Category: Food

Salsa music meets Somali food at this year’s Concord Multicultural Festival

By John Fladd
[email protected]

This weekend’s Concord Multicultural Festival will have participants from more than 70 countries. According to Jessica Livingston, the Festival’s Director, restaurants, food trucks and individual community members from the Concord area will share food from almost every corner of the world.

“The food is everyone’s favorite part [of the Festival],” she said. “It’s the hardest part of organizing the festival, but it’s so worth it.”

Livingston credited Concord’s Multicultural Festival with bringing the community closer together. “It’s probably the most impactful part of the festival,” she said. “When we started out, years ago, there were just a couple of food vendors who were actually just neighbors in the community who were newer here and they were sharing their food.”

Now the Festival’s website lists 12 community members and nine professional food vendors at this year’s celebration. Special care is taken to help community members prepare and sell their food.

“We have to follow obviously, the City of Concord’s food health safety rules for food,” Livingston said. “So having all of these non-commercial food vendors cook is a challenge. We are grateful to be able to work with the New Hampshire Food Bank, who has a beautiful state-of-the-art kitchen down in Manchester. They work with us and help the food vendors — the non-commercial food vendors — develop their menus and their pricing. And then the day before the festival, all of the cooking happens down at the food bank. There’s so many people there, probably 15 different food vendors and their helpers and then the other kitchen helpers, and it’s like it’s a really beautiful multicultural production of food, which is a lot of fun.”

Livingston said she’s heard that the Saturday prep session is the most fun part of the Festival. “I actually had somebody a couple years ago, after volunteering at the Food Bank that day, come back and say, ‘That was the funnest thing I’ve ever done; you should charge people for that experience.’ I was like, ‘You want me to charge people to volunteer in a kitchen?’” she said.

According to Livingston some participants find selling food at the Festival empowering.

“It’s a great universal way to bring people together,” she said, “because everybody loves food and especially like different types of food. But the great thing about the food production here is that it’s led to actual businesses like food businesses. … we have a food vendor who’s been with us almost since the beginning; this will be her 12th year. Her name is Batulo [Batulo Mohamed, last year’s Capitol Center for the Arts’ Culinary Artist in Residence, and owner of Batulo’s Kitchen, a Concord food truck], and she started as a food vendor. She makes Somali meat pies, and she’s so popular. Her food is so popular that every year people would be like, where can we get these throughout the year?”

Concord Multicultural Festival
When: Sunday, Sept. 22, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: Keach Park in Concord Heights.
The Festival is free and open to the public. Free parking is available at 70 Pembroke Road (formerly Community Bridges).

The food
Food served at this year’s Multicultural Festival by community vendors includes Empanadas (Argentina) by Roy, Aloo Dam (Nepal) by Bhagi, Kunaffeh (Egypt) by Abeer Shabaka, Fried Rice and Chicken (Sierra Leone) by Agnes, Rice with Kofta Meatballs (Afghanistan) by Asif, Man’ouche and Rose Lemonade (Lebanon) by Christy, and Ivorian Rice (Côte d’Ivoire) by Tina.

Restaurants and food trucks at the Festival will include Batulo’s Kitchen (Somalia), Bubble Bee Milk Tea (China), Katmandu (Nepal), Sue’s Kimbap House (South Korea), the Cannoli Stop (Italy) and Don Quijote (Caribbean).

Featured Photo: Courtesy Photo.

Animal shelter is this year’s charity

By John Fladd
[email protected]

The Manchester Brewfest will return to Arms Park (10 Arms St., Manchester) this weekend. For the past 10 years breweries and local businesses have pitched in to drink beer, have fun, and raise money for a local cause. This year proceeds will go to the Friends of the Manchester Animal Shelter.

Peter Telge, from Stark Brewing Co., is the organizer. He said that aside from promoting local brewing, the Manchester Brewfest has raised money and awareness for many good causes.

“Every year has been a different charity,” Telge said.

He has been juggling a lot of different elements for this year’s festival, some of them surprising. There will be representatives from more than 20 breweries, of course, and a beer pong tournament with a cash prize to be split with the Animal Shelter, but many activities are completely unrelated to beer.

“There’s a lot of events happening which are very, very cool,” Telge said. “We have ax throwing with The Rugged Axe and we have the Humble Warrior doing a yoga class, which should be very cool for a brew festival.”

There will be live music — country-rock group the Shawna Jackson Band will play throughout the afternoon, which will be a contrast to a half-hour performance by the New Hampshire Police Association Pipe and Drum Corps. Food vendors will include Congos Empanadas and The Potato Concept.

Because this year’s proceeds will go to supporting the Manchester Animal Shelter, several of the activities will be dog-themed.

“We have some dog trainers doing some dog training exhibitions,” Telge said. “603 Diesel’s gathering food for dogs and cats and trying to fill up a truck with food. We have Dave & Buster’s doing some games of chance for prizes and donating it to the animal shelter, and Big Dog Sauce is doing some sauce tastings and donating purchases to the Manchester Animal Shelter. We are kid-friendly and it’s going to be dog-friendly, too”

Manchester Brewfest
When: Saturday, Sept. 21, noon to 4 p.m.
Where: Arms Park, 10 Arms St., Manchester
Tickets: General admission $50, VIP tickets $60, and designated driver tickets $20
More: manchesterbrewfest.com

Featured Photo: Courtesy Photo.

NH Highland Games return for another year of Scottish food and fun

By John Fladd
[email protected]

This weekend marks the return of the Highland Games to Loon Mountain in Lincoln. When most people think of Scottish festivals, several images come to mind — red-faced bagpipers, grinning, bearded men in kilts throwing cabers [log-sized timbers], lifting stones or maybe running sheep dogs through their paces. Most people forget about the Scotch eggs.

“Lots and lots of Scotch eggs,” said Terri Wiltse, the Director of the Highland Games. “One of the most popular things we do every year is Scotch eggs, which is a hard-boiled egg with sausage around the outside and then they fry it. People love that, and I know that there’s always a buzz around the grounds like, ‘Oh, the Scotch eggs are out!’; they can’t always keep those in stock.”

The Scotch eggs are popular, but they don’t come close to inspiring the kind of passion that Scotland’s most iconic dish does.

“We do have haggis,” Wiltse said, “which is one of those love it or hate it items … and if you look up how they’re made in Scotland, they’re made with innards. There are rules in the U.S. because it has heart and some organs that you’re not allowed to import. We have a U.S. version and as I said people either love it or they hate it, but most are willing to try it. I think that that’s a great thing.”

Other Scottish foods on hand at the Games include cullen skink, which Wiltse described as “the Scottish version of clam chowder,” fish and chips, lamb stew, and shepherd’s pie, which is called “cottage pie” in Scotland.

Scottish food enthusiasts are excited about two special guests at this year’s Highland Games: Gary Maclean, the National Chef of Scotland, and Coinneach MacLeod, “The Hebridean Baker,” a celebrity baker, cookbook author, storyteller and singer.

Maclean was the winner of the 2016 series of MasterChef: The Professionals, has starred in several cooking competition shows, and is the author of seven cookbooks. In a video interview he said that the people at the Highland Games are very accepting of Scottish cuisine.

“The reality is the guests at the Highland Games are very accustomed to Scottish foods,” he said. “For a lot of people it’s a chance to share their own experiences. Every time I do a demo [at NHHG], somebody will raise their hand and say, ‘That’s how my gran always made it!’”

The Highland Games are largely about celebrating Scottish traditions, and Chef Maclean said food traditions tell us a lot about a culture’s history.

“Most of our traditional foods, regardless of where you are in the world, are probably four or five ingredients, because our ancestors not so long ago didn’t have the same options of an availability of food that we’ve got,” he said. “So I try and get back to basics a little bit, through Scottish food. I write books on Scottish food, so there’s a historical element to it, and I also try and theme each demonstration to have a bit of fun. I’ve done things like food from William Wallace and that sort of thing. I’ve done things like Outlander-themed food, and talk about the sort of history of that. This year I’m doing Still Game. I’m doing one of my demonstrations of Still Game. And Still Game is a really, really, really well-known comedy show about old men in Glasgow. And because of wonderful things like Netflix, Still Game’s on TV, so anybody with a bit of a Scottish connection will probably know about it. But if not, I can put some [clips of the show] up on the screen and have it really sort of interactive.”

Maclean has been to New Hampshire’s Highland Games several times, but this will be Coinneach MacLeod’s first time. He is Scotland’s best-selling cookbook author and has been named Scotland’s Food & Drink Influencer of the Year, at the Unicorn Awards. This weekend’s Highland Games are one stop on his current 31-city tour for his latest cookbook, The Hebridean Baker at Home. Like Maclean, he has been overwhelmed by how much resonance there is in the U.S. with Scottish cuisine, which he had assumed might be threatening to U.S. palates.

“It makes us very proud, to be honest,” MacLeod said in a telephone interview.

Because baking doesn’t lend itself easily to a festival demonstration, MacLeod will host a cèilidh, a Scottish gathering where stories are told and songs are sung. He will talk about the Outer Hebrides, where he is from. “I’ll talk about the language of Gallic and maybe even sing a song or two for the guests.”

2024 New Hampshire Highland Games
When: Loon Mountain Resort, 60 Loon Mountain Road, Lincoln, 745-8111, loonmtn.com
Where: Friday, Sept. 20 through Sunday, Sept. 22.
Tickets: $40 per day for adults, with weekend packages and children’s tickets available.
More: nhscot.org/highland-games-nh

Important Scottish terms to know
Caber toss – A traditional Scottish athletic event in which competitors toss a large tapered pole called a caber. In Scotland the caber is usually made from a larch tree, and it can be between 16 and 20 feet tall and weigh 90 to 150 pounds.

Cèilidh – A social event at which there is Scottish or Irish folk music and singing, traditional dancing, and storytelling.

Cullen skink – A thick Scottish soup made of smoked haddock, potatoes and onions.

Haggis – A Scottish dish made from the windpipe, lungs, heart and liver of a sheep, which are boiled, then minced, then mixed with oatmeal and beef fat. It is stuffed into the stomach of the sheep, then sewn up and boiled for up to three hours.

Outlander– A historical time-travel drama about a World War II nurse who is transported back in time to 1743 and becomes embroiled in Scotland’s Jacobite rising. It is a wildly popular television series and a wildly popular series of novels.

William Wallace– A Scottish warrior who became one of the main leaders during the First War of Scottish Independence (1296-1328). Mel Gibson played him in Braveheart.

Featured Photo: Coinneach MacLeod. Courtesy Photo.

News from the local food scene

• Kofta and cocktails: A new Mediterranean restaurant and craft cocktail lounge has opened in Salem. Beiruti Mediterranean Restaurant at 355 S. Broadway (870-0045, beirutiresto.com) had its grand opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony earlier this month. According to its website, the restaurant will provide “a welcoming family atmosphere, while serving authentic Mediterranean comfort foods and classic craft cocktails.” The menu is devoted primarily to Lebanese and Greek dishes. It is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

• Deeply discounted birthday libations: To celebrate their 90th anniversary, New Hampshire State Liquor and Wine Outlets (liquorandwineoutlets.com) will offer a discount of 18.66 percent on most alcohol until Sept. 29, triple the average tax rate on liquor in neighboring states. “We’re proud of the fact that New Hampshire is sales tax-free and want to remind our customers, especially those in neighboring states, about this benefit,” a Sept. 3 press release from the Liquor Commission quoted NHLC Chairman Joseph Mollica. Visit the Liquor and Wine Outlet website for details.

• Feeling cordial: Bedrock Gardens (19 High Road, Lee, 659-2993, bedrockgardens.org) will host a class called “The Art of Making Cordials and Liqueurs” led by Bedrock Garden’s Executive Director and author of The Heirloom Gardener, Jon Forti. Cordials and liqueurs are often used to mix flavors, stimulate the appetite and create a relaxed and “cordial” mood for social occasions. The class is limited to 15 people — adults only. Each ticket includes a day pass to Bedrock Gardens that day. Tickets are $60 for Bedrock members, and $65 on eventbrite.com for nonmembers. Visit eventbrite.com.

• A beer-forward block party: Derry After Dark (cask.life/derry-after-dark), an annual event described on its website as “a block party with 1,800 of your closest friends and neighbors, complete with craft beverage samples, local eateries and music,” will return to Derry on Saturday, Sept. 21, from 5:30 to 9 p.m. Cask & Vine (1 E. Broadway, Derry, 965-3454, cask.life/cask-and-vine) will host the event, supported by more than a dozen sponsoring businesses. While event coordinators work closely with town departments to create a safe and fun event, it is not put on by the town of Derry. All fire and police details are paid for by the event. Both GA and VIP tickets provide access to craft beverage samples being offered by more than 40 breweries. Tickets are $15 for designated drivers, $40 for general admission, and $60 for VIP admission.

• A match made in Salem (and Bedford): Copper Door (15 Leavy Drive, Bedford, 488-2677, and 41 S. Broadway, Salem, 458-2033, copperdoor.com) will host aSeptember Fall Harvest Wine Dinner as part of its Forks & Corks Dinner Series. The five-course dinner will include Thai dumplings, grilled prawns and pork tenderloin, all paired with companion wines. The dinner will begin with a 6 p.m. reception and a 6:30 p.m. seating for the first course. The dinner will take place on Tuesday, Sept. 24, in Salem, and Wednesday, Sept. 25, at the Bedford location. Tickets are $95 each through Copper Door’s website. Tickets must be purchased online and are non-refundable.

Enjoy a world of eats at Nashua’s Multicultural Festival

Nashua is one of the most diverse cities in New Hampshire. According to Data USA (datausa.io), 13 percent of Nashua’s population is Hispanic, and 15 percent were born outside the United States. Seven percent of Nashuans are Asian, two percent identify as Black, and another four percent are multiracial.

This year’s annual Nashua Multicultural Festival, on Saturday, Sept. 14, will be a celebration of food, art, dance and more, from some of Nashua’s many cultures. Jasmine Allen is part of the Festival’s planning committee and is in charge of outreach and social media for it.

“Nashua is considered a Welcoming City,” Allen said, “and we are planning the Multicultural Festival around the National Welcoming Week as a city that is welcoming to all diversity and cultures. And so we’ll be having a flag parade, we’ll be having some wonderful cultural dances and poetry — things like that. So just a fun mix of great stuff.”

One of the best gateways to learning about other cultures is through their foods. One of the focuses of this weekend’s Festival is food that many people in New Hampshire are likely unfamiliar with. Soel Sistas Soul Food (30 Temple St, Suite 202, Nashua, 943-1469, soelsistas.com) will be providing some of the food. “They do mostly soul food, things like chicken and collard greens, things like that,” Allen said.

Iraida Muñoz is the lead for the Multicultural Festival, the chair committee, and Equity Officer for the Division of Public Health and Community Services in Nashua. She is very excited about this weekend’s food, particularly from Soel Sistas.

“Of course, we’re going to have Soel Sistas,” Muñoz said excitedly. “She is planning to bring some Hispanic food that is going to be a surprise for us. But she’s very well-known in the city by her mac & cheeses, which are quite good. People love it. [Another restaurant] is going to be Sabor Brasil. Their specialty is obviously some red meat, some chicken as well, and they are planning to bring some pasta, some salad and some appetizers. And they are going to do like sample sizes, so people can enjoy all of them in a very affordable way. So that’s one of the things that we are focusing on — affordability, so people will have options from very affordable food to a little more on the expensive side.”

Another vendor that Muñoz is excited about is Empanellie’s. “This is a couple,” she said. “They do cook Hispanic food, obviously, especially empanadas. Their empanadas are very well-known in this area and they have more than 15 kinds. They are also bringing the typical Hispanic food like rice and beans. So it’s going to be Puerto Rican style and Colombia style that they are bringing to the table.”

A wide variety of drinks will be available, from horchata (a Latin American rice drink) to Asian fruit teas and juices. Muñoz emphasized that there will not be any alcohol served at the Festival. “This is a family-friendly event,” she said. But there will be beverages from Gong Cha, a Taiwanese-style beverage shop. “They have green tea, black tea, watermelon, winter melon, Muñoz said. “They have some based in cream, so the creme brulee, and brown sugar milk tea is very popular. And those kinds of drinks, people love it. They sold out last time and they are looking forward to coming back.”

Jasmine Allen said the breadth of types of food at the Festival is symbolic of a major cultural change that New Hampshire, and Nashua in particular, is going through. “I literally feel like New Hampshire is going through a renaissance period,” she said. “It’s very exciting.”

Nashua Multicultural Festival
When: Saturday, Sept. 14, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Where: Nashua Public Library (2 Court St., Nashua) and Library parking lot. Festival parking is available at any City lot.
Footage from last year’s Festival can be viewed on YouTube, under the heading “Nashua Multicultural Festival 2023”

Planteray Rum, rebranded from Plantation Rum and owned by Cognac Ferrand, If you ask people about their banana preference, they will probably back slowly away from you and make excuses about forgetting their children at day care. But suppose you are in an elevator or something, and they can’t get away easily. Put on the spot, most Americans will tell you that they like their bananas very yellow, with no soft or brown spots on them — maybe even a little bit green along the stem.

Which is a little strange when you think about it — though, in fairness, not any stranger than asking people about bananas in the elevator — because solid yellow, firm bananas don’t taste particularly banana-y. And they hurt the roof of your mouth a little. Bananas are at their most flavorful when they are covered with freckles over about half the surface of their peels.

Because most shoppers like their bananas barely ripe, it can be difficult to find truly ripe, sweet, banana-y bananas in the supermarket. True, you could just buy some not-quite-ready bananas and leave them on your counter until they are truly ripe, but bananas are extremely sensitive emotionally and don’t deal well with this type of aloofness on your part.

After living in an area for a while, most of us discover the best places to buy particular foods – the best place for fresh rhubarb, for instance, is in the grocery department of a big box store that rhymes with “Glooper Ball Cart.” The best place to find truly ripe, ready to eat bananas is in front of the cash register at a convenience store, where they are optimistically placed for hurried shoppers to grab a healthy snack on the run.

True, they start out the week firm, yellow, and full of joie de vivre, but by Thursday or Friday they have been completely devastated emotionally and are freckly and pitifully eager to go home with you to bake. Reassure them that they are safe with you now and that everything will be alright. It won’t be, of course; this is a lie to lull the bananas into a false sense of security, but it will make the experience less traumatic in the short-term for everybody involved.

Banana Pudding Cookies

Dry ingredients:

2 cups (240 g) all-purpose flour

3.4-ounce box of instant banana pudding mix

1¼ teaspoons coarse sea salt

¼ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

Wet ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter

1 cup (213 g) brown sugar

1 egg yolk

1 large, very ripe banana

1½ teaspoons crème de banana, or vanilla

Stir-In ingredients:

24 Nilla Wafer cookies, broken into ¼- to ½-inch pieces

¾ cup (128 g) peanut butter baking chips

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment paper.

Whisk the dry ingredients together in a medium-sized mixing bowl.

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. One at a time, beat in each of the wet ingredients. Add the dry ingredients, and stir until just combined.

By hand, mix in the cookie pieces and peanut butter chips.

Spoon out six cookies, about 2 tablespoons each, onto each baking sheet. Chill the remaining cookie dough in the refrigerator.

Wish the cookies Godspeed, and bake for seven minutes, then switch and rotate the pans, and bake for another seven minutes. Remove from the oven, and allow to cool.

Repeat with the remainder of the dough, for a total of two dozen cookies.

Your convenience store banana’s Last Grand Gesture was not in vain. These are solidly banana-y cookies, crispy along the edges and chewy in the middle, with random crunchiness from the Nilla Wafers, and random pops of salt. They are outstanding with vanilla ice cream.

Featured Photo: Photo by John Fladd.