Category: Food

News from the local food scene

By John Fladd

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• New head of NH Food Bank: New Hampshire Food Bank (700 E. Industrial Park Drive, Manchester, 669-9725, nhfoodbank.org) has appointed a new Executive Director. Formerly the head of New Generation, Elsy Cipriani began her new role at New Hampshire Food Bank on March 3. Cipriani has worked in organizations helping vulnerable people in California, New Jersey, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

• Steel Chef: Tickets are still available for theNew Hampshire Food Bank’s 9th Annual Steel Chef Challenge, to be held Saturday, March 15, at the Doubletree Expo Center (700 Elm St., Manchester, 625-1000). Approximately 680 guests will watch a live, timed cooking competition featuring some of New Hampshire’s best chefs. As the competition heats up, guests will enjoy a fabulous dinner curated by celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson. Proceeds will benefit the New Hampshire Food Bank. Tickets are $150 each at nhfoodbank.org/steelchef.

• Mystery dinner: Averill House Vineyard (21 Averill Road, Brookline, 244-3165, averillhousevineyard.com) will host “The Leprechaun’s Secret,” a four-course mystery food and wine pairing, Saturday, March 15, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Dress in your finest Irish attire and prepare for an evening of sipping, sleuthing and savoring. Enjoy Averill House Vineyard wines alongside an Irish-inspired secret menu. Tickets start at $59 through exploretock.com.

• Crafts and corned beef: The Capital City Fine Spring Craft & Artisan Show will take place at the Capital City Sports Complex (10 Garvins Falls Road, exit 13 of I-93, in Concord) on Saturday, March 15, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday, March 16, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The event will feature 100 exhibitors including craftsmen, artists, authors and specialty food makers, according to a press release. The event will also feature green beer and corned beef to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day as well as eats from Sidelines Cafe, the release said. Admission costs $5 (valid both days) and is free for ages 14 and under. See GNECraftArtisanShows.com.

• Celebrating whiskeys: Kick off St. Patrick’s Day weekend with a whiskey dinner at Unwined (1 Nashua St., Milford, 213-6703, unwinednh.com) on Thursday, March 13, at 6 p.m. The four-course dinner will feature some of Unwined’s favorite whiskey picks. Doors will open at 5:30 p.m. with a welcome cocktail, and each course will feature its own pairing of whiskey or whiskey cocktails. Tickets are $125.

• Chili cook-off: St. Peter’s Episcopal Church (Mammoth Road at 3 Peabody Row Londonderry; stpeterslondonerry.org) will hold its 8th annual Chili and Chowder Cook-Off on Saturday, March 22, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. To compete with a chili or chowder, register at 4:15 p.m.; kids can compete in a Kids’ Dessert Competition. Admission for attendees is a $15 donation ($7 for children 10 and under).

By John Fladd

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This recipe came from what most of us call an “Old Church Lady Cookbook.” “Old” in this case refers to the cookbook. For a few decades in the mid-1900s, many small organizations made up mostly of women would raise money by publishing cookbooks with recipes contributed by the women themselves. These recipes often give less-than-precise instructions, like “cook until done” or “add a lump of bacon fat about the size of a hen’s egg.”

This particular recipe came from Mrs. Ralph E. Parmentier of Exeter. It is in her own handwriting, which is an adventure to decipher. “Pints,” “lumps” and “pinches” have been converted to more contemporary measurements of cups, grams and blobs.

Corn Fritters

2 cups (240 g) all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

1 Tablespoon sour cream – the original recipe calls for sour milk. You find this in many old recipes; it’s there to add acidity to react with the baking soda and help fluff up the fritters as they fry. Sour cream, buttermilk, or plain Greek yogurt will work just as well.

2 teaspoons sugar

1 cup (135 g) corn kernels

1 medium-spicy chili pepper – a serrano or Fresno – seeded and finely chopped

1⅓ cup (300 g) whole milk

Heat 2 to 3 inches of oil in a pot to 350°F.

Whisk the dry ingredients and sugar together in a medium-sized bowl. Stir in the corn, chili and milk, until it is the consistency of thick pancake batter.

Use a one-tablespoon scoop to measure the batter for frying. If you don’t have one, use two spoons to drop blobs, each “the size of a walnut,” according to the original recipe.

Drop the blobs of batter into the hot oil, being careful not to crowd the pot. You hear this a lot in recipes. What it means is that each blob of dough that you drop into the hot oil will reduce its temperature. You want to keep the oil as close to 350 degrees as possible. That’s hot enough to cook the fritters all the way through, but not hot enough to burn them easily. If the oil is hot enough, the fritters will bubble in the hot oil. That is caused by steam forcing its way out of the cooking batter. As long as the steam is pushing itself out, very little oil can make its way into the fritter, which would make it greasy.

Fry each fritter until it is deeply golden brown on both sides. If you managed to drop fairly round blobs into the oil, weirdly, the fritters are likely to flip themselves over in the oil, as first one side becomes slightly lighter from losing water in the form of steam, then the other, as the top-heavy blob flops over, like a fat man standing up in a canoe. “They can’t order me around, Martha,” you can imagine the fritter saying belligerently to one of its fellows. “I’m a full-grown fritter and I’ll make my own decisions, than-you-very-much! Whoa!” Flip. Gurgle.

This process will take eight minutes or so. This is an excellent opportunity to listen to an audiobook. I would suggest Alfred Molina reading Treasure Island.

Drain the fritters on a paper towel or a brown paper grocery bag. Like most fried foods, they are best straight out of the oil, hot and crispy. Mrs. Parmentier suggests serving them with maple syrup, which is an excellent idea. I’d also add a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

If you get distracted from the fritters by a shocking confession from a family member or something, and they cool off and lose their crispness, they can be restored easily in your air fryer.

Featured photo: Corn Fritters. Photo by John Fladd.

The challenge of putting less in a cookie

By John Fladd

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It’s probably fair to say that Jill Robbins’ cookie journey started largely because of classroom snacks.

“My son has food allergies,” Robbins said, “and I started my company so that kids like him could join in socially when treats are served. I wanted to make it easier for anybody who serves [food] to include people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to join in. And pretty much every social occasion revolves around baked treats, which are pretty much always made with allergens like milk and wheat and eggs and butter.” Add to that any ingredients that might have been made or processed in a facility with foods like peanuts or tree nuts, and snacking can quickly get complicated and problematic.

Robbins’ company, Homefree (homefreetreats.com), in Windham, makes cookies that as many people on restricted diets as possible can enjoy.

“[Our cookies] are free of the top 14 food allergens. The top nine are the ones you have to put on a label, and those are peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, dairy, wheat, soy, fish, shellfish, and more recently sesame,” she said. Additionally they are vegan, certified gluten-free, and kosher pareve, meaning that they have been approved for someone following kosher dietary guidelines.

Homefree makes packaged cookies for retail sales and food service, including chocolate chip, double chocolate chip, vanilla, lemon, chocolate mint and ginger snap.

“We now have large, soft, chocolate chip cookies and brownies that we’ve just started offering to food service,” Robbins said. “So people could request it from food service if there’s, say somebody works somewhere that has a break room where they provide snacks or a cafeteria or if there’s a hotel or a hospital or a cafe or a school or a camp, they can all get the large soft cookies and the brownies.”

Starting a business, particularly a food business, can be complicated, but meeting Robbins’ goals gave her an extra layer of difficulty.

“There’s something called Safe Quality Food, or SQF,” she said, “that’s a very high-level food quality and safety certification. Just the annual audit is three days long. It’s on everything related to food quality and safety, documentation and traceability”

Sourcing reliably pure ingredients has been another challenge. Because it is a common allergen, Homefree can’t use wheat flour.

“We use gluten-free whole oat flour,” Robbins said. “Our oat flour comes from a place that does gluten-free oats.”

Ultimately, one of Homefree’s biggest objectives is making a good cookie.

“There was a company that did a survey,” Robbins said. “They took our single-serve bags of chocolate chip mini cookies and bags of Chips Ahoy, and sent them to over 400 women and asked all kinds of questions. Basically, 73 percent preferred Homefree. So it’s a regular, good cookie, but one that essentially everybody can eat.”

“When I think about what we sell,” Robbins said, “it’s not cookies. It’s inclusiveness in the form of cookies.”

Homefree

See homefreetreats.com for more information including a list of stores selling the cookies.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

News from the local food scene

By John Fladd

[email protected]

• New player in the enchilada game: A new Mexican restaurant has opened in Manchester. Raices Authentic Mexican Cuisine (2626 Brown Ave., 932-2770, raicesnh.com) is described on its website as “a heartfelt tribute to the matriarch of our family, Margarita Trejo … and serves authentic Mexican dishes in a modern oasis.” Open Sunday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.

• New Hampshire’s fizzy history: The New Hampshire Historical Society (30 Park St, Concord, 228-6688, nhhistory.org) will host a lecture Saturday, March 8, at 2 p.m. on “The Great Granite Fizz: New Hampshire’s Long History with Sodas and Tonics,” presented by historian and Moxie enthusiast Dennis Sasseville. Admission is free for Society members, $10 for nonmembers. No registration required.

• A great deal of wine, presumably Italian: The Artisan Hotel at Tuscan Village (17 Via Toscana, Salem) will host a Grand Wine-Tasting and Food Festival on Saturday, March 9, from 5 to 8 p.m. More than 50 exceptional wines from renowned vineyards will be available for sampling, along with dishes from Tuscan Village’s culinary team and local partners. Stroll through a beautifully designed ballroom, mingle with winemakers and discover your next favorite pairing in an elegant setting. Tickets start at $85 through the Tuscan Brands website, tuscanbrands.com/store/events.

• Good Eats and good music: As part of hisLast Bite Tour, musician and celebrity chef Alton Brown will perform at the Chubb Theatre (Chubb Theatre at CCA, 44 S. Main St., Concord, 225-1111, ccanh.com) on Tuesday, March 11, at 7:30 p.m. Brown will reflect on his decades in food media, present several of his favorite culinary mega-hacks, sing some of his funny food songs and offer a unique culinary variety show. Tickets start at $63.75 through the Capitol Center website.