Category: Food

Roast beef and Italian-style pizza

Zo’s 2 opens downtown

By John Fladd

jfladd@hippopress.com

For Harpreet Singh, opening a restaurant was a leap of faith.

Singh, who opened his second restaurant, Zo’s Place 2, in Manchester in August, said he opened his first restaurant with no experience.

“It was very overwhelming,” he said. “And financially I was drained too. For 10 years I saved all my money and then I just put it in one restaurant. I didn’t get a loan for it, because I didn’t have any background. I went through a phase where I was literally crying every day.”

Singh bought a roast beef place in Nashua and threw himself into learning everything he could about running it.

“That’s where we started,” Singh said. “That’s where I learned everything.” His son was about to be born. “I told myself that before his first birthday I’d do something that he would remember his whole life, so that’s when we opened the first place.” The Singhs named it Zo’s Place, after their son. “Before his first birthday, we opened in Nashua. And then, around his second birthday, we decided to open a second place.”

Not surprisingly, when Singh was building the menu for Zo’s Place 2 he started with roast beef. “Obviously,” he said, “everybody who knows me, who knows my background, knows that roast beef is one of the things I bring wherever I go. It’s one of our signature items. It’s not just sandwiches. We do it in a calzone. It’s called roast beef three-way calzone. Basically mayo at the bottom, and then a little bit of cheese and roast beef, and we’ll put James River barbecue sauce, and then cheese at the top, and then it will be a calzone. We make a roast beef three-way pizza … we put 10 slices of roast beef on it. We want to keep our beef rare and tender. So we drizzle some barbecue sauce and mayonnaise on top of the pizza. And then we have roast beef sandwiches and also club sandwiches that we do [with roast beef]. We do a roast beef salad too.”

Singh decided to go in a different way for Zo’s pizza.

“We do hand-tossed Italian pizza,” he said. “We know that in Manchester the majority of the pizza is Greek style. And that’s what we do at our Nashua location too. But here, I wanted to hand-toss Italian pizza. It has a thinner crust, and different sauces and cheeses, too. The dough is fresh-made here in the house. Our Italian [sauce] is a little sweeter and we go lighter on cheese.”

Singh said that aside from the pizza “a lot of the menu is Greek-style. The salads that we do [are] really good, like the fresh chicken kebab salads. That’s all Greek-style. We use Greek feta with onions. And then we have gyros. We do chicken gyros, and we do lamb and beef gyros. We have rice bowls, steak tip rice bowl, chicken kebabs, grilled chicken rice bowls, chicken parm rice bowl, eggplant parm rice bowl, and then veggie rice bowl. And then we have club sandwiches, which you can get with anything you want on it — tuna club, ham and cheese club, roast beef club, cheeseburger club.”

“We have a pretty solid menu.”

Singh said it was important to him to use the same ingredients in multiple dishes.

”Let’s say we bring in a new item,” he said. “If [its ingredients are] not used in all the different menu items, they’re going to sit around for one item.” On the other hand, he used eggplant parmesan as an example. “It can go in an eggplant parm rice bowl, it could be an eggplant parm sub, it could be eggplant parm ziti, it could be the eggplant on a pizza.”

Zo’s Place 2

Where: 102 Elm St., Manchester, 836-3905
Hours: Monday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 1:30 a.m., and Sundays noon to 1:30 a.m.
More: zosplace.com

Featured photo: Harpreet Singh holding a Junior Roast Beef. Photo by John Fladd.

It’s all in the spices

Egyptian food fest feeds Nashua

By John Fladd

jfladd@hippopress.com

What you have to understand about Egyptian food, according to Kyrillos Gobran, is that while it has many similarities to the foods of other Mediterranean cultures, small details make it distinct.

“When you go from one place to another,” he said, “[the foods] might look similar but the spices that are being used add very different flavors to them, and each one that you will eat will taste different even though it might be the same piece of meat.”

Gobran is a priest at St. Mary and Archangel Michael Coptic Orthodox Church in Nashua, which will hold its annual Egyptian Food Festival this weekend.

“We use cumin a lot,” he said. “We use nutmeg. We use mixtures of different kinds of spices mixed together, which is good for grilling and it just adds an Egyptian type of flavor to it.”

Gobran said the foods on offer at the festival provide a window into Egyptian culture.

“In Egypt, they love their food and they love to eat in the morning, evening, at night, and even late at night — restaurants are open for all [types of food] until the late, late hours of the night.” These are the types of foods that his church will serve at the festival, he said.

“A lot of what we offer are meats,” he said, “like the beef kabob, chicken kabob, lamb kabob, stuff like that. That’s really very authentic to Egypt. It’s very tasty, very juicy. One of the great comments that I get from people that come every year is that, we come here, we enjoy the food and we are so happy that the quality and the taste of it doesn’t change from year to another. Keep it up, keep this coming.’”

“We have shawarma,” he continued, “beef shawarma and lamb shawarma as well, and Egyptian sausage. Of course, many of the foods we offer will be vegan and non-vegan. There will be falafel, and stuffed grape leaves, and something that is one of the most famous vegetarian food in Egypt. It’s called koshary, which is like a rice mixed with brown lentils, elbow macaroni, chickpeas, and it’s flavored in a way — it has like tomato sauce on top … The flavor in it is very tasty when you mix all of these together. Of course, it’s topped with fried onions as well.”

Not everyone comes to the festival for savory foods, Gobran said.

“In terms of desserts, we have lots of them — things like baklava,” he said. Egyptian baklava is subtly different from the Greek version, he explained. “It’s different in the syrup — we don’t use as heavy a syrup. We use a little hint of vanilla, for example, just to give it a smell and a good taste to it. One of my favorite desserts that we’ll be having this year is om ali.” This is a bread-based dish made from flaky bread or pastry, soaked in sweetened milk and baked with nuts and cream. “We’re going to be having fresh mango juice as well, and so many other desserts and drinks that are related to Egypt.”

It’s probably not possible to try everything in one visit.

“Some people come for the three days,” he said, “and they try different things because they cannot try everything on the first day, so they come back and try different things every day.”

Egyptian Food Festival

When: Friday, Sept. 5, from 4 to 9 p.m.; Saturday, Sept. 6, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday, Sept. 7, from noon to 6 p.m.
Where: St. Mary and Archangel Michael Coptic Orthodox Church, 39 Chandler St., Nashua, stmarycoptsnh.org
More: Rain or shine. Admission is free. Search for Nashua Food Festival on Facebook.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

The Weekly Dish 25/09/04

News from the local food scene

• More Zizza Pizza: Zizza Authentic Pizza, a Milford pizzeria, has opened a second location at 1100 Bicentennial Drive in Manchester, specializing in up-scale pizzas and sandwiches. Open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and until 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Visit zizzapizza.com.

• Breakfast Bourbon Brunch: Flag Hill Winery and Distillery (297 N. River Road, Lee, 659-2949, flaghill.com) will celebrate the release of its newest spirit, Breakfast Bourbon, with a special brunch, Sunday, Sept. 7, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sip handcrafted welcome cocktails and build your own bloody bourbon bar. Tickets cost $60.43.

• Wine-Tasting mystery party: Wine on Main (9 N. Main St., Concord, 897-5828, wineonmainnh.com) will host Murder at Downton: A Wine Tasting Mystery Inspired by Downton Abbey on Wednesday, Sept. 10, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. There will be curated wine tastings, interactive clue rooms, and a live murder mystery set in the glamorous world of Downton Abbey. Create your own character name, team up to solve the crime; prizes await the best sleuth and most fabulous costume. Tickets are $48.80.

• Wine with history: General admission tickets are still available to the Vintage & Vine fine wine and food festival at the Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth on Thursday, Sept. 4, from 5 to 7:30 p.m., according to strawberybanke.org/vintage-vine, where you can purchase tickets.

• Local wines and bites: The Fall Food & Wine Festival will take place on Saturday, Sept. 27, from 7 to 9 p.m., at the Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St. in Nashua, featuring wine, cheese, chocolate and more, according to a press release. This 21+ event benefits End 68 Hours of Hunger — Nashua, a non profit that provides food for the 68-hour weekend between school meals, the release said. Tickets cost $25 for general admission, $35 for an extra hour of admission from 6 to 7 p.m., the release said. See tinyurl.com/3sfxvwp9 for tickets.

Life in the pits

Many years ago, we planted a peach tree. Jump forward two decades and we have more peaches than we know what to do with. Two words spring to mind: peach daiquiris.

Peach-Infused Rum

Peaches are full of delicate flavors, colors, and, er, peachiness that are alcohol-soluble. If you cut up a bunch of peaches and soak them in liquor for anywhere from a few hours to a week you will end up with something special. Don’t bother to peel them; peach skins have flavor compounds and colors that will serve you well.

Rinse your peaches, just to make sure you’re not including any dust or bugs then slice them into chunks into a large container, and cover them with rum. For an application like this, your best bet is probably to use a medium-shelf white rum. (Vodka will work perfectly well, as will whiskey. Maybe even tequila.)

I usually let it sit for four or five days, stirring or shaking it once or twice a day. When I think it’s ready, I taste a spoonful or so, then strain it through a fine-mesh strainer. If I’m feeling fancy I’ll strain it again through a coffee filter.


Peach Syrup

Wash a bunch of peaches, then dice them up. Again, I wouldn’t worry about the skins. Freeze the diced peaches for a few hours or overnight. By freezing them you’ll poke holes through all the cell walls with ice crystals.

Later, when you’ve got a little time on your hands, cook the frozen peach chunks with an equal amount (by weight) of sugar. Stir the mixture from time to time, until the juice comes to a boil, then strain that, too. If the syrup needs a little zing, squeeze a little fresh lemon juice into it, not worrying too much about measuring anything.

This syrup will last for two or three weeks in your refrigerator.

Peach Daiquiri

2 ounces peach-infused rum (see above)

1 ounce fresh-squeezed lime juice

2/3 ounce peach syrup (see above)

Combine all three ingredients, with ice, in a cocktail shaker. Shake until a frost line appears in the condensation on the shaker, then strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass.

Is this rummy? A little.

Is it limey? Just limey enough. Lime is everybody’s best friend, and it gets along beautifully in this situation.

Is it peachy? Sweet Leaping Moses on a Popsicle Stick, yes. This is the perfect drink for when a child is whining. After two or three sips, you can assure them that living is easy, that their daddy is rich, and their momma’s good-lookin’. The child’s confused silence will be a little bonus.

Featured photo: Peach Daiquiri. Photo by John Fladd.

Bonding over mushrooms

One time, at MycoCamp…

By John Fladd

jfladd@hippopress.com

Christine Gagnon is a mushroom expert, owner of the Uncanoonuc Foraging Co. (uncforaging.com), and one of the organizers of New Hampshire MycoCamp 2025, a three-day event in the forest to celebrate everything mushroomy. “Myco” is a reference to mycology, the study of mushrooms.

“Four years ago,” she said, I teamed up with two friends to organize our first ever New Hampshire MycoCamp. It consisted of a weekend away where everybody could stay together in the same location and be fed together and eat together and then go on forays to find mushrooms together and then come back and talk about mushrooms and how to identify them, all the different characteristics, where they grow — all those fun mushroom things.”

Each year since then, Gagnon said, more mushroom enthusiasts have come to MycoCamp, and the event has gotten too big for its original space.

“It was an excellent space,” she said, “and a good location, but we were outgrowing it quickly. So this year we’ll be able to [hold it] at the World Fellowship Center in Albany, New Hampshire. They have over 400 acres, they have a main lodge, a bunch of different cabins and homes, they have a couple of bunk houses, and they have camping. There’s the clearest lake that I have ever seen down a trail in the middle of the woods that nobody has access to unless they’re at camp or they have a home there. There’s a huge commercial kitchen, there’s a huge dining area, there’s a meeting space, it’s just a wonderful venue to hold an event like this.”

This event is a gathering of mushroom fans of all types, Gagnon said — academics, foragers, chefs and biologists.

“It’s like a bird-watching convention,” she said, “except that it’s mushrooms…. There are people who just study the DNA, or other people study mushrooms that are bioluminescent or study mushrooms that just react under UV light or some just look at the medicinal qualities of mushrooms. Some people study how mushrooms might break down the wood, or how they might mitigate pollution using mushrooms.”

Gagnon described the weekend’s activities.

“There will be speakers on Friday night and Saturday night,” she said. “And then afterward, there’s a big fire outside, or there’s a fireplace inside and people hang out there. … We may include a cooking demonstration with mushrooms. [During the day] we will certainly go on forays — scheduled walks into the woods — and mushrooms are gathered and brought back and spread out on tables. And then we talk about what the mushrooms are. And we, well, we separate them by species. ‘These are all the Russulas and these are all the Amanitas and how do we know that this is this and not that?’ And then we talk about them and it’s a lot of fun.”

Gagnon said you don’t have to be a mushroom expert. “You can be a total beginner … But if you’re more advanced, you’re still going to learn stuff … It’s really inclusive and it’s very educational, but also just fun.”

New Hampshire MycoCamp 2025

When: Friday, Sept. 5, through Sunday, Sept. 7
Where: Albany, New Hampshire
Registration is open now. Price depends on the type of accommodation, but tickets start at $150. Visit the event’s website by searching for “New Hampshire MycoCamp 2025.”

Featured photo: Mushroom. Courtesy photo.

To hop or not to hop?

Moving microbrews in a new direction

By John Fladd

jfladd@hippopress.com

According to Stan Tremblay, owner and head brewer of Liquid Therapy Brewery and Grill in Nashua, by definition, hops are one of the things that make a beer a beer.

“Beer at its most basic is water, hops, yeast and grain,” Tremblay said.

Tremblay said small breweries have been pushing hops really hard for the past few years, which admittedly has resulted in some very good beer.

“India Pale Ales [IPAs] such as the doubles and the triples [beers with twice or three times as much hops as a standard IPA] we’ve been seeing, have a huge amount of nuance because of the amount of [hops] that’s in there, which can mean a more vibrant beer. You’ve got beer that tastes like tropical fruit. You’ve got beer that tastes like citrus. You’ve got beer that tastes like berries. Even without using adjuncts or fruits, you can still get those flavors to really pop based on how these hops work best.” An expert brewer can extract any number of flavors, depending on how they incorporate hops.

And what are hops?

Hops are the dried flowers of a vine, Tremblay said, that are used to give beer a bitter taste — sometimes subtly, sometimes aggressively — and, in the days before pasteurization, to help preserve the beer.

“Think of a pine cone,” he said. “A pine cone has that center hard core that all these little petals are stuck to. All those petals have bits of organic material attached to them. So, depending on what you’re looking to accomplish, you can grow the whole cone in and get a certain vibe or flavor. If you’re looking to enhance that flavor, you can press the hops into pellets where they’ve taken that center vegetal mass out and it’s more the petals and the powder that’s on those petals going in. So you’re not getting as much vegetable flavor, grassy notes, hay notes, etc.”

But recently, brewers like Tremblay have started to explore other varieties of beer, with different, less hoppy flavor profiles.

“There are a lot of manufacturers that are producing lagers again on a regular basis,” he said, “or pale ales again on a regular basis. Things that are a little cheaper, things that you can find, products in the market — locally grown herbs and whatnot — that can be incorporated for Belgian styles, etc.” The most popular styles of extremely hoppy beers recently have used imported hops from New Zealand and Europe. A combination of supply and demand and recent import tariffs have made them prohibitively expensive.

“The last time I was in a beer store doing a tasting,” he said, “I saw beers that had gone up two dollars a four-pack because of these increased prices. It’s scary times, man. I just don’t see people paying $22 for the beer that I’m selling at $18. It’s going to put a pickle in everything right now. We have to branch out and do other things.”

Instead of leaning into bitterness, Tremblay said, many small breweries have been exploring fruity or even savory flavor profiles.

“There are plenty of fruit beers out there now,” he said, “[such as] one that I’m coming up with that’s going to have cranberries and orange for like a mulled orange cranberry style sour. So I’ve got that in the works, and I’ve got plenty of lemon blueberry beers that I’ve made in the past with fresh blueberries. I even made a carrot cake beer once. It was a little earthy, but you know it was still quite good. I’ve got one right now called Nacho Gose [pronounced “go-za”]. One of our claims to fame at our restaurant is our nachos. I take all of those broken chips that we can’t use, put them on a plate. Those all go into the mash. And then I use hops that provide lime notes. And then I age it with pickled jalapeños. So you get a little bit of heat, you get some of that corn note, you get those jalapeño flavors, you get some lime notes, it’s delicious. It’s actually super refreshing.”

Featured photo: Some of Liquid Therapy’s less hoppy brews. Courtesy photo.

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