Category: Food

News from the local food scene

• More markets: The new Dunbarton farmers market takes place Fridays through Aug. 29, from 3 to 7 p.m. at Stark Farm (30 Stark Lane, Dunbarton). It will feature fresh produce, baked goods, handcrafted items and more.

• Charcuterie board building: Vine 32 Wine and Graze Bar (Bedford Square, 25 S. River Road, Bedford, 935-8464, vinethirtytwo.com) will host an interactive charcuterie workshop Sunday, Aug. 10, at 2:30 p.m. Each participant will receive a handcrafted wooden board to take home, three cheeses, two meats, crackers, spreads, nuts and more, as well as a $10 wine credit toward the self-pour wine machines, to use during the workshop. You can also bring a guest to share in the board-building for no additional charge. Tickets are $90 per board.

• Nashua Burger Month: August is Nashua’s third annual Burger Month. Featured burger makers for Week 2 include Fody’s Great American Tavern (9 Clinton St., Nashua, 577-9015, fodystavern.com) and The Hidden Pig (53 Main St., Nashua, 402-9640, thehiddenpig.com/nashua) until Sunday, Aug. 16, and Surf Seafood (207 Main St., Nashua, 595-9293, surfseafood.com) until Monday, Aug. 17. The Enjoy Nashua page on Facebook (from the city) will highlight and describe each week’s specialty burgers. Customers can snap a photo of their burger from a participating restaurant and post it with the tag #NashuaBurgerMonth (privacy set to Public) for a chance to win a $100 gift card to one of many Nashua establishments.

• Spice-lover’s dinner: LaBelle Winery Amherst (345 Route 101, Amherst, 672-9898, labellewinery.com) will host a Spice-Lover’s Four-Course Dinner on Friday, Aug. 8, from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Each spicy course will be paired with one of LaBelle’s wines. Tickets are $109.86.

• Mousaka making: Join Ya Mas Greek Taverna & Bar (275 Rockingham Park Blvd., Salem, 635-4230, yamasnh.com) to learn how to make mousaka from Ya Mas’ secret family recipe. This class will include a detailed recipe and a hands-on lesson to make your own 9-by-14-inch pan of mousaka to take home and bake. Tickets are $108.55.

A friend of mine was going through a difficult time so I wrote her a story. This story involved a heroine with her name, who was also going through a sort of anti-Mardi Gras, only to discover she had magical abilities. She was able to work magic through music — a fairly well-established fantasy trope. The twist to this story is that the main character of the story learned to warp the fabric of reality ever so slightly by playing a kazoo.

As my stories go, this one turned out pretty well, and my friend was pleased with it.

Because I rarely know when to leave well enough alone, I asked my friend’s permission to make a video version of her story for my internet channel. Out of, I suspect, a sense of morbid curiosity to see where this would go, she said to please, by all means, go ahead. One thing led to another — as it frequently does with my projects — and I ended up commissioning a musician in Guatemala to record a 30-second kazoo cover of “Livin’ la Vida Loca.”

As one does.

So, you know how sometimes you get a song stuck in your head, nothing you do manages to dislodge it, and you just have to let it run its course, until your brain fixates on something else? It turns out that this sort of situation is only exacerbated by hearing that same song performed on a kazoo.

Which, in a round-about way, is how we find ourselves making a cocktail inspired by this state of affairs:

1½ ounces pineapple rum

½ ounce Aperol – this is a bright red, bitter-sweet Italian liqueur

½ ounce elderflower liqueur – I prefer St. Germain. It gives a cocktail a lovely floral taste and comes in one of the prettiest bottles you are likely to run across.

¾ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice

1 dash of the bitters of your choice. I like to use homemade caraway bitters.

Combine all ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker, and shake for 30 seconds or so, or until your hands start to hurt.

Strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass. Garnish with a kazoo.

This is one of those multi-stage cocktails, in the sense that each flavor presents itself to your consideration individually. The flavor of caraway elbows its way to the front of the line, followed by the acidity of the lemon. The rounded flavor of the rum is there, if you look for it, as are the flavors to the liqueurs. This might be an inspired choice to have with brunch; it would pair well with an omelet and an arugula salad. This would be an excellent alternative to prosecco, with the added advantage that after three of these, it would take a person of enormous personal character not to launch into a kazoo rendition of the William Tell Overture, or “Big Spender.”

Featured photo: Pink Kazoo. Photo by John Fladd.

The Currier’s new cafe gets a new menu

Developing a new menu for the Currier Museum of Art’s new café came with a number of challenges that required creative work-arounds, but for Chef Meghan Barry, that played to her strengths.

“Being creative,” Barry said, “is probably one of my strongest points.” But working around the constraints of putting the new Tidewater Café in an art museum was tricky, she said.

Because of the need to keep the air in the cafe more-or-less grease-free — giant, high ceilings and delicate, priceless pieces of art pretty much require this — Barry had to build her new menu without anything fried or sauteed to order.

“There’s a separate kitchen downstairs,” she said, “where we can precook our bacon. We have two ovens down there. But during service there’s no way we can go from the downstairs to the upstairs. There’s a small induction burner downstairs and we only use it just to grill our chicken. We have a little grill. Yeah, that’s pretty much it.”

A partial solution to these restrictions, Barry said, was to focus on brunchy foods.

“At the Currier, it’s breakfast all day,” she said. ”So it’s a brunch menu and lunch. We have breakfast burrito, we have avocado toast, we have teas, all of it.” Barry is particularly proud of the sophisticated cold dishes that she and her staff have come up with. “I definitely want to say our marinated tomato and burrata salad is super-popular. It’s made from fresh romaine lettuce, marinated red and yellow tomatoes, and burrata cheese, with a balsamic reduction, with a no-nut pesto.” Burrata, she explained, is a ball of fresh mozzarella, with heavy cream inside. “That cream is called stracciatella.”

Ali Goldstein, the Currier’s director of marketing and communications, said creating a sophisticated and comfortable atmosphere has been a high priority for the new café.

“If you can imagine a neighborhood café,” Goldstein said, “where you love going there, you love the menu, everything’s fresh, but it’s at the heart of a world-class art museum. That meeting in the middle is where Tidewater Café at the Currier comes in. It’s equal parts neighborhood cafe and art museum, if you can imagine those two things together. [Visitors] can enjoy a meal or a cookie or a coffee alongside visiting the cafe. People more and more want that full experience of not just checking out the latest show, but also being able to sit down halfway through, get something to drink or have lunch with your family. And really the hope is that this will be a beautiful gathering place to do that.”

The Tidewater Café
Where: inside the Currier Museum of Art, 150 Ash St., Manchester, 669-6144, currier.org
Hours: open Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
View the menu at currier.org/tidewater-cafe.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Great North Aleworks is looking for an animal star

For the fourth year, Great North Aleworks in Manchester is partnering with the Animal Rescue League of NH for a Paw Prints Beer Label fundraiser.

“It’s very exciting,” said Charlotte Williams, the Director of Development for the Animal Rescue League. “It’s an opportunity for people to nominate their beloved pets, past or present. The pets who get the most votes will be on cans of a limited, small-batch production by Great North, and the label will feature a picture of four fantastic pets.” This will be a set of four different cans, she said, with one pet featured on each can.

For the first three years of this fundraiser, Williams said, the beer cans featured dogs, “but this year it’s for all types of pets.” A wide variety of animals have been nominated by their owners, so far, she said. “We have rabbits. We have a sheep. We have a pig, and a donkey, and even a starfish. And, of course, we have lots of cats and dogs as well.”

Pet owners pay $10 to nominate a pet and then, through Aug. 4, friends, family and any other pet/beer enthusiasts can pay $1 to vote for one of the nominated pets.

“On certain Fridays,” Williams said, “two votes will be the same price as one. We call it a ‘Yappy Hour.’”

Williams said the response to this year’s competition has been overwhelming.

“We’ve just been blown away,” she said. “In the past we might have [had] 40 to 60 dogs nominated. We’ve had 221 pets nominated so far this year. We’ve raised over $17,000 so far. It’s been an incredible response.”

On Saturday, Sept. 20, the beer with the winning pets on the label will be revealed at a special can-release party at Great North Aleworks, where the beer will be for sale, as long as supplies last. This will be a very limited run of beer, said Brian Parda of Great North Alweworks. “It will probably be around 30 or 35 cases,” he said, “with six four-packs to a case.” The Paw Prints Ale will only be available at the brewery, he said.

This year, the Paw Prints beer will be a blonde ale, he said.

“We’ve done a couple different styles [for this event] over the years,” he said. “We landed on Blonde Ale, something that we’re releasing in September … Septembers tend to still be quite warm, so we thought that would be something flavorful and refreshing, whether you drink an IPA or you like to drink a lager that you can enjoy.”

Not surprisingly, the can reveal party will be pet-friendly.

“A lot of our employees own dogs and love dogs,” Parda said. “…We are as dog-friendly as we are legally allowed to be. We are not allowed to have dogs inside the indoor space of our tasting room, but out on our patio [is permitted]. ”

Paw Prints
To nominate a pet to be on a can of “Paw Prints” Blonde Ale, or to vote for your favorite contestant, visit gogophotocontest.com/arlnh. It costs $10 to nominate a pet, and $1 to vote for one. This contest will continue until Monday, Aug. 4.
The winners of the contest will be announced on Saturday, Sept. 20, at a reveal party at Great North Aleworks (1050 Holt Ave., No. 14, Manchester, 858-5789, greatnorthaleworks.com). The beer can be purchased at the brewery while supplies last.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

News from the local food scene

• Hot Chicken and more: Sunny’s Hot Chicken (196 Lake Ave., Manchester, 674-4611) has opened, offering hot chicken wings and American, Greek and Indian favorites for eating in or takeout. It is open seven days, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Search for them on Facebook.

• Making new cocktails: Tuscan Market (Tuscan Village, 9 Via Toscana, Salem, 912-5467, tuscanbrands.com) will host a Seasonal Cocktails workshop Tuesday, Aug. 5, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Learn to mix two inspired seasonal cocktails with Tuscan Market’s mixologists. Tuscan Market describes this as “a fun, interactive class for cocktail lovers.” Food and beverages can be ordered during the class and will be added to a final bill. Tickets for this event are $65.87 through eventbrite.com.

• Formal tea for kids: Honey Cup Cafe & Tearoom (150 Bridge St., Manchester, 836-6008, honeycupnh.com) now provides a special Kids’ Tea Service, Tuesday through Friday, by reservation. One child or several will be served a formal treat tower with kid-friendly sweet and savory treats, and a bottomless pot of tea (or juice, milk or soda). The price per tier of the treat tower, which can be shared among children and their adults, is $28. There will also be kid-friendly stories and activities.

• Hidden gems among French wines: France produces some of the most well-known wines, but also some excellent lesser-known ones. Wine on Main (9 N Main St, Concord, 897-5828, wineonmainnh.com) will host a special summer wine class to teach you about France’s hidden gems. On Wednesday, Aug. 6, from 6:30 to 8 p.m., learn about selections from places like Cahors, Languedoc, Cotes du Roussillon, Savoie, Corsica and more. The cost is $35 per person through Wine on Main’s website and includes six wines and light snacks. Participation is limited to 20 people.

• Dinner and cigars: The Bedford Village Inn’s annual Cigar Dinner is slated for Thursday, Aug. 14, at 6 p.m. The dinner includes a cocktail hour with passed hors d’oeuvres followed by a three course meal with each course paired with a cigar and an alcoholic beverage. Tickets cost $150 per person, 21+.