Category: Food

Old-fashioned rice pudding

  • 5½ cups (1,250 g) whole milk – We don’t want this pudding to be too fatty or not fatty enough. Whole milk brings just the right amount. If you want to make a vegan version of this, substitute a plant milk with around a 4 percent level of fat.
  • ½ cup (99 g) sugar – This doesn’t seem like enough. It is.
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • Heaping ½ cup (120 g) medium-grained rice – Why medium-grain? We’re counting on the rice to throw off threads of starch to help give the pudding its texture. Short-grained rice – sushi or Arborio rice – would give off so much starch that the individual grains would start to collapse into mush. Regular jasmine or long-grain rice won’t throw off as much starch as we’re looking for, giving the final pudding a looser texture.
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla – to bring depth and deliciousness
  • Ground cinnamon, or nutmeg, or cardamom to sprinkle on top (very optional)

In a large saucepan, bring the milk, sugar and salt to a boil, stirring occasionally.

Crash the heat to its lowest setting, and stir in the rice. This will cool the mixture down slightly, so stay with it, stirring occasionally, until it comes to a gentle simmer. This means that the surface of the liquid will be moving around, thinking about bubbling, but not quite committing to a full boil.

Leave the pudding to simmer for about an hour. If you’re a nervous cook, go get a chair, and sit near the stove reading a martial arts magazine or doing a crossword puzzle. If you are more relaxed about such things, set a timer, and go into the next room to catch up on your binge-watching. Set a timer for about half an hour to remind you to go stir the pudding, but otherwise leave it to find its own way.

After 50 to 60 minutes, check on the pudding. If it is still pretty liquidy, let it cook a little longer. Maybe goose the temperature a tiny bit. You are looking for a consistency like that of yogurt. If it seems thick enough, kill the heat, stir it once or twice, and leave it to cool.

Eventually, come back to your cooled pudding, and stir the vanilla into it. Because vanilla evaporates at fairly low temperatures, taking vanilla-y flavor compounds with it, you’ll get more bang for your buck vanilla-wise if you add it to cool or cooling foods.

At this point the pudding will have a firm, proud texture. It would welcome being eaten right away but would also be perfectly happy to be chilled. It depends on whether you are a warm rice pudding person, a chilled rice pudding person, or somewhere in between.

When you are ready to serve the pudding, you might want to stir in a small amount of additional milk to loosen it up. Or not. Rice pudding wants what you want. It only seeks your comfort and happiness.

Featured photo: Rice pudding. Photo by John Fladd.

Giant pretzels for the win

Fisher Cats get ready for another season of baseball and eats

One of the most challenging aspects of being responsible for the food and drinks at a ballpark is to serve fun and surprising foods to the fans, but at the same time to make sure that the staff is never surprised themselves.

According to Brad McClennan, the Fisher Cats’ new Director of Food and Beverage, there has been a change to the team’s approach to feeding fans.

“We’ve had an opportunity to run our production now ourselves,” he said. “We are part of DBH, Diamond Baseball Holdings, which is our ownership group. It is the largest minor league baseball owner in the country with 48 clubs, soon to be 49 actually. And many of the clubs this year have decided to produce our food in-house, so we are now a DBH concession.” He hopes having so many minor league clubs working together on their catering will mean the food at all the clubs will always be of a high standard. The hot dogs will always be good hot dogs. Popcorn will be consistently fresh, crisp and warm from the popper, regardless of which ballpark a fan visits.

Nobody is unhappy about getting consistently good food, McClennan said, but that creates its own challenges. How can a ballpark maintain its individuality and not serve the exact same food as all the other teams in the same group?

The whole identity of a minor league team, McClennan said, is to make each team an expression of its home community. The individual food experience at each park is part of the local culture.

“The goal [of working together with other teams in the Fisher Cats’ group] from creation was always to create a network for resources and tools but to keep local local. The menus at different parks will be very different. There will be ballpark classics and staples at every park, of course. You never want to not be able to get a hot dog or a bag of peanuts somewhere — and a cold beer — in a game.” But at the same time the Fisher Cats want to be able to represent New Hampshire through the food at Delta Dental Stadium.

“You’ll see a much better tie-in to some of our local [beer] distributors, for instance,” McClennan said, “like Amoskeag and Kettlehead. You’ll also start to see some products from LaBelle Winery, which we’re very excited about. On the food side you’ll see some fun new desserts. We’re keeping most of the specific items close to the vest, but one item that we’re proud of is a 24-ounce Bavarian pretzel that’s the size of a large pizza. We want people to see it and gasp. It is going to be a showcase; I personally can’t wait to see a 10- or 12-year-old walking around trying to eat that whole thing…. It’s really, really cool.”

There are plans underway to have food and drink specials specific to particular celebrations or to reflect visiting teams, McClennan said.

“We definitely take into consideration our opponents, “ he said, “because I think there’s some really fun, natural synergies you can promote with, especially with some of our local rivals, like right up the road in Portland. It’s kind of fun to have such a team that close; it’s a blast.” There will be food and drink specials to reflect games played by the Fisher Cats’ alter egos, the Chicken Tenders or the Space Potatoes.

“There are a lot of different synergies with the Tenders, of course, but we’ll also have Brandon and Lauren from [Manchester restaurant] The Potato Concept back this year again. They’ll be joining us back again for Space Potato weekends, which will be … kind of spread out throughout the year.”

Play ball, eat pretzels
The New Hampshire Fisher Cats will open the 2026 season on Friday, April 3, with a home game against the Binghamton Rumble Ponies beginning at 6:03 p.m.

Baking for the weekend

Sunflower Bakery offers sweet and savory treats

Brittani and Jake Randall own the Sunflower Bakery and Cafe in Nashua. They bake every day, but the bakery itself is only open on weekends. The couple are very deliberately building their business, one small step at a time. “We’ve had people try to bully us into opening during the week,” Brittani said, “but our attitude is ‘We’ll get there when we get there.’ Would we like to be open on Fridays? Sure, but we sell out of everything on Saturdays and Sundays already. We push ourselves as hard as we can all week to get ready just for the weekend, and then we are wiped out of everything. We probably work 17-hour days on Saturdays and Sundays, and that’s just restocking for the next day. So we’re working on [extending our opening hours],” but we don’t want to do it until we’re ready — until we can make sure that we’re putting out the same products, and people are happy. We’re being consistent.”

“So we’re going slow,” Jake said, “but I think we sell out a lot But you know, I would rather sell out and have the quality be as top tier as possible than try to just be open more days, to get more product out, to try to get as much money as possible. The whole reason we wanted to do this was to try to provide quality food out in the community.”

“I think our biggest strength,” Jake continued, “our No. 1 item, is actually our range. A lot of people ask us, ‘What’s your signature product?’ And I will say, there’s some stuff we do that nobody around here does, that have gotten really popular, I think, for that reason. Like we do kouign-amann, which is essentially like a butter croissant but the last two layers are folded inward with a thin layer of sugar so it caramelizes a little bit.”

“So we do those,” Brittani said, “and we do bialys, which are like Polish bagels. They’re fermented and then boiled. They have caramelized onion in the middle, but they don’t have holes like a traditional bagel. We started making them because we had a person say, ‘Hey, I see you have bagels. Do you do bialys?’ And I was like, ‘I can look into it’. And then after that, people were obsessed with them. So I was like, ‘All right, I guess we’ll just keep doing them.’“

Like many bakeries, the Sunflower serves breakfast sandwiches, but only until they sell out, and not the same types of sandwiches that customers would be used to seeing.

“We change those every weekend,” Brittani said. “We do bring back a pulled pork one pretty often. We actually ran it during the Super Bowl, and people really liked it. So I brought it back, and it keeps selling out, which is great. So far, all the specials have been really well received, even when we get creative. I was surprised that one went because, you know, brie isn’t everyone’s favorite, and blueberry/red onion jam is like kind of out there. I didn’t think anyone was really going to be into it. But we sold out. I was like, ‘OK….’”

The Randalls said they spend the week leading up to Saturday and Sunday baking for a few wholesale accounts but mostly stocking up on baked goods for their weekend customers.

“We make pies,” Brittani said. “A lot of pies. We do fresh doughnuts; we have glazed and we do different filled ones. Sometimes we do a specialty one depending on how crazy the week is. We do a variety of different glazes and then we do yeasted filled doughnuts. We always do Boston cream and then our lemon curd lemon doughnut is super popular. Everything’s completely from scratch, including lemon curd. People often tell us it’s the best doughnut they’ve ever had.”

“I feel like the longer we’ve been here, the more our customers are willing to try stuff that they normally wouldn’t,” Jake said. “If you get here at the beginning of the day, you can have free rein of anything. But if you get here later and things are sold out, if you take a chance on something random, it’s still going to be really good.”

Sunflower Bakery and Cafe
Where: 50 Broad St., Nashua, 505-0794, thesunflowerbakerycafe.com
When: open Saturdays and Sundays, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

The Weekly Dish 26/03/26

• New pie: The new brick and mortar iteration of Slightly Crooked Pies (1209 Elm St., Manchester, 661-4575, slightlycrookedpies.com) will open with a ribbon cutting Thursday, March 26, at 1 p.m. Pie will be served.

• New Manchester liquor store: In a March 12 press release the New Hampshire Liquor Commission announced the opening of a new Liquor & Wine Outlet in downtown Manchester. “The 12,000-square-foot Manchester Outlet offers more than 4,000 wines and spirits,” the announcement read, “after NHLC transformed the former Rite Aid building at 1631 Elm Street. This North End location is the third NH Liquor & Wine Outlet serving New Hampshire’s largest city.” This store replaces the NH Liquor & Wine Outlet previously located at 1100 Bicentennial Drive at North Side Plaza in Manchester.

• Lions Club pancake breakfast: On Sunday, March 29, the Amherst Lions Club will hold its 52nd Annual Pancake Breakfast at Wilkins School (80 Boston Post Road, Amherst) from 8 a.m. until noon. According to a March 12 press release, the breakfast will include a children’s coloring contest with prizes in three age groups, balloon creations by Pammy the Balloon Twister, visits from Amherst Fire & Rescue, Police and CERT, showcasing their vehicles, a spring raffle featuring a basket containing $100 worth of scratch tickets, and free eye screenings offered to all ages. Visit e-clubhouse.org/sites/amherstnh.

• Smoothing over a crumby Easter: There will be a special Easter-themed cookie decorating workshop by Confections by Kate (723-5187, confectionsbykatenh.com) Wednesday, April 1, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Wine on Main (9 N. Main St., Concord, 897-5828, wineonmainnh.com). Learn the ins and outs of cookie decorating, while tasting four different wines. Tickets are $71.21 through the Confections By Kate website.

• Greek pastries from scratch: Learn to make spanakopita and tyropitakia rounds by hand, Sunday, March 29, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Ya Mas Greek Taverna & Bar (275 Rockingham Park Blvd., Salem, 635-4230, yourmythbeginsatyamas.com). Tickets include samples of spanakopita and tyropitakia and a two-course brunch, and cost $81.88 through eventbrite.com.

Blood Orange Margarita

  • 1 1/2 ounces blanco tequila – I like Tanteo, which has a kiss (un beso?) of jalapeño to it. 3/4 ounce triple sec – for citrusy sweetness, to offset the bitterness of the Campari
  • 1/4 ounce Campari – for color and a little bitterness to offset the sweetness of the triple sec
  • 3/4 ounce fresh squeezed blood orange juice
  • 3/4 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice
  • 1/4 ounce simple syrup
  • Another ounce fresh squeezed blood orange juice

Add ice to a cocktail shaker.

Ask your digital assistant to play “Cancion del Mariachi” from the El Mariachi soundtrack.Set it to repeat several times. Chuckle evilly. Take a swig of tequila if you have to. Attitude is everything with this drink.

Add the tequila, triple sec, Campari, lime juice and simple syrup, then shake to the rhythm of la musica. It helps to stand in front of a mirror while you do this, practicing your “You want some of this?” look. If one of the kids comes in to see what you’re doing, this look will chase them away and give them something to talk about in therapy later in life.

Strain the margarita over fresh ice in a rocks glass, then top with a float of the remaining blood orange juice, which will give you a lovely ombre (hombre?) effect.

This is a lovely little margarita — not too boozy, with just enough tequila to remind you that in your own way, you are formidable — the cabrona of school drop-off, the machote of your fantasy football league. The blood orange is sweet, but “sweet” in the way a teenage boy would say it, while watching something explode.

Featured photo: Blood Orange Margarita. Photo by John Fladd.

Chili, chowder, local help

Saint Peter’s holds its annual fundraising cook-off

Lee O’Connor is the chairman of the Chili and Chowder Cook-Off for Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church in Londonderry, which will take place this Saturday, March 21. O’Connor said the Cook-Off has become one of the most important events of the year for St. Peter’s.

“This is an event we’ve been having for nine years,” he said. “It’s an opportunity for people to cook chili and chowder with a chance of winning prizes and a chance to support important local programs. This year we’re supporting the Liberty House in Manchester, which helps local vets get their lives back together. [The Cook-Off] has become a big community event. We have a lot of people walk in just to have some chili and chowder and support a local cause. We probably have 100 people there and a lot of people just walk in just to support the event.”

The competition is open to anyone who wants to participate, O’Connor said. “Anybody can cook. We typically have 25 to 30 entries of either chili or chowder. People can either email our church or contact me, or in worst case, just walk in with their entry. There’s a $10 entry fee to submit a recipe, but with the opportunity to win several prizes. We’re excited to invite everybody to cook and to eat.”

While cooks are welcome at the cook-off, O’Conner said, anyone with an appetite is encouraged to come taste the entries and decide for themselves what the rankings should be. “To dine is here is the best bargain in town,” he said. “It costs $15 for all the chili and chowder you can eat.”

O’Connor said the ratio of chili to chowder varies from year to year, but there are usually more chili entrants than chowders.

“We’re encouraging folks to consider making their favorite chowder recipe,” he said, “but we’ve probably got close to 20 chili entries right now, and I think seven or eight chowders. So our judges are going to be busy.”

He said planning a strategy to appeal to the judges can be tricky.

“The judges have a judging sheet,” he said, “but these are not professional judges, so it largely comes down to their own personal taste. But the judging sheet helps them determine how much heat is in each chili. They look for meat or vegetarian flavors. Surprisingly, we have a lot of vegetarian entries that sometimes win. The winning chilis should have a distinct taste and some level of heat could be determined by the judges.” That level of heat can be pretty intense, he said. “There’s typically a couple of hot chilis that I like a lot — some five-alarm chilis.”

On the chowder side, O’Connor said, entries span the chowder spectrum.

“Clam chowder is a classic,” he said, “and so is corn, but sometimes we get … Manhattan clam chowder…. There’s some entries that border on soups that have an Italian flair; there’s some pasta in them sometimes. This is New England, so there’s seafood chowder, clam chowder, fish chowder, and corn chowder is a big one. So that’s what my wife makes.”

The secret to a winning chili or chowder, O’Connor said, will be big chunks of fresh ingredients. “I think that with chili,” he said, “having a quality meat and quality preparation is key to this. I think typically people who put time and effort into preparing meat tend to do better here.”

And it doesn’t hurt to look good.

“Contestants have to bring chili in a crock pot already heated,” he said. “And if it looks good in the pot and maybe has some condiments that you bring with it, those tend to catch the judge’s eye as well. Presentation is important.”

Ninth Annual Chili Chowder Cookoff
When: Saturday, March 21
Where: Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church, 3 Peabody Row, Londonderry, 437-8333, stpeterslondonderry.org
Cooks can register by signing up at church or emailing the church at church@stpeterslondonderry.org. There is a $10 entry fee. There is also a kids’ dessert competition, which is free to enter. Tasting tickets cost $15, $7 for ages 10 and under, according to the church’s Facebook page. The event will also include piñatas for kids and raffles, the post said.

Featured photo: Last year’s judges. Courtesy photo.

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