales and traditional recipes, but she put it to me to make an eggnog beer. So I did a five and a half percent [ABV] golden ale that was flavored with cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, some vanilla and sort of gave you the characteristics of eggnog without actually being a thick, creamy eggnog.”

“So some fans of the original 5.5% Nog beer wanted to do an imperial (lager) barrel-aged version of it. So that’s what we did. We more or less doubled up on the recipe. We stuck it in ex-bourbon barrels, Heaven Hill’s bourbon barrels, for the better part of six months. Then we pulled it out and we treated it with cinnamon, nutmeg, etc., etc., and that’s where Noggy Elf came from,” Day said.

Day said The Noggy Elf has gotten a good response. “People have said it tastes like you’re drinking Christmas. … There’s definitely a little bit of oak and vanilla from the bourbon. It is deceptive in nature in that it is 10.5% [ABV], but it drinks like a much lower-alcohol beer, so it’s kind of one of those you’ve got to pace yourself and pay attention.”

More holiday brews

Concord Craft Brewing (117 Storrs St., Concord, 856-7625, concordcraftbrewing.com) has two Bourbon Barrel Aged Stouts on tap, a 2024 and a 2021. Both are imperial stouts with an ABV of 9.3%. Concord Craft says, “We have aged our imperial stout in Knob Creek bourbon barrels. … the bourbon flavor blends seamlessly with the maltiness of the stout and also gives a subtle oaky finish.”

Feathered Friend Brewing (231 S. Main St., Concord, 715-2347, featheredfriendbrewing.com) has several dark, deep, seasonal beers on tap, including BA Trouble Behind, a doppelbock, with an ABV of 9.8%. Brewed in house, it is aged in barrels from Steadfast Spirits Distilling Co. (134 Hall St., Suite. H, Concord, 333-2162, steadfastspiritsdistilling.square.site).

Flying Goose Brew Pub and Grill (40 Andover Road, New London, 526-6899, flyinggoose.com) is serving its winter beer on tap – Kong, a Russian Imperial Stout with an authoritative ABV of 10.5%. There is also Directionless Perfectionist, a sour American kriek (cherry beer), with an ABV of 6.7%

.From The Barrel Brewing Co. (1 Corporate Park Drive, Derry, 328-1896, ftb-838342.square.site) lists, on its website, three seasonal stouts on tap: Into the Void Coffee Vanilla Stout, Into the Void Peanut Butter Stout and Into the Void Coconut Stout.

Liquid Therapy Brewery and Grill (14 Court St., Nashua, 402-9391, liquidtherapynh.com) is offering a Soul Shard Imperial Stout on draft. It weighs in at a hefty 11.7% ABV and is described on the Liquid Therapy website as “aged on cinnamon, marshmallow, vanilla, and rum-soaked oak.”

Look for the Gingerbread Summit Porter at Mountain Base Brewery (553 Mast Road, No. 111, Goffstown, 935-7132, mountainbasebrewery.com). At 7.3% ABV, Mountain Base describes it on its website as a “Sweet milk stout with a seasonal gingerbread taste. Black in color with the milky feel of chocolate, caramel, and gingerbread.”

According to its website, Oddball Brewing (6 Glass St., Suncook, 210-5654, oddballbrewingnh.com) has Yer A Hairy Wizard Spiced Stout on tap at 5.6% ABV, as well as 3 on the Tree New England IPA at 6.6%.

Pipe Dream Brewing (49 Harvey Road, Unit 4, Londonderry, 404-0751, pipedreambrewingnh.com) is serving Pumpkin French Toast pumpkin ale on tap. It has an ABV of 6%, and Pipe Dream’s website describes it as “a slightly sweet, bready, pumpkin ale with a cinnamon maple twist.”

The Rockingham Brewing Co. (1 Corporate Park Drive, Unit 1, Derry, 216-2324, rockinghambrewing.com) has two festive beers on tap, according to its website: Snowball, a 4.2% ABV Belgian Witbier, and Winter Wonderham, a 7.5% ABV Winter Warmer Ale.

Spyglass Brewing Co. (306 Innovative Way, Nashua, 546-2965, spyglassbrewing.com) has two super-charged seasonal beers on tap: Escape Velocity 10% Triple IPA, described on the Spyglass website as “a New England style Triple IPA double dry hopped with Citra, Mosaic, Vic Secret and Azacca Hops,” and Continuum 10.5% Belgian Abbey Quad “a Belgian Abbey style quadrupel ale made with Belgian malts, Dark Candi syrup, and Styrian Golding hops.”

The Weekly Dish 24/12/19

News from the local food scene

• Goodbye to an institution: Bakolas Market (110 Spruce St., Manchester, 669-2941) will close this month, after almost 100 years. The market was the city’s last all-Greek market. According to a Dec. 8 article on Manchester Ink Link, the building containing the store and the apartments above it has been sold.

• Chocolatey Luxury: Luxury Travel Guide (ltgawards.com) has named Dancing Lion Chocolate (917 Elm St., Manchester, 625-4043, dancinglion.us/cacao) as its Confectionary Store of the Year for 2024-2025. In a Dec. 10 Facebook post Manchester’s Economic Development Office congratulated the chocolate shop: “Out of 90,000 global submissions, they rose to the top … Thank you to Richard Tango-Lowy (also President of the Heirloom Cacao Preservation) and the entire Dancing Lion Chocolate team for your incredible contributions to Manchester.”

• I’ll cashew at the wine tasting: Averill House Vineyard (21 Averill Road, Brookline, 244-3165, averillhousevineyard.com) is offering a pairing experience that is nuts. From Thursday, Dec.19, to Monday, Dec. 22, experience four bold, satisfying nuts chosen by one of Averill House’s associates to complement your choice of four wines. There will be 21 wines to choose from. Tickets are $27.

• Cheese and charcuterie: Vine 32 Wine and Graze Bar (Bedford Square, 25 S. River Road, Bedford, 935-8464, vinethirtytwo.com) will host a Holiday Charcuterie Board Workshop on Sunday, Dec. 22, from 1 to 3 p.m. Join Vine 32’s charcuterie experts to craft a charcuterie board. Register at vinethirtytwo.com/charcuterieclasses.

• Homemade cookies: There will be a cookie swap at the Rodgers Memorial Library (194 Derry Road, Hudson, 886-6030, rodgerslibrary.org) Saturday, Dec. 21, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Contribute four dozen (48) of your favorite homemade holiday cookies and take home a cookie assortment. Provide a recipe copy with your cookies. Registration is required.

Drinks with John Fladd

Cranberry Margarita

Everything was quiet, mostly.

Very few houses are actually quiet at night. Every time the wind blows, a house will usually flex a little, settling in one direction with a creak or a soft cracking noise. But around 2:30 this morning, everything briefly went completely quiet. If there had been anybody still awake, the sudden, complete silence might have startled them. That’s one of the things science fiction generally messes up on; if you’re dealing with a temporal anomaly — and how could you not be, if you’re trying to visit more than two billion houses in a night — sound doesn’t know how to work under those conditions.

The Old Man came down the chimney, set his bag to one side. He looked at the stockings waiting for him, but out of habit, looked for the traditional milk and cookies. Instead, his eyes fell on a waiting tray table. Laid out carefully, there was a small dish of cocktail peanuts, a cocktail shaker, an ice bucket and a martini glass. The Old Man’s eyes sparkled as he used the tongs that Rachel always left for him — always had, since she was a college student — and dropped three ice cubes into the shaker and shook himself a cocktail.

He carefully strained it into the waiting glass, helped himself to a few peanuts for the salt, then with a sigh, took a grateful sip of his margarita, and set to filling the stockings with his unencumbered hand.

Some parents just get it.

Cranberry Margarita

2 ounces Blanco tequila – I like Hornitos

1 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice

¾ ounce homemade cranberry syrup (see below)

Combine all ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker.

Shake this cocktail brutally, then strain into a coupé glass.

If you have something sweet and syrupy, you can almost certainly use it to make a pretty good margarita. Cranberry syrup takes things one step further, firmly into Delicious territory. Cranberry goes extremely well with lime. Both fruits are puckeringly sour and can stand up to the tequila’s assertiveness. The sweetness of the syrup mellows everything out and makes this smooth and very, very drinkable.

Cranberry Syrup Two Ways

Combine equal amounts (by weight) of frozen whole cranberries and white sugar in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, crush berries, and allow to steep for 30 minutes. Strain and bottle.

or

Combine equal amounts (by volume) of unsweetened cranberry juice and white sugar in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil. Leave on a boil for 10 to 20 seconds to make sure the sugar is completely dissolved. Remove from heat. Allow to cool, then bottle.

Either version will be delicious — like grenadine with a better personality. The whole-fruit version will be a bit thicker, due to the pectin in the berries. The juice version will be a little thinner and clearer.

In the kitchen with Edmond David Hood

Hood is a butcher and co-owner of Old Boy’s Butcher Shop (707 Route 101A, Merrimack, 699-8014). Dave Hood has been working a butcher counter since his teens.

“I worked in a grocery store — DeMoulas — since I was 15, and it was the department that paid the most. That’s how I fell into the profession,” he said. “I worked with Market Basket for 28 years. I was in management since I was 20 years old. We — my wife, Lindsey, [and I] — got out of the spotlight of corporate markets, and we figured we would do something on our own. We just opened up early June of this year. Old Boy’s Butcher Shop is a butcher shop and deli. We make sandwiches, but we specialize in our certified Angus beef program. … They’re free-range steer instead of quarantined. And they’re 100 percent grass-fed. If you’re going to do it, you’ve got to do it right. That’s kind of what sticks us out from the rest of the people. Just being around on a commercial basis and knowing what sells, people expect that consistency with quality. That’s why we decided to do the prime grades, even with our marinades.”

What would you have for your last meal?

Probably a rib-eye steak; it’s my favorite steak. It’s the flavor. It’s your most flavorful steak. It’s from one of the best locations of the animal. I love it.

What is your favorite local eatery?

Buckley’s in Merrimack. It’s the steakhouse with the best-quality meats. I order a rib-eye when I go there, every single time.

Who is a celebrity you would like to see eating in your restaurant?

Keanu Reeves. He is one of the actors in one of my favorite movies. He stars in The Matrix. He’s very humble. I’m always impressed when people can keep their humility.

What is your favorite cut of meat that you sell?

It’s not what we sell; it’s who we’re selling it to. We carry a lot of things in our store from small areas in New England. We support a lot of locally based products as well. We love seeing people come back. They’re not spending a lot of money like they do in other places. We’re trying to offer that quality meats at a reasonable price.

What is the biggest food trend you see in New Hampshire right now?

I see a lot of carnivore diets, which really helps us, people just eating meats. I have clients coming from all the way from Londonderry, Hollis, northern Massachusetts coming up because they do like our grass-fed line.

What is your favorite thing to cook at home?

I love steak, but pizza is my second favorite. Everyone in my house likes their own. I’m a pepperoni type of person. My wife likes Hawaiian, and my son likes nothing on his pizza, just sauce and crust. He’s a purist.

As a meat expert, how would you recommend cooking a steak?

There’s a couple of ways. A lot of people like to cook with cast iron, which is a high-intensity heat; it pretty much sears the outside of a steak, so it prevents the juices from coming out of it. With a prime grade product the marbling keeps it juicy naturally. We also teach people to use cast iron to broil steaks. That involves the same key factors as grilling outside, despite the weather.

Compiled by John Fladd

Setting the scene – in chocolate

Chocolate bars serve as a canvas for edible art

Laurie Lowy sat at a small table in the corner of Dancing Lion Chocolate in downtown Manchester, bent over a 3- by 5-inch bar of chocolate, painting a winter scene. She dipped the tip of her paintbrush into one of the pigments resting in a warm-water bath just off to her right. Carefully, but without stress, she painted an olive green line on the chocolate in front of her, marking out the top of a small triangle. Another dip of the brush led to another, slightly larger triangle just below it, then another below that. All of us have tried to draw or paint a pine tree like this at some point, but when Lowy did it, a realistic-looking tree appeared on the chocolate.

“My background is art,” she said. “I went to the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida, but I’m here for a week on vacation, and I’ve been put to work.” Lowy is the mother of master chocolatier Richard Tango-Lowy, the owner of Dancing Lion. “I am painting chocolates here,” she said, “but I live in Florida.”

She looked up, smiled, switched brushes, then started to fill in her tree with a different shade of green. The brush put color on the chocolate less smoothly, adding texture to the tree.

“I mostly do mosaics now,” she said, “tables, backsplashes, that sort of thing. But these, for me, these are just fun. I mean, it’s creative, but it makes me pull for myself.”

One of the advantages to being the boss’s mother, she said, is a large amount of creative freedom. The chocolate bars she was working on this morning were all winter landscapes — one with a tiny, red-coated figure pulling a sled — but that was what she was in the mood for. “[I paint] whatever I choose to do,” she said. “When Richard and I talked before I got here, he said, ‘All right, Mom, what’s it going to be?’ And I said, ‘I think I’m doing trees.’ So that’s it; every single one of them I’ve done this time have had trees of some sort.”

Lowy switched brushes again, picking up one with a wider head, dipping it in white pigment, and started surrounding her tree with snow and dimpling the surface of the tree with small blobs of white. She cleaned the brush off, then dipped it into a completely different pigment, a muted gold color. With quick, smooth movements, she put gold highlights on the snow, and suddenly the scene was three-dimensional, and the light was the way it is on a late winter afternoon.

Lowy pointed to the jars of pigment in the water bath next to her. Although it makes sense to call what she does “chocolate painting,” she said, she doesn’t actually use paint. “It’s melted cocoa butter,” she said. Because it is a component of chocolate, it bonds easily to a chocolate bar, and is completely edible. “This,” she said, indicating the electric water bath, “keeps all these very melted. Because it’s chocolate. So, as soon as I turn this off, these harden, and then I can’t use them at all.”

She added some light gray tones to the snow in her tiny painting, and suddenly, there were snowbanks.

“The last time I did this — which was probably four years ago — we took pictures all over town,” Lowy said, reaching for a broad, feathered brush. “And I did pictures of buildings. It was very cool. But this time, I just wanted to go back to nature.”

Because Dancing Lion does not make chocolates from precise recipes, each batch is slightly different from any other, so each of these hand-painted chocolate bars is completely unique. “This is one-of-a-kind,” Lowy said. “A one-off. Every time I’m doing 12 and each one is entirely different.”

It’s hard to imagine someone actually eating one of these chocolate paintings, and Lowy said that sometimes people are reluctant to.

“That is a tendency,” she said. “But Richard always tries to explain, we create these things to eat.”

Chocolate art
Laurie Lowy’s hand-painted edible chocolate landscapes are available at Dancing Lion Chocolate (917 Elm St., Manchester, 625-4043, dancinglion.us/cacao) for $140 each.

Chocolate Raspberry Rugelach

  • 1 cup (120 g) all-purpose flour
  • 2 Tablespoons cocoa powder
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1/3 cup (66 g) sugar
  • ½ cup (1 stick) butter
  • ½ cup (half an 8-ounce package) cream cheese
  • 1 egg, separated
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 3 Tablespoons + 3 Tablespoons seedless raspberry jam
  • ¾ cup (4 ounces or 125 g) semi-sweet chocolate chips, chopped

Whisk the dry ingredients — the flour, salt and cocoa — together, and set aside.

Right now you might be asking, “If I’m whisking the dry ingredients together, why not the sugar?” Interestingly enough, because it melts into wet ingredients so easily, it is usually considered a wet ingredient.

With a mixer, cream the butter, cream cheese and sugar together until they are light and fluffy. If your dairy is cold, it will cream up perfectly well, but clumps of it might stick in your mixer blade(s); knock it off with a rubber spatula, or turn up the speed and let centrifugal force do it for you. Attaining fluffiness should take two to three minutes. Beat in the egg yolk and vanilla.

Mix in the dry ingredients a spoonful or two at a time. If you try to do it all at once, a cloud of flour will poof up into your face. Remove the dough from the mixing bowl, and pat it into two slightly flattened disks on a floured countertop. Wrap the disks in waxed paper or plastic wrap, and leave it in your refrigerator to chill for an hour or so.

After your dough has had a chance to chill, preheat your oven to 350°F. Take one of the disks out of the fridge, flip it over and press it down on a floured countertop a couple of times to coat it with flour, so it won’t stick, then roll it out into a 10-inch circle. It’s useful to keep a tape measure for baking situations like this.

Slather the rugelach disk with three tablespoons of jam, and sprinkle half of the chopped chocolate over it. Cut it into eight to 10 slices, the way you would a pizza. Roll each of the triangles up, starting with the wide end. They should look a little like crescent rolls. Put them on a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat. Repeat the process with the other disk of dough. Chill them in your refrigerator again for another half an hour or so, to discourage them from losing their shape as they bake.

Brush the rugelach with egg white, and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, switching and rotating the pans halfway through. Cool for 15 minutes or so on the baking sheets, and dust them with powdered sugar, if that’s a thing you feel compelled to do.

Chocolate and raspberry are a classic combination, and a faint hint of sourness from the cream cheese makes these excellent holiday cookies.

Featured Photo: Bourbon-Cider Sour. Photo by John Fladd.

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