Category: Food

‘Fries are just kind of the perfect food’

Street serves them up with kimchi ketchup

According to Lynn Theth, the Chef at Street in Concord, the secret to a really good french fry is cooking it twice, then watching it like a hawk.

“We parcook [fries] just enough so they’re lightly golden,” she said. “We blanch them in canola oil just until they’re lightly crispy, just enough to hold their integrity. And then we fry them again to order, just so they get nice and crispy and nice and hot. Once they are where we like them to be, nice and golden brown on the outside, we take them and we toss them in a subarashii spice that we make in-house. [Subarashii is a Japanese term that means “splendid or glorious.”] It’s our own blend that we make just for the fries. And then those come with kimchi ketchup that we make as well and the scallion mayo to top it all off.”

The idea behind the double frying, Theth said, is to make sure the inside of a french fry is cooked enough to be fluffy and tender. That’s why she blanches the potatoes in cooler oil. She gives the fries enough time to cool down before cooking them to order. The second frying at a higher temperature brings the surface of the fries to the point where they are crispy without overcooking the interior.

That’s fine in theory, but Theth said that working the fry station in Street’s kitchen on a busy night can get complicated. The fry oil cools down a little with every batch of food that is dropped into it, then heats back up, so it’s never the same temperature for long.

“You kind of have to judge it just by the looks of it,” she said. “We have a very high volume for what we do and when we’re cooking at the volume that we are cooking at, the temperature of the fry oil fluctuates. When you’re cooking them — personally for me, I like to judge by the color depending on when you drop it. Usually, when I’m training people, I’ll talk to them about the integrity of the french fry, because if you don’t blanch them far enough they’ll get soggy and they’ll get all mushed up when you’re trying to double-cook them.”

Then there’s the sound. “When I’m cooking the fries myself,” Chef Theth said, “I usually kind of shake the basket a little bit. And then you can hear those fries like hitting the sides of the basket. And if they’re crisp enough, you can kind of hear them.”

Frying potatoes perfectly is just the first step, though, Theth said. Street is known for its condiments.

“All of the recipes have been the same since we opened,” she said. “For our kimchi ketchup, we use just regular ketchup, but we add probably about a gallon of kimchi to each batch. It’s a cabbage kimchi, just your standard cabbage kimchi. There is fish sauce and things like that in the mix, so it is not vegan, but it’s still delicious. We blend it all and puree it all down, and add a couple other things — rice wine vinegar, some shallots, and other things — then just mix that all together.”

Although Theth and her team develop recipes with elements from all over the world, she said french fries hold a special place in her heart. “You can kind of do whatever you want with them. You can put whatever you want on them. I’m a sauce girl; I love just condiments and things like that. You can use them [fries] as a vessel for whatever you want. If you get a really nice starchy potato, it can uphold whatever you’re going to use it for.”

“Fries are just kind of the perfect food, in my opinion.”

Street
76 N. Main St., Concord
333-2125, streetfood360.com

Featured Photo: Curry fries and Subarashii fries. Courtesy photo.

Mutiny of Clowns

  • ¾ ounce black rum – regular strength black rum; we’ll get to the overproof stuff in a couple of minutes
  • ¾ ounce Cynar – this is one of those low-octane, bitter Italian liqueurs that old men drink out of tiny glasses outside cafes in little alpine villages; as with most of these old-man liqueurs, it’s made with more than a dozen secret herbs, but because the label on the bottle has a giant picture of an artichoke on it, it’s a pretty good guess what one of them is
  • ¾ ounce fresh squeezed lime juice
  • ½ ounce ginger syrup (see below)
  • ¼ ounce simple syrup
  • An orange slice – preferably one just big enough to cover the top of a rocks glass without falling into it.
  • A slug of overproof (151) rum

This is a presentation cocktail. It is like the trick of pulling the tablecloth out from under the dishes, but with flaming alcohol.

Start by making some ginger syrup. There are two ways of going about this:

(1) Add sugar to fresh squeezed ginger juice and simmer it briefly, until the sugar dissolves entirely into saturation, then cool it and store it in your refrigerator. This will be a powerful, spicy, slightly bitter syrup that will knock you back on your heels. The problem is that you will need a good vegetable juicer, which not everyone has lying around. If you do, you’ll need to juice about a pound of fresh ginger, and your kitchen will smell overwhelmingly of ginger for half an hour or so. Not that that is a bad thing.

(2) Alternatively, you can shred a large hand (that’s what the big clumps of ginger root you get at the grocery store are called) on a box grater. Bring it to a boil with a cup or so of sugar and an equal amount of water. Stir it well, to make certain that everything has gotten thoroughly mixed together, then take it off the heat, cover it, and leave it all day, or overnight. Strain it through a fine-mesh strainer, then squeeze the remaining ginger pulp in a tea towel, to get the last of the ginger juice out of it. Bottle and refrigerate it. This will be a gentler, more civilized ginger syrup that will work just as well but won’t carry as much street cred as the more serious stuff.

Now, assuming that you’ve gone to the liquor store, and made your syrups, and sliced an orange, all you need to do is find a rocks glass and make sure you have matches or a lighter on hand.

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add all the ingredients, except the overproof rum and the orange slice, to the shaker, and shake vigorously for a full minute. Strain it into the rocks glass with no ice. Cover the glass with the orange slice, and pour a slug of 151 onto it.

Quickly but without panic, light the orange on fire. There will be a delicate blue flame and the smell of grilling citrus.

Turn the lights down but not completely out, and take half a dozen pictures of your flaming drink. When you’re done, turn the lights back up and blow on the orange to put it out. Stuff the orange slice into your drink, and top it off with two or three ice cubes. Swirl it around a few times to chill everything back down, then drink it in silence.

In spite of this drink’s dramatic presentation and name, it is surprisingly delicate, a balance of sweet syrups and rum and the bitterness from the Cynar. The ginger is not overwhelming but is definitely there, adding to the depth of flavor.

This is a drink that demands confidence to make, but once you have, it murmurs encouragement to you and reminds you of how competent and good-looking you are.

Featured Photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Dining among the stars at the Taste of NH

Restaurants gather at the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center

The Taste of New Hampshire is a yearly opportunity for the public to spend an evening mingling, seeing and being seen, and trying food from dozens of local restaurants. It is also one of the biggest fundraisers of the year for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central and Northern New Hampshire.

Kamini Jorgensen is the Events Manager for the organization. She said Taste of New Hampshire is a big night for the capital area restaurant community. This year the event will be held at the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord. Participating restaurants will be spread throughout the museum, and attendees will be able to travel from one station to another, enjoying the Discovery Center’s exhibits and trying samples from each restaurant.

“We’ll have a bunch of local restaurants downstairs,” Jorgensen said, “along with a couple upstairs where the big bar will be, which is with New Hampshire Distributors. They are spread out throughout the whole museum. Down the hallway [on the first floor] toward their planetarium there will be about five restaurants. We’ll have a bunch in the main area and then some upstairs as well.”

John Constant will be on the first floor. He is the owner of Constantly Pizza (39 S. Main St., Concord, 224-9366, constantlypizza.net). He said that in terms of catering jobs Taste of New Hampshire is pretty low-stress.

“I would say this is a medium-sized catering job,” Constant said. “This one’s just a really special job because we’re doing it to raise money for the Boys & Girls Club, so this is more of like enjoyment than actual work, you know?”

Constant will be presenting dishes from his catering menu. “We’re going to have our homemade macaroni and cheese,” he said. “We’re going to have a ravioli pasta dish, we’re going to have our calzone platters, and we’re going to be sampling our homemade meatballs.”

Devin Flanagan, the owner of Flanagan’s South Ender Deli Market (250 South St., Concord, 856-8020, flanaganssouthender.com), will be focusing on meat.

“We started a boutique butcher shop within our store,” Flanagan said, “so we will be showcasing our marinated chicken breast, our marinated steak tips and our pork tenderloin.”

Last year was Flanagan’s first time at Taste of New Hampshire, and he was impressed with the way the event’s organizers spaced out the restaurants.

“I really thought it was a great turnout last year,” he said, “and I really like how they separated all the restaurants in different rooms, so you could actually explore the area. You know, a lot of people had never been there before, and it’s just really thoughtfully laid out.”

Kamini Jorgensen said Taste of New Hampshire is a high point of her job. “I really enjoy seeing a bunch of new faces come in,” she said.

The Taste of New Hampshire
When: Tuesday, Oct. 22, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Where: McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center, 2 Institute Drive, Concord, 271-7827, starhop.com

Who’s there?
Participants at Taste of New Hampshire will include

110 Grill
70 North Kitchen
Alan’s Of Boscawen
The Barley House
Boys & Girls Clubs Of Central NH
CC Tomatoes
The Common Man
Concord Country Club
Constantly Pizza
Flag Hill Winery
Flanagan’s Southender
Granite State Candy
Hermanos Cocina Mexicana
M.S. Walker
New Hampshire Distributors
O Steaks And Seafood
Pats Peak Banquet Center
Red Arrow Diner
RNDC (previously known as Horizon Beverage)
Smokeshow Barbeque
The Brussel: Custom Catering & Events
The Wine’ing Butcher
Vinnie’s Pizza
Tandy’s Top Shelf

Featured Photo: Courtesy photo.

What the Pho! finds the balance

Traditional and fusion come together at Manchester restaurant

For Chris Caddy, owner of What The Pho!, a new noodle and tiki bar in Manchester, designing a menu is about striking balances — between sweet and sour, spicy and savory, fusion and authentic. It’s a lot to keep in mind. For instance, how many different flavors or textures should you include in a dish?

“I’m trying to get multiple layers of flavors,” Caddy said. “But when you get to more than three flavor profiles, everything gets muddied.” He used What the Pho!’s beef carpaccio as an example. Traditionally a carpaccio is an appetizer made of thinly sliced, often raw, meat or fish with a sauce. For a lot of restaurants a carpaccio’s simplicity can be a trap: Too much ornamentation or competing flavors will cover up the subtleties of the protein, but if it’s not complemented in some way, there’s a danger it will just sit there and slide into a single flavor profile that loses the eater’s attention after the first bite.

Caddy worked to keep each element on his carpaccio plate simple but to provide a bite or two of side dishes to give enough of a contrast to let the beef shine through. The beef is lightly seasoned.

“There’s a toasted sesame aioli and chili oil,” he said, “and then we finish it with Himalayan sea salt. In the center there’s a little salad of cucumber and sweet onions to offset it with something cool and tossed in our poke sauce. And then we’ve got some kettle chips on the side for crunch. You’ve got different mouthfeels, you’ve got different textures and different flavors.”

As a non-Asian chef, Caddy said perfecting a quintessentially Vietnamese dish like pho — a rich, spicy noodle soup, pronounced ‘fuh’ — involved a lot of trial and error.

“It was an intensive, every single day, multiple-hour learning curve,” he said, “just researching, researching, researching, buying different ingredients I was unfamiliar with, and just tons and tons of asking questions.” One of those questions was how authentic he wanted his pho to be.

“The thing is, we’re not a pho place,” Caddy said. “We’re an Asian fusion place. And pho, it’s in the name, and I want to draw people in with that. I’m addicted to pho myself. But what I wanted isn’t a perfectly traditional pho.” And the key to a great pho is in the broth. “Every time I’ve heard a Vietnamese person talk about pho, they go into how hard it is to get the broth right. Of course, if you’re from the Vietnamese culture, you’re carrying cultural expectations with you.” Because he wasn’t trying to be authentically Vietnamese, Caddy had a little more wiggle room in how he prepared his broth. “I roast the bones so we get a darker, richer flavor,” he said. “And all the usual suspects are there — the coriander, the ginger, the cinnamon, the cardamom, and all the charred onions and all that — but one of the things I wanted to do was give it more depth. Finally we reached the point where we said, ‘Let’s not do anything more with it.’ So we’re trying to stay in the ballpark, but I’m trying to elevate things slightly So it’s not, you know, it’s not the same exact [soup] as when you walk into like a little mom-and-pop Vietnamese place. It’s going to be a slightly different thing.”

For Caddy and his staff, the mission is to give the same level of attention to the food, their cocktails and the restaurant’s decor.

“When you can do that with the drinks,” Caddy said, “and with the food, the fun thing for me is when I watch people just enjoying everything we’ve created. It makes me really happy. That’s kind of the payoff for me.”

What The Pho!
836 Elm St., Manchester (next to Bookery and Cat Alley)
606-8769, whatthephorestaurant.com
Open seven days a week: Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m to 9 p.m.; Friday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Saturday, 4 to 10 p.m., and Sunday, 4 to 9 p.m.
Orders can be placed online for pickup.

Featured Photo: Courtesy photo.

The Weekly Dish 24/10/17

News from the local food scene

• German cooking for two: There will be an Oktoberfest-themed cooking class for couples on Saturday, Oct. 19, from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at The Culinary Playground (16 Manning St., Derry, 339-1664, culinary-playground.com). Learn to make jägerschnitzel(pork schnitzel with mushroom gravy), Semmelknödel(bread dumplings) and German apple cake. Teams of two work together in this hands-on class. The cost is $165 per couple.

• Tableside tequila: Join The Birch on Elm (968 Elm St., Manchester, 836-1958, birchonelm.com) for a tequila dinner on Tuesday, Nov. 19, from 6 to 8 p.m. Experience a curated five-course meal with specially selected Don Julio Tequila alongside each course. Courses will feature butternut squash “steak,” seared scallops, fish tacos, carne asada al pastor, and classic tres leches. Tickets are $165 each through eventbrite.com.

• Gourmet Italian wine pairings: There will be a five-course Wine Dinnerin Trattoria Fondi at the Bedford Village Inn (2 Olde Bedford Way, Bedford, 472-2001, bedfordvillageinn.com) on Wednesday, Oct. 23, from 6 to 9 p.m. This 21+ dinner will feature wine selections from the Ruffino wine portfolio. Each dish is paired with wines that showcase Ruffino’s offerings, beginning with a prosecco, followed by a crisp white and finished with bold reds. Tickets are $125+ per person through eventbrite.com and must be purchased in advance.

• A Brewfest in Goffstown: The Mount Uncanoonuc Brewfest will take place Saturday, Oct. 19, from 1 to 5 p.m. in the parking lot of Mountain Base Brewery, 553 Mast Road, No. 111, Goffstown (935-7132, mountainbasebrewery.com). Tickets are$35 in advance at workerbeefund.org/events, or $45 at the gate. All profits go to support the Worker Bee Fund, workerbeefund.org.

Apple Fritters

Start with 3 apples – whatever kind you like; ideally, they should be crisp; I like Fuji or Braeburn, but if all you have are some sad, mealy Red Delicious, use them, you’ll be doing them a favor

Dry ingredients

  • 1 cup (120 g) all-purpose flour
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 Tablespoon + 1 teaspoon sugar

Wet ingredients

  • 1 cup (227 g) apple cider
  • 2/3 cup (152 g) more apple cider
  • 1 egg, beaten, or egg substitute
  • 3 Tablespoons melted butter or vegan butter
  • oil for frying
  • thermometer for checking the oil temperature

Peel and dice the three apples. Soak them in a cup of cider, and set aside to soak anywhere from an hour to a day. A 1-pint plastic takeout container is very useful for this.

Add all the dry ingredients to a large bowl, and whisk to combine.

Fill a medium-sized pot 3 to 4 inches full of vegetable oil, and place it over medium-high heat, while you finish mixing your fritter batter.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients in your bowl, and stir to combine. Drain the diced apple, set 2 Tablespoons of that drained cider aside, then drink the rest.

Stir as much of the apple into the batter as you can. Force the issue if you have to. “Yes, I know it’s crowded,” you can tell the apple. “Think of this as a pajama party with destiny.” (I’m not sure what that means either, but the apple chunks will be a little confused after soaking in cider all day and will probably be happy to have somebody act like they know what they’re doing.)

Check the temperature of your oil. You’re shooting for something in the neighborhood of 365°F. When the oil is hot enough, scoop 1/3 to 1/2 cup of fritter batter into it. A large ice cream scoop is about the right size.

This is the point where recipes will tell you not to crowd the pan. This means that you want to keep the oil hot enough that the fritters will cook crisply and evenly on the outside. You will probably notice that as you add fritter batter to the pan, the temperature of the oil will drop. It’s a good idea to fry one or maybe two fritters at a time. Hot oil will create a crust to keep the oil out of the inside of the fritters. If the oil drops in temperature too much, the fritters will end up greasy.

After about two minutes, flip the fritters with a slotted spoon or a pair of tongs to submerge the other side in the hot oil. When they are deeply golden brown, remove them from the oil and drain on a towel or paper towels. Wait for the oil to come back to 365°F, then gently scoop more batter into the pan. Repeat this until you use up all the batter.

Once the fritters have drained and cooled a little, glaze them.

Glaze

Mix 1 cup (114 g) of powdered sugar with the 2 Tablespoons of cider you set aside a few minutes ago. Whisk it to combine, then drizzle it over the cooling fritters and leave them to get to know each other for 10 minutes or so.

There is a jazz classic called “Green Onions” by Booker T and the MGs. I maintain that while there is some music that is as good as “Green Onions,” there is almost nothing better. A warm apple fritter, fresh from the fryer — crispy, tender, sweet, and fruity — is much the same. There are a few things as good — the laughter of a small child, seeing Casablanca for the first time (but wait until you’re at least 30, first), or drinking a perfectly made and chilled cocktail after a hard day — but very few things are better.

Especially with some vanilla ice cream.

Serving suggestion: Eat these with vanilla ice cream, while listening to “Green Onions.”

Featured Photo: Photo by John Fladd.

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