Category: Food

Wine and Chocolate

Classes create pairings for dinner and dessert

Other than red roses, nothing says “valentine” more than chocolate and wine, and LaBelle Winery will capitalize on this tantalizing pairing with two classes in February, available at LaBelle’s Derry and Amherst locations. Classes will meet from 6 to 7 p.m. and admission for each session is $40.

Chocolate Desserts & Wine Pairing is described as a special wine pairing event for lovers of decadent chocolate desserts.

“This is one of my favorite classes,” said LaBelle Winery Sommelier Marie King. “We pair four delicious wines with four specially made desserts made with white, milk, dark and spiced chocolates made by our amazing pastry chef, Sara Mercier.” The wine menu for the evening will include White Chocolate Mousse paired withLaBelle Cranberry; Milk Chocolate Pot de Creme paired withLaBelle Americus; Dark Chocolate Brownie paired withLaBelle Dry Blueberry; and Chocolate Cayenne Truffle paired withLaBelle Petit Verdot.

“I like to keep the class informal, fun, and have guests leave with a little more knowledge about wine and how to pair it,” King said.

Cooking with Wine & Chocolate, facilitated by Amy LaBelle and Executive Chef Justin Bernatchez, is an entertaining interactive cooking class demonstration. Guests will have the opportunity to sample fried chicken with chocolate BBQ sauce, steak with The Winemaker’s Kitchen Cocoa BBQ Spice Blend, Mexican mole sauce, and Chocolate Decadence Dessert — each paired with a LaBelle wine.

One of the surprising things people learn about cooking with chocolate is that it can be used to make savory dishes.

“Think of Mexican mole sauce,” King said. “The sweetness is an underlying note to the savory spicy notes of the dishes. Cocoa powder and dark chocolate, which are most often used for cooking, are actually quite bitter. The sweetness we equate with chocolate is from the sugar, milk and flavorings added to the bitter cocoa.”

What makes wine and chocolate compatible?

“Everything is better when paired well,” according to King. “We like to say that pairing wine and food well elevates the enjoyment of both. Finding what is compatible or contrasting between the wine and chocolate makes for fantastic pairings that neither the food or wine can create separately.”

Although many people tend to think that red is the only wine that can be paired with chocolate, King disagrees: “It does not have to be red wine with chocolate. It especially does not work well with white or ruby chocolate. Fruit or dessert wines are also fun to pair with chocolates.”

“Milk chocolate is sweeter, has less of a perception of tannins and is creamier on the palate. Dark chocolate is more bitter; you can perceive the tannins more easily and [it’s] less creamy on the palate. You might be able to pair both with a wine that is fruit-driven but also tannic, but one chocolate will generally pair better than the other depending on which characteristic dominates,” King said.

Which wines are best paired with white chocolate? “We like to use our Cranberry and Cranberry Riesling, but I have also had success with Seyval, riesling and Shimmer. If the white chocolate has citrus notes, it makes it even easier,” King said.

King noted that rosés have “more tannins than the average white and more acidity than the average red.”

“I am a sparkling girl, so I always try to find foods to pair with sparkling wines,” she said. “Our Tempest sparkling wine is great with milk chocolate as it has raspberry notes and the bubbles help to cleanse the palate from the buttery texture.”

Chocolate Desserts & Wine Pairing
Wednesday, Feb. 7, from 6 to 7 p.m.
LaBelle Winery, 345 Route 101, Amherst
$40

Chocolate Desserts & Wine Pairing
Wednesday, Feb. 14, from 6 to 7 p.m.
LaBelle Winery, 14 Route 111, Derry
$40

Cooking with Wine & Chocolates
Thursday, Feb. 15
LaBelle Winery, 345 Route 101, Amherst
$40

Cooking with Wine & Chocolates
Wednesday, Feb. 21, from 6 to 7 p.m.
LaBelle Winery, 14 Route 111, Derry
$40

For more info or to register, visit labellewinery.com/public-winery-events

Featured photo: Wines paired with chocolates. Courtesy photo.

Taste of Bedford raises funds for DECA

High school nonprofit hosts event with eateries

If you like to eat, then Taste of Bedford is where you and your appetite will want to be on Tuesday, Jan. 30, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Bedford High School Commons, 47 Nashua Road in Bedford. The food-filled fundraiser, featuring numerous area eateries, benefits DECA, a nonprofit organization that prepares youth to be academically ready, community-oriented, professionally responsible and experienced leaders. Admission for the food fest is $15 for individuals, $45 for a family of four, or $60 for a family of five.

“Taste of Bedford is a great fundraiser for our students because it enables the community to come out and taste food from different restaurants all at the same time,” said Betsy Doyle, a business teacher and six-year faculty advisor for Bedford High School’s DECA.

“Participating restaurants serve samples of a selection of their cuisine,” Doyle said, so “it is an easy way to have dinner for a family taken care of.” The icing on the cake? “They sometimes also hand out coupons to encourage attendees to try out their business.”

According to Doyle, last year’s Taste of Bedford was very successful in promoting new businesses that weren’t even around in 2020 or 2019.

Joining the culinary celebration this year will be Alas de Frida, serving authentic Mexican food; Ben & Jerry’s ice cream; Carly’s Custom Cakes, offering pastries; El Rincon Zacatecano Taqueria; Hannaford Supermarkets; Lighthouse Local, home to dozens of local vendors and artisans who prepare everything from sweet to savory baked goods and delicatessen delights; Sweet Ginger, whose Thai cuisine includes a variety of vegetarian options; Taj India, dishes from mild to hot; The Inside Scoop, specializing in ice cream and other frozen desserts; Thousand Crane, known for Chinese and Japanese cuisine, including high-quality fresh sushi, and more.

“The Bedford High School DECA club members sell tickets to the Taste of Bedford event,” Doyle said. “All of the ticket sales get attributed to the individual student who sold the tickets, and those funds reduce their own expenses for future competitions.”

An international nonprofit career and technical student organization, DECA has more than 224,000 members throughout the United States. The Bedford High School group is one of the largest chapters in New Hampshire.

DECA’s mission is to prepare emerging leaders and entrepreneurs by holding business competitions that assess business knowledge and presentation abilities and emulate atmospheres like those of professional business conferences. Students compete through business exams, case studies, interviews and sales presentations. After competing at the New Hampshire level, winning students move on to DECA’s International Career Development Conference, a global competition held at major metropolitan areas across the United States.

“The students gain valuable experience in organizing the event and recruiting the businesses to participate,” according to Doyle, one of three faculty advisors for Bedford High School’s DECA chapter. “All of the advertisements and publicity is taken care of by the students. The running of the event itself — each is done by a student leader. This year the event is led by Brenda Sacramento Cortes, a junior at BHS. Participating restaurants will have one or two student volunteers that will help them set up, serve and break down and load up after the event concludes.”

Aside from giving DECA students real-world hands-on experience with interviewing, problem-solving, and evaluating business situations, Doyle is gratified by her involvement in Taste of Bedford. “My favorite part of the event is seeing the community come together to see what the students are doing. We often have a very high level of participation from our own faculty and staff … and the DECA students love to see them and their families at the event.”

When: Tuesday, Jan. 30, 6 to 7:30 p.m.
Where: Bedford High School, 47 Nashua Road, Bedford
Admission: individuals $15; family of four $45; family of five $60
Visit: sites.google.com/bedfordnhk12.net/bedford-taste-of-bedford/home

Featured photo: Taste of Bedford from previous year. Courtesy photo.

Irish Coffee

If you listen to Irish Coffee Enthusiasts, you will be taken aback by how complicated the process for making one is. The ICEs will go on at some length about how such-and-such a bar makes a pretty good Irish Coffee, considering it isn’t a real Irish Coffee. Apparently, an Irish Coffee isn’t legitimately authentic unless:

(1) it is made by an old, gnarled bartender with an actual Irish accent and a list of stories about growing up in a thatched hut.

(2) who pours the whiskey from an otherwise unmarked jug with three Xs on it,

(3) into a mug with coffee so strong, vaporous little ghosts float screaming from it as he stirs it

(4) while three or four drunk guys at the bar sing “Danny Boy” and weep openly.

The truth of the matter is that making good Irish Coffee isn’t particularly difficult, and it’s definitely not complicated. It is simply a matter of paying attention to details.

Making a Very Nice Cup of Irish Coffee

Fill a glass coffee mug with boiling water. Leave it to heat while you brew the coffee.

Brew 1 to 2 cups of very strong, good coffee. It doesn’t have to be expensive, single-source, hand-picked beans that have passed through a civet. Chock Full o’Nuts will do fine. Make it a little stronger than you normally would. Wash a couple of dishes or watch the prize task on Taskmaster while the coffee brews and the mug heats up.

Pour the water out of the mug, thanking it for a job well done.

Mix 1 tablespoon of brown sugar in the mug with a little of the hot coffee, to dissolve it, then add 2 ounces of decent Irish whiskey. Again, you probably don’t want to use your $45-a-bottle top-shelf stuff, but a good, self-respecting Irish whiskey like Paddy’s will do nicely.

Top off your mug to within half an inch or so of the top with more coffee. Stir gently.

Finish the mug off with two dollops of lightly sweetened whipped cream.

This drink will be hot, so unless you’re a professional you probably won’t be able to swig this down, but you should definitely attack it with enthusiasm. If you don’t give yourself a whipped cream mustache, you lack commitment.

Classics are classics for a reason. This is delicious. It tastes of coffee, and caramel, and dairy, and whiskey, and something else — maybe destiny. It will take a great deal of adult restraint to not pound this down far too quickly and then make another. And conceivably many more.

For that reason, here is your guide for drinking good Irish Coffee:

Drink it at brunch. The very best time to drink Irish Coffee is late on a cold, damp afternoon, while reading a good book and thinking of a lost love. Unfortunately, by the time you’re old enough to have any really juicy regrets, you won’t be able to drink coffee that late in the day. Drinking more than one of these in an afternoon or evening will give you more opportunity to reminisce than you were really looking for. Flipping through old photographs and crying at 2 in the morning is not compatible with your New Year’s resolution to be more productive.

If you decide to dive into the Irish Coffee pool with a bunch of friends on a Sunday morning, your boyfriend or Carlos, your Uber driver, can get you home in time to sleep it off before you have to Skype your parents that evening.

1 mug of Irish Coffee: You will feel more positive about life.

2 mugs: You will tell at least one of your friends how much you love them. At this point, your wife or friends should keep you away from Facebook.

3 mugs: There will be singing and uncontrollable laughter.

After this, you will probably forgo the coffee and drink directly from the bottle. There will be more singing, and probably crying.

After this, things get a little murky.

John Fladd is a veteran Hippo writer, a father, writer and cocktail enthusiast, living in New Hampshire.

Featured photo: Irish Coffee. Photo by John Fladd.

The Weekly Dish 24/01/25

News from the local food scene

• Wine season: If you’re used to pairing January with a wine tasting, Wentworth by the Sea (588 Wentworth Road in New Castle; opalcollection.com/wentworth) is holding its annual Winter Wine Festival with events scheduled into mid-February. Grand vintners’ dinners are scheduled with Far Niente Family of Wineries and Vineyards (Saturday, Jan. 27, at 6 p.m.), Jackson Family Wines (Saturday, Feb. 3, at 6 p.m.) and Raymond Vineyards (Saturday, Feb. 10, at 6 p.m.). Flight nights run Mondays through Thursdays from 5 to 7 p.m. in the lounge and offer the opportunity to taste and compare three different wines, the website said. The Bubbles & Jazz Brunch runs Sundays through Feb. 11 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., with a different prosecco as the focus each Sunday. And on Friday, Feb. 9, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. the Wentworth will feature the second of two big tastings, with tickets costing $91.07 for an evening with food, a wide selection of wines to try in a walk-around event and live jazz, according to the website, where you can find pricing and details for all events.

• Big reds for cold nights: WineNot Boutique (25 Main St. in Nashua; winenotboutique.com, 204-5569) has a few red wine tasting events on the schedule. As of earlier this week, tickets were still available for the blind tasting of malbec wines on Thursday, Jan. 25, from 6 to 8 p.m. Tickets cost $40. Try seven malbecs, paired with cheeses, salumi and chocolate, according to the website. On Thursday, Feb. 22, from 4 to 7 p.m., the focus will be “Tasting of Big and Bold Winter Wines.” Sample 15 wines paired with cheeses and a light appetizer; tickets cost $20, the website said.

• Italian wines: Colby Hill Inn’s The Grazing Room (33 The Oaks in Henniker; colbyhillinn.com) will hold a five-course dinner paired with Italian wines from Regal Imports on Friday, Feb. 23, at 6 p.m. The cost is $100 per person, according to the website.

• Market Saturday: The Milford NH Indoor Farmers Market will hold the 4th of its seven planned winter markets this Saturday, Jan. 27, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Milford Town Hall Auditorium (1 Union Sq. on the Oval). The duo Speed the Plough is slated to perform; see milfordnhfarmersmarket.com for a listing of vendors and guest vendors.

• Dinner, dancing, animals: OK, animals won’t be at the event but proceeds from the Snowball Gala 2024 go to equipment and animal needs at the Educational Farm at Joppa Hill in Bedford (theeducationalfarm.org). The event will be held Saturday, Feb. 17, from 6 to 10 p.m. at the Bedford Village Inn (2 Olde Bedford Way in Bedford) and will include dinner, dancing, and a silent and live auction, according to the EventBrite page. Tickets cost $125; a $175 VIP ticket includes a drink, 10 raffle tickets and a swag bag. See the farm’s website for a link to purchase tickets.

In the kitchen with Ryan Lewis

It was always special for Ryan Lewis, general manager at Napoletana Pizzeria & Bar, when his family would go out to eat at restaurants when he was a child. At home he loved to make food for and with his family and experiment with ingredients, even if the result wasn’t always successful. Despite his love for cooking and restaurants, he didn’t consider a career in food service until he got a job at his favorite local spot while in college where he developed skills and enjoyed the work.

What is your must-have kitchen item?

I’ve never really been into gadgets. A clean, organized workspace is really the only thing a chef needs. I train my cooks to fold their kitchen towels when their prep is done. The cook with the largest, neatest stack of towels is unfailingly the best prepared for service on any particular shift

What would you have for your last meal?

The term last meal reminds me of someone on death row — when else would I know I was eating my last meal? That being the case, I would want to make as big a mess as possible when they give me the juice, like a spicy burrito and a couple beers.

What is your favorite local eatery?

Napoletana is my favorite restaurant. It continues to get closer to my vision over time. Of the other 300+ restaurants in the Portsmouth area, I enjoy Green Elephant, Lexi’s Joint, Barrio and Ore Nell’s most.

Name a celebrity you would like to see eating in your restaurant?

Celebrity is relative. I have fed many ‘famous’ people over the years. Were it possible, I would love to see Tony Bourdain and hear his thoughts and suggestions. Even just to be in his presence would be something. Jose Andres and Eric Ripert are other heroes, using their success in their craft to make life better for others.

What is your favorite thing on your menu?

It’s kind of an evil question like asking who my favorite employee or family member is. There are things that are unique and those that are pretty pedestrian but well-loved by our guests. Today I ate our hanger steak and it made me pretty happy. It is a unique cut of meat that takes care to butcher properly, and our risotto rosso is a somewhat unusual but fitting accompaniment to it.

What is the biggest food trend in New Hampshire right now?

I have no idea. We, as an industry and community, are still coming back to life after the struggles of the past several years. It is encouraging to see green shoots sprouting here and there. Young entrepreneurs opening new concepts and getting traction; those are the people to watch.

What is your favorite thing to cook at home?

Jambalaya. It’s almost as versatile as pizza as far as the number of stylistic twists and permutations. That said, I make it 95 percent the same way every time. I like to load my bowl with hot sauce until my eyes sweat.

—Mya Blanchard

Royal Pretender Cake

This is not an authentic Mardi Gras King Cake. An actual New Orleanian would sneer at this hard enough to sprain her lip. But a real King Cake is actually a member of the bread family and takes about five hours to make. This is a delicious, dense, moist almond cake that will serve you in good stead.

Cake

  • 2½ cups (300 grams) all-purpose flour
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ¾ teaspoon baking powder
  • ¾ cup (162 grams) whole milk
  • ½ cup (120 grams) sour cream
  • 2¼ cups (450 grams) sugar
  • 7 ounces (1 tube) almond paste – you can find this in the baking/spices section of your supermarket
  • 2 teaspoons orange zest – the zest of one large orange
  • 1 8-ounce package cream cheese
  • 4 eggs
  • 3 Tablespoon (45 grams) amaretto
  • ¼ teaspoon almond extract

Glaze

  • 2 cups (227 grams) powdered sugar
  • 1 teaspoon almond extract
  • pinch salt
  • 2 to 3 Tablespoons milk – enough to make a spoonable glaze

Garnish

  • Gold, purple, and green sprinkles or sanding sugar – you can find these online or at a craft store

A small plastic baby that you will bake into the cake for luck. You might or might not actually have a small plastic baby to hand. If you do not, you can substitute some other small non-poisonous object in its place, such as a foreign coin, a marble, or one of those small ceramic figures that are sometimes included in boxes of tea.

Bring all the cake ingredients to room temperature. This recipe will work if the cream cheese and almond paste are cold, but they will be temperamental and will require some persuasion to blend together gracefully.

Preheat your oven to 350ºF. Prepare a large Bundt pan — I brush the inside with a mixture of equal parts shortening, vegetable oil and flour.

In a medium bowl, combine the dry ingredients — the flour, salt and baking powder. Set aside.

In a jar or measuring cup, combine the milk and sour cream. Set aside.

In a stand mixer, or using a hand-held electric mixer, combine the almond paste — cut into small pieces — and the sugar. Mix at slow speed; the mixture looks like damp sand. If you do not cut the almond paste into small pieces, it will fight against its fate and throw plumes of sugar out of your mixing bowl in protest. If this starts happening, cover the bowl with a tea towel and be careful that it doesn’t get sucked up into the beaters.

Add the orange zest and cream cheese. Mix to combine. Again, this will go more smoothly if the cream cheese is at room temperature.

Mix in the eggs, one at a time, then add the amaretto and almond extract. Scrape down the sides of the bowl if you need to. Once everything is thoroughly mixed, beat at a higher speed, until the proto-batter is a little fluffy.

Add the dry ingredients and the milk/sour cream mixture a little at a time, alternating between the two, until the batter is smooth and battery.

Pour half the batter into the prepared Bundt pan, which has been patiently waiting for you.

Drop your small plastic baby into the Bundt pan. “Godspeed, my friend,” would be a good sentiment to express at this point. Extra points if you say it in French.

Pour the rest of the batter into the pan, covering your Cake Baby.

Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean or it reaches an internal temperature of 200ºF.

Cool on a rack for 20 minutes before inverting onto a plate. Let it cool thoroughly before glazing and decorating it. Decorate a third of the cake in each of the colors of sugar or sprinkles. This is not a time to exercise restraint. “Garish” should be the absolute minimum level of decoration you are looking for.

This is a first-class snack cake. It is meant to be shared. A traditional King Cake is supposed to be eaten with friends. Whoever finds the baby in their slice is supposed to host the Mardi Gras party the following year. You should feel free to set the stakes to work with your particular group of friends, relatives, or co-workers.

Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Featured photo: Not King cake. Photo by John Fladd.

Stay in the loop!

Get FREE weekly briefs on local food, music,

arts, and more across southern New Hampshire!