Category: Food

A trio of mac

The Goat expands on the idea of traditional macaroni and cheese

Erica Fleury has given a lot of thought to macaroni and cheese. She is the owner of The Goat in Manchester, and she considers mac and cheese a very important food.

“I think it goes back to your childhood,” she said. “Everybody probably associates [macaroni and cheese] with their childhood. For people of my generation, it was our comfort food when we were kids. So I think they make that association. As a kid in the ’80s I definitely had Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, and my mom would make a homemade baked one once in a while; that was always good. And then as I got older I preferred Annie’s white cheddar.”

Today macaroni and cheese plays an important role at her restaurant. In addition to an entree portion — “It comes with a slice of fresh cornbread and it’s delicious,” Fleury said — The Goat offers a flight of different interpretations of mac and cheese. (For more on specialty flights at area restaurants, see our cover story on page 8.)

“It comes with three different types of macaroni and cheese,” Fleury said. “We have our house-made cheese sauce and we have a version with barbecued brisket, a truffle bacon version, and one with buffalo chicken with blue cheese.”

To Fleury, an ideal macaroni and cheese depends on two factors, texture and cheesiness.

“I think it has to have a homemade cheese sauce with some sharp cheddar in there, so it has a little bit of a bite,” she said. “And the pasta has to have some texture — it has to be al dente — preferably spirals. That’s what we use. And then you can add specialty ingredients. [Macaroni and cheese] definitely lets you get creative. Everybody has their own version of it and their own toppings and their own way of making it. Again, I think it goes back to how you ate it from your childhood.”

The three types of macaroni and cheese on The Goat’s flight start with a common base of the same mac and cheese, Fleury said.

“Our flight has small samples of the different versions,” she said. “When you’re eating our flight, it’s more about the toppings. So the base is the same … but you still get a bunch of different flavor profiles because you have the barbecue sauce on the brisket. We cook the brisket in-house and it melts in your mouth, but not like falling apart. There are solid pieces in there, but it’s definitely slow-cooked and delicious, but not to the point where it’s like mush, you know?” This gives the dish a contrast in textures.

“Then, the Buffalo mac and cheese has Buffalo chicken,” Fleury continued. “It’s fried chicken coated in Buffalo sauce, but then there’s the drizzle of blue cheese and also blue cheese crumbles, which gives it a complex flavor. You have a lot of different flavors going on with all the versions, but [the Buffalo chicken] definitely changes up the flavor of the whole dish for sure.”

Finally there is a version of macaroni and cheese with bacon and truffles. “It’s not super papery thin bacon,” Fleury said, “and it’s not the thicker bacon that we use on some of our other dishes. We make sure it’s crispy and then dice it up and put it on top and it has some truffle oil mixed in there and it gives another really complex flavor with everything mixing together.”

“ I think people like the flight with all the creative toppings on there, the different flavors,” Fleury said, “but mostly, I think they just really like macaroni and cheese.”

Mac & Cheese flight
The Goat (50 Old Granite St., Manchester, 222-1677, goatbarnation.com/manchester) serves macaroni and cheese on its dinner menu throughout the year, but their Mac & Cheese flight is only available during cold months, usually from January through May. The Goat’s warm-weather comfort-food flight is centered around queso cheese sauce.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

The Weekly Dish 26/04/02

• Easter bake sale: The Assumption Greek Orthodox Church Ladies Philoptochos Society will hold an Easter bake sale on Saturday, April 4, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Assumption church hall (111 Island Pond Road, Manchester, 623-2045, assumptionnh.org). Spinach peta, cheese peta, Greek cookies, Greek pastry, and Easter bread will be available for sale. Quantities are limited. For information call the church office at 623-2045.

• Easter eats: LaBelle Winery (345 Route 101, Amherst; 14 Route 111, Derry; 672-9898, labellewinery.com) will host special Easter Sunday dining at its Amherst and Derry locations Sunday, April 5, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Bistro and Americus Restaurant will both serve the same three-course Easter menu at a set price. Dining takes place in LaBelle’s dining rooms and event spaces, accommodating all group sizes, from intimate gatherings to large celebrations. The cost for adults is $80, and an a la carte children’s menu will be available, with items ranging from $8 to $15. Advance reservations through the LaBelle website are highly recommended.

• April’s martini-cupcake pairing: The theme of the Copper Door’s (15 Leavy Drive, Bedford, 488-2677, or 41 S. Broadway, Salem, 458-2033, copperdoor.com) martini and cupcake pairing for April is Strawberry Shortcake. This month’s featured martini is made from Smirnoff Whipped Cream Vodka, strawberry cream liqueur, white creme de cacao, strawberry syrup, cream and fresh strawberries with a shortcake rim for $14.75. April’s cupcake features a lemon cupcake, with a strawberry preserve filling, cream cheese frosting, fresh whipped cream, a fresh strawberry and a topping of strawberry crumble, for $11.

• Wild game dinner: Join the 603 Brewery (42 Main St., Londonderry, 404-6123, 603brewery.com) to kick off New Hampshire’s Craft Beer Week with a five-course pairing dinner featuring 603 Brewery beers and a collection of game dishes. Your ticket includes a Daydreaming/603 Brewery collaboration welcoming beer poured from the cask engine, a five-course dinner and a take-home NH Pint Days 2026 collectors’ pint glass. Dishes are served as is, with no substitutions. The dinner will take place Wednesday, April 8, beginning at 6 p.m., at Cask & Vine (1 E. Broadway, Derry, 965-3454, cask.life/cask-and-vine). Tickets are $99 per person, or $79 without alcohol. To register, search “603 Brewery Wild Game Night.”

• National Deep Dish Day cooking class: UNO Pizzeria & Grill (15 Fort Eddy Road, Concord, 226-8667) will host a Deep Dish Pizza cooking class and lunch Saturday, April 4, at noon. Ticket includes pizza demonstration and pizza with a salad, a beverage and a dessert. Tickets are $64.80 through unos.com/cookingclasses.

• Maple madness: Averill House Vineyard (21 Averill Road, Brookline, 244-3165, averillhousevineyard.com) will continue to offer its popular Wine Tasting, Maple Wine Cream and Tour, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, April 3 through 5. Each tour will include a tasting of two maple-infused wines, a cup of maple-infused WineCream ice cream, a full wine cellar, winery and 1830s Tasting Room Tour, and an Averill the Elephant Embossed Souvenir wine glassm, according to the event’s eventbrite.com page where you can purchase tickets for weekends throughout April.

• BBQ Easter: KC’s Rib Shack (837 Second St, Manchester, 627-7427, ribshack.net) will host its All-You-Can-Eat Easter Buffet, Sunday, April 5, from 12 to 5 p.m. Expect smoked ham, brisket, pulled pork, ribs and more with side dishes. The cost for adults is $32, and $15 for children 5 to 10. Reserve online through facebook.com/kcsribshack.

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.

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