Category: Food

• Hot pot: OBA Korean BBQ & Hot Pot has opened at 371 S. Willow St. in Manchester (obakoreanbbqhotpot.com). The all-you-can-eat Korean restaurant is open Wednesday through Monday at 11:30 a.m. until 9:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and until 10:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

• An Italian New Year’s Eve: There will be a Bubbles and Truffles New Year’s Eve event at Tuscan Market (Tuscan Village, 9 Via Toscana, Salem, 912-5467, tuscanbrands.com) Wednesday, Dec. 31, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. This two-course cooking class will begin with a classic shrimp cocktail paired with a prosecco toast. Guests will then explore the elegance of truffles through a curated tasting, starting with truffle bites paired with Franciacorta, followed by fresh truffle-finished pasta tossed tableside in a Parmesan wheel and paired with a crisp Blanc de Noir. This will be a celebratory, elevated way to toast the new year. Tickets are $131.63 through eventbrite.com.

• Holiday ice cream: Social Club Creamery (138 N. Main St., Concord, 333-2111, socialclubcreamery.com) will continue to offer a special Holiday Series Menu through the end of December, with limited-time cookies, and ice creams including Peppermint Mocha, Cinnamon Roll Cheesecake, Gingerbread House, and Santa’s Oat Milk & Cookies (vegan).

• Melted snowman cookies: The Nashua Public Library (2 Court St., Nashua, 589-4600, nashualibrary.org) will host a Melted Snowman Cookie workshop for children in grades K-5, Monday, Dec. 29, from 2 to 3 p.m. “In this hands-on program, you’ll decorate your own melting snowman cookie using icing, candy, and other fun toppings. Learn some basic cookie decorating techniques, like spreading icing, placing decorations, and adding finishing touches, while giving your frosty friend a wobbly, ‘melting’ look. Space and supplies are limited,” according to the website.

• New year, new flavors: The Hooksett Library, 31 Mount Saint Mary’s Way in Hooksett, hooksettlibrary.org, has a Spice Club. While supplies last, pick up a spice kit with a new spice and recipes each month, according to the website. In January, the spice is ginger; pick up the spice kit at Patron Services on Jan. 20 while supplies last, the website said.

There comes a point in the holiday season — maybe it’s Christmas Eve — when everything has gotten to be too much. Too much running around. Too many trips to the grocery store. Too much rich food. Too much fanciness.

I heard someone say once that one of the great things about this time of year is that you can shut yourself away in your bedroom, and anytime someone tries to open the door you can shout, “DON’T COME IN HERE!” Everyone will assume you are wrapping presents, when in fact you’re reading a trashy magazine, listening to a true crime podcast and working your way through a bottle of wine.

As much as you like entertaining — and I do; I call it “Fezziwigging” after the jolly character in A Christmas Carol — the idea of a quiet evening of listening to jazz and reading sounds endlessly appealing.

Especially if the food is simple. A piece of toast, perhaps, and a diet soda. Or cheese and crackers and a pot of tea.

Or — and hear me out on this — a couple of slices of banana bread. Plain, no secret ingredients, no mysterious baking techniques, no — and this cannot be stressed strongly enough — walnuts.

Plain banana bread and a glass of milk.

And a playlist of torch songs.

• 2 1/3 cups (531 g) mashed banana
• 2 cups (240 g) flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ¾ cup (160 g) brown sugar
• ½ cup (1 stick) butter
• 2 eggs

Preheat your oven to 350°F. Grease a loaf pan.

You know how the bottom shelf in your freezer is a No Man’s Land of half-empty bags of frozen vegetables, or fruit that you meant to make into a smoothie a month ago? Looking through our freezer this afternoon I found a couple of half-full bags of frozen banana chunks. Why they were in there, and how they got there, is a story for another day, a story of intrigue, danger and, depending on how you look at it, deep betrayal.

But the point is, a couple of large handfuls of frozen banana chunks are just about right for this recipe. Alternatively, actual fresh bananas that your kids have avoided because one of them had a brown spot on it will work well too. Put whichever type of bananas you have — minus the peels — in your electric mixer and beat them until they are grey and mushy. Set them aside. Don’t bother cleaning out the mixing bowl; everything’s going to be mixed together within the next couple of minutes or so anyway.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt. Set this aside as well.

In your still-banana-y mixing bowl, cream the butter and brown sugar together. Once the mixture has come together a little, turn up the speed and whip it until it is light and fluffy.

Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, then beat in the eggs, one at a time. Then bring the bananas back to the party, and beat them in too.

Turn the mixer to its lowest speed and spoon the flour mixture in, until it has just barely been incorporated.

Turn the mixture into your loaf pan, and bake it for an hour or so, until a toothpick comes out clean.

Let the banana bread cool a little before turning it out of the loaf pan. Serve slices of it with gloppy melting butter or a scoop of ice cream.

Featured photo: Banana bread. Photo by John Fladd.

603 Brewery decorates for the season

It isn’t unusual for businesses to put up a Christmas tree during the holidays. For the 603 Brewery at 42 Main St. in Londonderry the “tree” is made of beer kegs. The keg tree varies in size each year, but this season it is made of six tiers of beer kegs stacked on top of each other, with the widest tier on the bottom and successively smaller tiers to form a vaguely conical tree shape that the staff has decorated with oversized ornaments, garlands and a huge red bow.

According to Kellyn Thompson, 603’s Creative Content Manager, the 12½-foot-tall tapered stack of kegs has been a tradition at the brewery since 2013.

“They needed a little holiday cheer at our old location on Liberty Drive, and it’s stuck with us ever since,” Thompson said. “Every year around the holidays, our owner team takes a day when we’re usually closed so people aren’t witnessing the assembly of the keg tree. There’s actually a fair bit of math and science and physics to make sure that the kegs are stable.”

This year’s keg tree is made of between 45 and 50 kegs, Thompson said.

“They are regular half-barrels, and skinnier ones called sixtels.” (A half-barrel, which is usually called a “full-sized keg,” holds 15½ gallons of beer when full. A sixtel, or sixth-barrel keg, holds just over 5 gallons of beer.)

“I don’t know if you’ve ever lifted a keg, but they’re not light. So to get this together is really hard, a kind of a feat in itself because you’ve got to get all the kegs in one place, and then you’re stacking each layer. They’re not full, but even the keg itself is really heavy. We bring a scissor-lift in here so they’re going up and down and zip-tying, and this year [there are] wooden discs we added I think for extra support, so, yeah, it’s a lot of work. It takes a full day.”

“Our goal each year is that it looks cool and that it’s tall enough to be its own spectacle,” Thompson said. “We’ve put it in a bunch of different places over the years. The largest keg tree was in 2019, but it took up so much space we couldn’t seat many people around it. Then we scaled back a little bit to put it in our vestibule, so it was probably two tiers smaller than you’re seeing now. And then this year I really pushed for them to bring it back out on the main floor [of the brewery] where they could make it a little bit bigger. The Beer Hall ceilings are roughly 24 feet tall at their peak, so this year’s tree matches the space. With as grand as the space is, we needed something to match. My first Christmas here, it went almost up to the HVAC system.”

“In past years we’ve decorated [the keg tree] with cans,” Thompson said. “Sometimes we put wrapped boxes up there. It’s a fun thing; the office staff comes out and decorates it once it’s been assembled. It’s not just a giant Christmas tree — it like really kind of embodies who we are and what we do. It makes for a cool photo op, too.”

• Bonfire update: Bonfire Country Bar at 950 Elm St. in downtown Manchester suffered damage from flooding by a burst pipe in the building last week and is closed for now, according to a video on the establishment’s Instagram. Shoppers Pub & Eatery, 18 Lake Ave. in Manchester, will host a fundraiser with raffles and tip jars to benefit the staff at Bonfire Country Bar on Friday, Dec. 19, at 7 p.m., according to a video on the Shoppers Pub Instagram. Deadproof Pizza, which operates out of Torched at 946 Elm St. in Manchester, next to Bonfire, is planning a benefit service for Thursday, Dec. 18, from 4 to 8 p.m., according to a video on Deadproof’s Facebook and a post on its Instagram, as well as a benefit event on Sunday, Dec. 21, from 11 to 5 p.m., the posts said.

• Sky Meadow reopens: As reported by WMUR in a Dec. 5 online article, Sky Meadow Country Club (6 Mountain Laurels Drive, Nashua, 888-9000, skymeadow.com) has reopened its Prime Restaurant three months after a man was killed and several other people were injured in a shooting there in September. WMUR quoted owner Rob Parsons, who said, “rebuilding the restaurant physically [has been] far easier than rebuilding the lives that were shattered.”

• New Bad BRGR location: “Old-school smashed burger” restaurant Bad BRGR has opened an additional Manchester location, this one in the in the Mall of New Hampshire on South Willow Street. It is open Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday until 9 p.m., and Sunday from 11 a.m.to 6 p.m. Visit bad-brgr.com.

• Charcuterie! Vine 32 Wine and Graze Bar (Bedford Square, 25 S. River Road, Bedford, 935-8464, vinethirtytwo.com) will host a holiday charcuterie board building workshop Sunday, Dec. 20, from 3 to 5 p.m. This interactive workshop includes a handcrafted wooden board to take home, cheeses, meats, crackers, spreads, nuts, and more, and a $10 wine credit. See website for tickets.

• Feast of the Seven Fishes: Trattoria Fondi at the Bedford Village Inn (2 Olde Bedford Way, Bedford, 472-2001, bedfordvillageinn.com) will host a five-course Feast of the Seven Fishes Monday, Dec. 22, from 6 to 9 p.m. Tickets are $125+ per person and must be purchased in advance. 21+ only.