Category: Food

News from the local food scene

By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com

• Noodles at Nash: The Lucky Lantern Noodle Restaurant has opened at The Nash Casino (Pheasant Lane Mall, 310 DW Highway, Nashua, thenashcasino.com). It is one of three sit-down restaurants in the casino. As its name suggests, the restaurant specializes in Asian and Asian-inspired dishes, particularly those with noodles. It is open seven days a week, from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m.

• Harpoon in NH: Harpoon will open its first brewery and pub in New Hampshire on Sunday, June 15. The brewpub will be located at 215 Canal St., Manchester, in the Queen City Center. In a June 5 press release, the Harpoon parent company said the new location will include an experimental brewery, restaurant, tap room, private event space, and an outdoor beer garden. Visit harpoonbrewery.com.

• Two great tastes: There will be a chocolate and wine pairing event at Wine on Main (9 N. Main St., Concord, 897-5828, wineonmainnh.com) Thursday, June 12, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Chocolate expert Maggie Prittie will guide participants through tasting four single-origin chocolates alongside four complementary wines. Tickets for this 21+ event are $39.19 through eventbrite.com and include chocolate and wine samples as well as a lesson on the history of chocolate and how to taste it.

• Better than breakfast in bed: Celebrate Father’s Day with a “Dad and Me Pizza Cooking Class” at Uno Pizzeria & Grill (15 Fort Eddy Road, Concord, 226-8667) on Saturday, June 14, from noon to 2 p.m. This is an interactive cooking class where dads and the kids can bond over making deep dish pizza from scratch. Chefs will guide participants through every step from preparing the dough to adding favorite toppings. Adult tickets are $44.52 and children’s tickets are $12.51 through eventbrite.com.

• Order online for this food fest: Starting Sunday, June 15, Temple B’nai Israel (210 Court St., Laconia, 524-7044, tbinh.org) will accept orders for its annual Jewish Food Festival. Dozens of types of traditional Jewish dishes will be available for drive-thru pickup on Saturday, July 19, and Sunday, July 20. Orders will be accepted at tbinh.org/shop-page through Monday, July 7.

By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com

I really wanted a serious blender.

Not one of the relatively inexpensive ones from a big-box store. Not a cool, chromey, vintage one that would be at home in a diner. A serious blender, the type you can watch chew up hockey pucks and Barbie dolls on the internet.

My wife tried to deflate this ambition with logic — namely, why would I want to do any of these things, particularly grinding up hockey pucks? “We are not spending $500 on a blender,” she informed me in a tone that would not allow for any argument.

An hour later, after some internet research, I informed her that we could buy a reconditioned professional blender for a relative bargain of just over $200. I took the jar on my dresser that I had been dropping change into for the past year to change-counting machine at the bank. It made short work of my jar of change and returned two British pounds, $1.40 in Canadian change, two buttons and almost $300 in Blender Money.

Upon returning home, I informed my wife that we would have to pick up a change-of-address form at the post office.

“Why’s that?” she asked.

“Because we’re moving to Blender Town, Baby!” I replied, waving a wad of cash in the air.

I subsequently bought a red Vitamix blender and named him Steve.

This was Steve’s project this past weekend:

Fluffy Lemonade

• 1½ cups of ice cubes
• Zest of one lemon
• ¼ cup (2 ounces) fresh squeezed lemon juice
• ¼ cup (2 ounces) heavy cream
• ¼ cup (2 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
• ¼ cup (2 ounces) London dry gin

Combine all ingredients in your blender (Steve).

Blend on low speed, until the ice stops rattling around, then really put the spurs to the blender, and whip the mixture up for 30 seconds or so, until it is light and fluffy in texture.

Pour into a Collins glass and drink with a straw, while your digital assistant plays “Mr. Blue Sky” by the Electric Light Orchestra. Hold up your glass, as in a toast, and gently clink it against the rim of your blender jar. Your blender will smile to itself contentedly.

Given that some of the ingredients — I’m looking at you, condensed milk — are pretty heavy, this is a beautifully light and delightful blender drink. It’s super lemony, but not too sour. The gin hides in the background. The overall drink is lightly sweet, and super refreshing.

Featured photo: Amanda’s Savory Cheesecake. Photo by John Fladd.

By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com

“Why don’t you ever make anything for me?” Amanda asked.

“How about some cookies?”

“No,” she said with a frown. “I’m keto.”

“Some muffins? I could make them out of almond flour?”

“Will they have sugar in them?”

“So, what would you like?”

“You know me,” she repeated with a bright smile. “I’ll like anything you make.”

Amanda’s Savory Cheesecake

Crust
Two 8-ounce bags of roasted, salted pecans
3 Tablespoons butter, melted
1 egg white

Cheesecake filling

Three 8-ounce blocks of cream cheese
½ cup (113 g) sour cream
3 Tablespoons corn starch
1 teaspoon kosher or coarse sea salt
2 eggs
2 Tablespoons capers, drained
1/3 cup (20 g) chopped chives (well, snipped actually; chives prefer to be cut with scissors)
½ 14-ounce can of artichoke hearts – four or five hearts
2 Tablespoons balsamic vinaigrette
Preheat oven to 350°F.

Grease a 9-inch springform baking pan, and line the bottom with parchment paper. Welcome the lined pan to the team, and set it aside to prepare for its upcoming mission.

Chop pecans in a blender, then transfer them to a mixing bowl. Mix the chopped pecans with the melted butter and the egg white, then transfer the mixture to the springform pan, and press it down with the bottom of a measuring cup or a coffee mug. Bake it for 20 minutes, then set it aside to cool for a few minutes, while you make the cheesecake filling. Reduce the oven temperature to 250°F.

Drain the canned artichoke hearts, then squeeze them by hand — hard, like they owe you money. They will break apart, which is what you want. Put the broken-spirited artichoke hearts into a small bowl, and add the balsamic vinaigrette. Leve the two to marinate for 15 or 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, use an electric mixer to beat the cream cheese, corn starch, sour cream and salt together until they are light and fluffy. Put the corn starch in first to avoid poof-ing. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber or silicone spatula, then beat in the eggs, one at a time.

Add the capers, chives and now thoroughly inebriated artichoke hearts to the cream cheese mixture and stir them in by hand.

Transfer the mixture to the springform pan, on top of the pecan crust. Smooth it out with the silicone spatula or the back of a large, wet spoon.

Place the cheesecake on the middle rack of your oven. (You remembered to turn the temperature down, didn’t you?) Bake it for 45 minutes, then turn the oven off, but leave the cheesecake in it for another hour. Do not open the door.

After the oven and the cheesecake have calmed down together, take the cheesecake out and leave it on the counter to continue pulling itself together. Yes, 250°F is what we would call a “gentle” heat, but it can still be traumatic to a cheesecake.

Serve at room temperature, in modest-sized slices. While it’s not a sweet dish, it is very rich, and one slice per guest will be perfect. A glass of prosecco or a cup of oolong tea will be a perfect accompaniment.

Amanda’s verdict?

“This is like the best dip I’ve ever had. But it’s a CHEESECAKE!.”

Nomad Bakery

Cheryl Holbert’s bread is available weekly at Benedikt Dairy (97 Shirley Hill Road, Goffstown, 801-7056, benediktdairy.com), on the menu at The Grind Cafe (5 W. Broadway, Derry, 260-2411, facebook.com/thegrindnh), on selected dates at the Derry Homegrown Farm & Artisan Market (1 W. Broadway, Derry, 479-5918, derryhomegrown.org) on Wednesdays, June through September. She also accepts commissions through her Facebook page, facebook.com/NomadBakery.

Featured photo: Amanda’s Savory Cheesecake. Photo by John Fladd.

A Derry baker creates art through bread

By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com

Cheryl Holbert is more than a baker and more than an artist. She creates works of art — mostly landscapes and scenes from nature — from brightly colored bread dough. The result is almost better than a painting or a sculpture, which would have the disadvantage of not making a good sandwich.

Holbert said she started baking professionally in 2014. Before that, she worked as a reporter.

“I worked for museums,” she remembered. “I was a tapestry artist. I ran a program at the Currier Museum for a while, weaving and all of that. I always loved bread; I grew up in a family that loved bread. It was my grandmother who was really the baker. I started baking bread, honestly, because after I moved away from my family in New Jersey I was homesick so I just started baking it at home.”

At the same time, she was also exploring her Jewish roots.

“I was discovering my heritage,” she said, “some roots I wasn’t familiar with and the two just dovetailed where I started baking and being very interested in the bread that my grandmother had made from her Eastern European culture — challah bread [a traditional braided Jewish egg bread]. And I ended up starting a small business, from my home, a homestead food operation, where I started baking bread for the farmers markets. I got a license so I could do it wholesale. And I started baking.”

This, Holbert said, is where her weaving background came in.

“During Covid,” she said, “everyone, including me, started a sourdough starter. Sourdough people started braiding and doing challah braiding. There were a lot of platforms at the time reaching out and looking for bakers with experience making braided beads. I started a relationship with King Arthur, contracting with them as a guest teacher. I began teaching a lot virtually.”

A series of family health emergencies kept Holbert tethered to her home, and creative baking gave her an outlet for her talent, and to support her family.

Holbert uses local and organic ingredients to make her breadscapes.

“I color the bread with food ingredients,” she said, “actual food ingredients. So in my spectrum of the reds to pinks, I use pureed beets. And then I might add beet root powder to make a little more red than a magenta. Yellow is definitely turmeric. I might add olive oil in the dough for that because that’s going to affect what kind of yellow that’s going to be. I love very highly saturated earth colors. I love saturation. I love contrast. And for me, because bread is going to put kind of a brownish hue on everything, I want to get as much color as possible, and this is the route I need to take to get that.”

Holbert usually tints her doughs before baking a breadscape, she said. “The colors will retain, if not brighten, the interior. When it’s on the exterior, you have to do some things to retain as much color as possible because it’s going to turn brown, but you can do certain things to control that a little bit. And then I have painted more on the surface design with [ingredients] like chocolate powder or espresso to create designs. You have to be intentional about what you think, where it’s going to land in the final piece.”

“It really has to do with the years of really having a passion about and developing a growing and evolving understanding of how all the natural elements work,” she said. “For me, that creates the art I want with this.”

Nomad Bakery

Cheryl Holbert’s bread is available weekly at Benedikt Dairy (97 Shirley Hill Road, Goffstown, 801-7056, benediktdairy.com), on the menu at The Grind Cafe (5 W. Broadway, Derry, 260-2411, facebook.com/thegrindnh), on selected dates at the Derry Homegrown Farm & Artisan Market (1 W. Broadway, Derry, 479-5918, derryhomegrown.org) on Wednesdays, June through September. She also accepts commissions through her Facebook page, facebook.com/NomadBakery.