Category: Food

Brown Butter Fruit Blondies

  • 8 Tablespoons (1 stick) butter, browned
  • 3/4 cup (150 g) sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 cup (120 g) all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon citric acid (optional) – I have discovered that citric acid and browned butter complement each other very well. On the other hand, you might not have a bag of the stuff on hand. It’s one of those ingredients that you rarely need but keep finding uses for if you have it around.
  • 3 ounces (85 g) chocolate or white chocolate chips
  • 1 cup (150 g) frozen fruit – Most frozen fruit from a supermarket will work well for this. I particularly like the idea of a “tropical fruit blend” that you often find, with frozen pieces of mango, banana, pineapple and for some reason strawberries. My particular preference is that I’m not crazy about raspberries or blackberries because of the seeds, but that’s a personal thing.

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

Grease and line a 9×13” baking pan with parchment paper.

You can absolutely use an electric mixer to combine all these ingredients, but this is actually a pretty easy throw-together recipe that you can old-school your way through in a mixing bowl with a wooden spoon. Mix the browned butter and sugar together. If you are using an electric mixer, beat them together for a couple of minutes, until they get thoroughly combined.

Mix in an egg and the vanilla, then the dry ingredients. If you’re being super-conscientious, you might want to whisk the flour, baking powder, salt and citric acid together separately. If you don’t feel up to it, don’t worry. Betty Crocker and a team of commandos in Kevlar aprons will not come crashing through your window on zip-lines to arrest you on charges of baking laziness. You can just put the mixing bowl on a kitchen scale and add the amount of each by weight. If you do that, just make certain that you stir in the salt and citric acid first, so you can stir the mixture thoroughly and make sure they are evenly distributed.

Stir the chocolate chips in by hand, then transfer everything to the baking pan. Smooth the mixture out with your spoon, making sure you push it into all four corners. Finally, push the pieces of frozen fruit into the top surface of the batter. It should just about take up all the available surface area.

Pop the pan into the oven, and bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until it isn’t jiggly anymore and has browned a bit. Remove from oven, and set aside to cool.

When you’re ready to serve these bad boys, lift everything out by the parchment paper, then lay it out flat on your kitchen counter and cut it into brownie-sized pieces. If you have good self-control, this might be 12 or even 15 pieces. If you’ve had a particularly challenging day, it might be six unreasonably large pieces.

If you are in the mood to eat these with ice cream, bless you. However, hard-won experience has taught me that the cold ice cream will toughen the blondies up to the point where they are difficult to cut through with a spoon. You’d be better off dicing your blondie — reasonably sized or not — into small pieces, and sprinkling them on top of the ice cream.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Candy contest

Valentine’s Day leftovers — sweet!

Liz Ryan is a reference librarian and the adult programming coordinator at the Derry Public Library. Part of her job is to come up with activities for the Library to sponsor that will resonate with adults. She said that can be tough in the middle of the winter.

Her solution? A Post-Valentine’s Day Candy Taste Test.

“Food is something that gets people in,” Ryan said. She “had this idea of a Valentine’s candy taste test, and it was initially going to be before Valentine’s Day.” Unfortunately, the scheduling didn’t work out, and she had to move it to after Valentine’s Day. “We’re actually going to host it on the 18th,” she said, “which is actually better, because then we can go get all the discounted Valentine’s Day candy. That was exciting, because now it will be even more low-cost, because we can get it at half price.”

“We’re going to hold [this tasting] in our meeting room,” Ryan said. “We’re going to have stations that have a number of different types of candies at them — probably the really well-known ones like Reese’s, the Queen Anne’s chocolates, Cherry Cordials — I love those; I know they’re terrible — and maybe have some Skittles and stuff. We will try to take into account that people have dairy allergies or peanut allergies, so we’re going to put the bags out for people to look at, rather than writing everything out. And then at the end we’re going to have a vote for people’s favorites. There will be a ballot box and we’ll ask everyone, ‘Of everything you tried, what was your favorite?’”

Ryan is confident she will be able to find candies that will appeal to a wide range of tastes.

Because she will get to choose the candies, chocolate will almost certainly play a big part in lineup, Ryan said.

“Chocolate is always something I love. I will say that I’m not a big fan of coconut. And, well, as much as I like peanut butter, and I like almonds, and cashews and a lot of nuts, I don’t like chocolate-covered nuts that much, and I don’t really like, you know, peanuts and almonds and whatnot in my bars. If I had to pick my favorite chocolate, Lindt chocolates, hands down.” She said she hopes to find a good deal on them.

“In the end,” she said, “I’m a milk chocolate person. I have a sweet tooth. I think I get that from my grandmother. She lived to almost 103. Apparently, she had a sweet tooth and ate candy every day, almost up until the end.”

Candy
The Post-Valentine’s Candy Taste-Test will take place at the Derry Public Library (64 E. Broadway, Derry, 432-6140, derrypl.org) Wednesday, Feb.18, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. This event is free and open to the public, but participants are asked to register for it through the Library’s website, to determine how many people will be there and how much candy the staff should buy.

Sleazy Vegan’s new digs

The vegan eatery finds a new brick and mortar home in Concord

K.S. LeBlanc is happy to put down roots.

LeBlanc is the owner and operator of Sleazy Vegan, a popular food truck that has finally found a permanent brick-and-mortar location after a long journey.

“When we first started, we opened as a ghost kitchen back on April 1 of ’22. In September of this past year we were told that that place was no longer going to be available to us, and so we had to skedoodle. We had to find a new commercial kitchen to do our catering from and to be our commissary for food trucking, even though we don’t have a food truck exactly right now. We moved to what was formerly known as State Street Kitchen in Concord. There were actually two identities here. There was State Street Kitchen that was meant to be a pay-by-the-hour community-based kitchen for [new entrepreneurs]. And then in the front there’s a retail space that was, for a while, Pilar Art Studio. When we reached out to the owner of this building, to see about coming in and really having a much bigger footprint than just a community kind of user and taking over the kitchen and using that front spot, he was very amicable to the idea, and loved the idea of having the space get used more than it had been. So we moved in here in October and we took over that front retail spot as the Sleazy Vegan Cafe. And we’ve actually been running from here from seven in the morning until two in the afternoon, since October.”

Since then, LeBlanc said, she and her chef have been fine-tuning their menu, focusing on baking.

“We did all of our Thanksgiving catering from here,” she said, “all of our Christmas catering from here. Lots of pies. We’re making sourdough bread every week. We’re making three or four different kinds of vegan muffins every week. We’ve got … a sourdough cinnamon roll that we’re making every week.”

As of this week, however, the Sleazy Vegan will be open all day, LeBlanc said.

“[It will be] a full-service day here, where we’ll be running breakfast, lunch and dinner from the new location. We did two seated six-course dinners that were really great. They were lovely. It’s very private, kind of glam up the front, and the seating is limited to 10 or 12 people per service. So it’s very intimate and very quiet and private and a little more glammed up version of sleazy vegan chefery going on. We did two of those events in January that were fantastic, and we have another event coming up for Valentine’s Day. We’re doing a 6 p.m. service — a six-course dinner — and an 8 p.m. service.”

“So now there’ll be kind of two locations that will be here in Concord,” LeBlanc said. “There will be the Sleazy Vegan Cafe, which will be in the front, and then Sleazy Vegan Mobile Catering is in the back. And that’s where we’ll be doing our catering and our cooking classes. We’ll be hosting a Food is Medicine meetup once a month. At each meetup we will bring in an expert to help guide us through some plant-based health secrets and some plant-based health lies that we might believe and help us get healthier and more educated around what we can do for our health with plants. Our next one is going to be Feb. 18.”

LeBlanc said the new location gives her confidence that there is a demand for high-quality, plant-based food in Concord.

“People come here,” she said, “and it’s not by accident. They didn’t just accidentally show up someplace where everything happened to be vegan on the menu. They’re coming here because this is what they wanted, and they’re very excited to have some place where they can look at a menu and know that everything on the menu is right for them.”

The Sleazy Vegan
205 N. State St., Concord, thesleazyvegan.com. Open Wednesday through Saturday, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Featured photo: Sleazy Vegan Concord location. Courtesy photo.

The Weekly Dish 26/02/12

• Weather delay: The Fire on Main event hosted by 603 Brewery (42 Main St, Londonderry, 404-6123, 603brewery.com) originally scheduled for this weekend has been postponed due to anticipated weather conditions. It will be held Saturday, March 14, instead. Visit 603brewery.com/fire-on-main-bonfire-event.

• There’s always room for dessert. And wine. LaBelle Winery Amherst (345 Route 101, Amherst, 672-9898, labellewinery.com) will host a Chocolate Desserts & Wine Pairing Class Thursday, Feb. 12, at 6 p.m. Wine Educator & Sommelier Marie King leads this interactive event where you’ll enjoy four desserts, each paired with LaBelle wines. The cost is $48.16.

• All you need is truffles: Van Otis Chocolates (341 Elm St., Manchester, 627-1611, vanotis.com) will hold a chocolate truffle-making class Friday, Feb. 13, at 5:30 p.m. Guests ages 18+ will tour the chocolate factory, where a chocolatier will demonstrate how to make a chocolate ganache. Tickets are $55.20.

• Cookie season: Girl Scout cookie booth season has begun, with booths scheduled across the area throughout the weekend including at the Irving Gas Station in Bow on the afternoon of Friday, Feb. 13; Chunky’s Cinema and Remix Roller Skating in Manchester at times on Saturday, Feb. 14, and Sunday, Feb. 15; the Brookline Transfer Station in the morning (through 1 p.m.) on Saturday, Feb. 14, and Sully’s in Suncook on Sunday, Feb. 15, from noon to 8 p.m., according to girlscoutsgwm.org. Click on “Find Cookies” to find booths this weekend and beyond.

• Food and theater: The Capitol Center for the Arts (44 S. Main St., Concord, 225-1111, ccanh.com) will partner with Street Restaurant (76 N. Main St., Concord, 333-2125, streetfood360.com) on Feb. 17 for a special Community Night eventfrom 5 to 9 p.m. When you dine in at STREET and mention the Capitol Center for the Arts to your server, 20 percent of your meal will be donated to support it.

• Observing a wine holiday: Join Barrel and Baskit (377 Main St., Hopkinton, 746-1375, barrelandbaskit.com) Wednesday, Feb. 18, for a celebration of National Drink Wine Day with a free wine tasting by Ruby Wines.

Make it bitter

Most Americans don’t seem to appreciate bitter tastes. We’re fine with other strong flavors — we love sweets, many of us will go at a bag of salty snacks like it’s been away at war, there are certainly chili-heads who crave intensely spicy foods, and some children eat sour candies that would make the head of an adult collapse in on itself. But what about bitter foods?
I enjoy some bitterness from time to time, so on the off chance that you do, too, or are in the middle of a contentious break-up, here is a bitter but delicious cocktail, with a very bitter name:

Remember the Alimony

  • 1 1/4 ounces Fino sherry – I’m not exactly sure what “fino” means in this context, but whatever full-bodied sherry you have on hand.
  • 1 1/4 ounces Cynar or other bitter Italian liqueur. Cynar is the one with an artichoke on the label.
  • 3/4 ounce medium-shelf, London dry gin — Because of the strong flavor of this drink, subtle flavors will be overwhelmed; this is not a job for your best top-shelf gin. I used Gordon’s, and I do not regret the decision.

We will not be using a cocktail shaker for this drink. Add several ice cubes to a mixing glass, then add the sherry, Cynar and gin, then stir gently but thoroughly.
Strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass.

As expected, this is a bitter drink — not bitter to the extent that you’ll have to smash your fists against the table to force it down or anything, but there’s no getting around its bitterness. When you take your first sip of it, your immediate impression will be a bit of raisinyness from the sherry, quickly followed by bitter notes from the Cynar. It actually has a smooth finish and goes down easily, but there is a tail of bitterness in the aftertaste.
This is a very grown-up drink, for sitting by a window and watching the snow or rain come down and thinking about the turns your life has taken.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Smoothie move

New location and new name for smoothie purveyor born in the mall

The name is different, but the smoothies are still excellent, said Jonathan Allard.

“We’re called That Smoothie Spot,” he said. “We are a 100 percent natural smoothie spot. We used to be Nature’s Nectar in the Mall of New Hampshire. We were there for 16 years, but we felt it was finally time to change and move on. Nobody really associated the name with smoothies, so that’s when my wife and I came up with That Smoothie Spot. It just made sense. My wife managed the other spot, Nature’s Nectar, for over 12 years for the previous owner. She sold it to us in November of 2024. And now we’re here. We’ve been able to expand our menu, add some food items — some gluten-free, some dairy-free.”

“Here” is on March Avenue in Manchester, just off South Willow Street, in the plaza where Panera Bread and Broadway Shoes are located.

Allard said the new smoothie shop offers “refreshers, coffees, lattes, sandwiches, toasties and things like that. But our bread and butter is the smoothies for sure.”

“I believe what makes a good smoothie,” Allard said, “is just good natural fruit, making sure it’s blended properly, and in the proper combinations. We make all our bases fresh in-house. Our piña colada has been one of the biggest hits for 16 years. You can’t get anything like our piña colada base that we make here. We use cream of coconut and fresh pineapple. It’s our most popular base. A lot of smoothie places will use either milk or yogurt or oat milk or almond milk, something like that. We emulsify our natural fruit into our base and that’s what makes the liquid for the base. It helps make it creamier. It just tastes better. We don’t add any additional sugar, so we’re diabetic-friendly, and we’re able to keep it that way by making everything ourselves.”

“One of our biggest sellers on the menu right now has dragonfruit in it,” Allard said. “We love using it. Something else that a lot of people only use for bowls mostly is acai, but we use those in our smoothies as well. It just blends really well. Acai has immense benefits for your body and your immune system. We try to add as many good things as we can. Some fruits that I’d love to start kind of playing around with, and I don’t think many places use it, is like jackfruit. We use kiwi, but I think we can add kiwi a little bit more to some of our blends. We have some ideas for the summer, maybe sipping out of a coconut with a fresh smoothie.”

Selling smoothies from a stand-alone location has been an adjustment, Allard said, but customers have found it.

“It’s definitely a more intentional customer,” he said. “In the mall we were able to maybe stand out in the hallway, hand out some samples, maybe get a customer here or there. It feels more intentional here. We’ve become more of a destination spot. Our regulars that we had for 15 years in the mall have come to us now, knowing that we’re in a new spot. We’re definitely getting more regulars here.”

“Because we’re known for our dairy-free and gluten-free smoothies,” he said, “we really want to take that into our food aspect and offer just a really good place to go that has gluten-free, dairy-free options. We’re very allergy-friendly. If you have a peanut allergy, any type of allergy, we definitely accommodate anything like that. So our main goal is to just be that spot where you can go get a sandwich one day, get a smoothie the next, maybe get a coffee, and be confident in what you’re getting.”

That Smoothie Spot
102 March Ave., Manchester, 408-1390, facebook.com/ThatSmoothieSpotNH
Hours: open Tuesday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and weekends, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.

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