Category: Q&A

In the kitchen with Amy LaBelle

Amy LaBelle, co-owner of LaBelle Winery Amherst (345 Route 101, Amherst, 672-9898), LaBelle Winery Derry (14 Route 111, Derry, labellewinery.com), The Bistro at LaBelle Winery, and Americus Restaurant

“I got a start as a winemaker later in life than many people; it is a second career for me,” LaBelle said. “I started out as a lawyer, and I had what I thought was my dream job at a major financial institution, but I took a trip to Canada and visited a winery in Nova Scotia and had a life-changing experience. Everything about it was so perfect — the wine, the food, the people, the whole wine-centered environment — I suddenly realized that it was what I really wanted to do with my life. It was a slow process, over 4,000 days, but every day of those 12 years I worked to move a little closer to my dream. Now the dream has expanded to include two wineries, each with their own restaurants. For me, food and wine are entirely interlinked. They are my twin passions.”

What is your must-have kitchen item?

That is such a hard question! If I had to pick, though, I’d say salt. It is integral to everything I cook. It brings out the nuances of every flavor and helps me really be present in everything I eat. I like to use two types of sea salt, a fine salt for the actual cooking, and a coarse or flaky salt for finishing a dish. …

What would you have for your last meal?

For me, it would be as much about where I ate it as what I ate. I’d eat a beef bourguignon in a cafe in Paris. …

What is your favorite local place to eat?

It’s a little self-promotional, but our own restaurant. … A few weeks ago, my husband and I had a night to ourselves with no kids, and we were wondering where we should go to eat, and half an hour later, we found ourselves right here.

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

Martha Stewart is a hero of mine. … She pays such scrupulous attention to everything she does — her magazine, her recipes, everything her staff produces. I admire that level of commitment and spirit of perfectionism.

What is your favorite thing on your menu?

Our menu is constantly changing as seasonal ingredients become available, but there are a few dishes that we keep on all the time. My favorite is Steak Frites. …

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

It’s probably because of the time of the year, but right now, we’ve had a big surge in demand for ‘clean,’ healthy foods. We’ve been working on several zero-alcohol mocktails …

What is your favorite thing to cook at home?

… Because my husband is South American, one of our favorites is empanadas. The beef on the inside and the fried exterior are fantastic. … It’s really labor-intensive, but we set up a production line. …

Colombian Empanadas
Recipe from Amy LaBelle

Filling
2 pounds grilled steak tips or rib-eye, ground
2 cups leftover boiled potatoes, smashed
1 Tablespoon olive oil
½ cup sliced onion
2 teaspoons sea salt
1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper
1 Tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon black pepper
¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro
½ cup LaBelle Jalapeno Culinary Wine

Caramelize the onion in olive oil. Remove from heat, and mix all ingredients together.

Dough
4 cups masa flour – blanca, not yellow!
2 teaspoons sugar
3¾ cups hot water
2 teaspoons sea salt

Mix the dry ingredients, then make a well in the center. Gradually add the hot water, turning and mixing constantly, until it is the right consistency for rolling.

Making the empanadas:
Divide the dough into medium-sized balls, then roll out to 5- to 6-inch circles. Place filling on the dough, then fold to make half-circles, then seal the edges. Fry the empanadas in 350-degree oil, not crowding the pan, until golden brown. Repeat until all have been fried.

Burns Night

Scottish Arts celebrates a night for the poet

Claire MacPherson is the president of Scottish Arts, an organization that has taught and preserved a myriad of Scottish musical traditions since 1984, including Highland dance, piping, drums and Scottish fiddle. Lezlie Webster, the founder of the organization, also provides weekly instruction to the New Hampshire Police Band. They host the Indoor Scottish Festival in April in Manchester as well as the Quechee Scottish Games and Festival in August in Vermont. On Saturday, Jan. 18, they will be celebrating the 18th-century Scottish poet Robert Burns with Burns Night at Castleton in Windham. MacPherson spoke to the Hippo about the event. Visit scottisharts.org or call 227-0207 for more information.

What exactly is Burns Night?

It’s really a celebration of Scotland’s most beloved poet, Robert Burns. It happens around his birthday, which was the 25th of January, 1759. People gather together and celebrate his life and works. The night typically follows quite a set pattern, so it starts off with a welcome to dinner and then the haggis is piped out. We have something called the Selkirk Grace, which is a little poem that’s typically recited and then someone will do the “Address to [a] Haggis,” which was one of his famous poems. … then the speeches begin.

One of the first speeches will be ‘The Immortal Memory,’ which is kind of the main speech of the night and typically follows a pattern of talking about Robert Burns and highlighting some of his works. The person giving the speech can take it wherever they want to go, but it would typically involve a deeper dive into some of his poems or some aspects of him, because he covered so many different topics for his works…. Interspersed throughout the evening are some poetry readings. The night will usually end with a rendition of ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ which was his, what you could look at as a world anthem, really, because everyone sings it to bring in the new year. We typically have a lot of music in there as well, because he wasn’t just a poet.

It began as a Burns supper in a place in Edinburgh, and his friends would gather and just remember him and recite his poems because he is our national poet and our most beloved son. It just blossoms into this huge event.

Besides being a poet, who was Robert Burns?

He was a humanitarian. He was very proud of being Scottish. He’s probably best known because he chose to write in the Scots dialect. He was really keeping that language alive and infusing pride in it. … He did a tour of Scotland and he would pick up songs, maybe even just fragments of a song that had been long forgotten, and he would go home and work on it and get a tune going. … That way he was keeping our music alive, the words and the tunes, the old tunes. His songs are just as important as his poetry. He was an amazing lyricist as he was a poet. So … because we’re a school of music, we’ll have a lot of music infused throughout the night.

Who will be performing music on Burns Night?

We’re very lucky to have Kirsten Z. Cairns, who’s coming to sing. She has the most beautiful voice. She will be singing some of her favourite Burns songs. Then we have Celtic Beats, who will be doing our traditional Scottish music. That’s pipes and fiddle, drums. Then we always have a little bit of a treat where we have our pipe band join us. That’s our sister organisation, the New Hampshire Pipes and Drums. We end our night on a Ceilidh, which typically means a dance. It has an older meaning to do with coming together and telling stories and some dancing and singing at somebody’s house, but typically now the meaning is to get together at the end of the night to do set dances. So Lezlie, our founder, walks people through the steps and everyone gets involved. In fact, it’s more fun if you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s a great community feel to it.

What is Scottish Arts and what do you all teach there?

Predominantly, we are a school of Scottish music and dance. We have about 50 students at the moment doing bagpipes with Lezlie Webster, who’s our founder and bagpiping teacher. She’s also a judge. She’s as highly qualified as possible to be, so our students are really getting an amazing pipe instruction from her. We have about seven Highland dancers at the moment. Then we have drumming, which we do through our sister organization.The lessons are done through the New Hampshire Pipes and Drums, which is separate but connected to us. A lot of our pipers end up going into that pipe band. Drumming is done through that [too] and that’s snare, tenor and bass drumming. We also have fiddle lessons as well. That’s like violin, but it’s a Scottish fiddle.

Do you all have any other events coming up?

We run some events throughout the year. So the first event that we have coming up is the Indoor Festival, which will be at Manchester Memorial High School and that will be on April 12. … There will be the usual solo piping, pipe band competition and then dancing and drumming. There will also be some workshops we are going to put on for our students too, just to help enhance their instruction. We have some amazing judges coming to that, Bruce Gandy and Bob Worrall, who is a legend in the world of piping in Glasgow. He’s hosted that for a long time, and then we also have a little judges’ event performance at the end. That’s really a treat to see some world-class professionals playing the pipe at the end of the event.

Burns Night
Where: Castleton, 58 Enterprise Drive,
Windham
When: Saturday, Jan. 18. Cocktail hour
5 to 6 p.m. Call to dinner 6:05 p.m. Ceilidh
8 p.m.

—Zachary Lewis

Featured image: Previous Burns Night.

In the kitchen with Emma Stetson

Emma Stetson followed a winding path to wine. “Actually I started out as a high school English teacher,” she said. “I took a Wine 101 course in college as an elective and really fell in love with it, but I was an English major, so my plan was always to stay in that field, and I got my start career-wise as a high school English teacher. But on the side I got kind of a fun freelance job writing about wine for a local food and wine publication in Connecticut. Also in college, while I was an English major, I double majored in Near Eastern Studies, like Arabic and Middle Eastern culture. A Boston-based chef was opening a restaurant in Kuwait and we got to talking and he asked for my help, like my language skills and my help to go out there and join their opening team and help them open the restaurant. So I left my teaching position because I thought that was such a cool opportunity, and went and did that with them. And then when I finished there and came back, I realized I didn’t want to go back into teaching.”

Stetson moved from writing about wine to working in a wine shop, then eventually to working for a series of wine distributors. “Wine on Main did exist in Concord for a little bit, but [the owners] quietly let me know that they were looking to sell the store, and wondered if I would know somebody [to buy it]. I told my husband and told my parents that I was trying to think of people who might be interested. And they all kind of looked at me and were like, ‘What about you? Like maybe this is a great opportunity for you and a chance to have your own store.’ So I am now the owner of Wine on Main in Concord.”

What is the most essential piece of equipment for a wine enthusiast?

Definitely a corkscrew; I prefer a waiter corkscrew. [Also known as a ‘wine key,’ this is the type of opener that is hinged to apply leverage to remove a cork.] It’s portable. I have probably about five on me at any given time. There’s like one in my purse, one in my pocket, one in the car, tons at the store.

What would you have for your last glass of wine?

A Meursault from Burgundy. It is arguably the best chardonnay in the world. Nobody does chardonnay like they do in Burgundy and Meursault is my favorite wine region.

What celebrity would you like to drink a glass of wine with?

I would say Gail Simmons. She was a judge on Top Chef. She’s more food-centric, but she got her start working for Food & Wine magazine. I read her memoir probably once every two years. In a strange way, I strive to make my wine career the way she developed her food career. Her whole philosophy was kind of starting at the bottom and tackling the industry from every side, even the unglamorous ones.

What would be an interesting wine that you would recommend to someone who was enthusiastic but not really knowledgeable?

I would say anything French, because French wines are so complex and interesting. I feel like people who don’t know a lot about wine get intimidated by French wines, but I would say, like, no, try them. I would maybe suggest starting with a Gamay, just because they’re so delicious, but they’re fruit-forward and lighter-bodied and approachable.

What do you keep in your refrigerator or your wine rack at home to drink?

I really do love a good chardonnay, so I have various chardonnays on hand, French ones and buttery, oaky California ones. I love the oakiness and the butteriness and the high acid. And you can have it on its own, but since it has the weight, it goes so well with food.

What is your best piece of advice for a wine lover?

I would just say — especially if you’re someone who’s starting your wine collection — make sure that you store your wine properly. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard from customers that they’ve been so excited to go get a bottle only to find that it hadn’t been stored properly and had gone bad. So maybe it’s worth investing in a small wine fridge. Find a part of your house that’s cellar temperature and at a consistent temperature, especially here in New England, that doesn’t have intense temperature fluctuations. Don’t keep the wine by your wood stove.

Building a Village

The co-founder of Wellness Village NH on takes on the new year

Nancy Doherty is the co-founder of Wellness Village NH (660 Mast Road, Manchester, wellnessvillagenh.com, 935-9556) along with her two daughters, Allison Morgan and Morgan Doherty. Nancy is also a Reiki Master and is the founder of Be Self-Centered, which is her reiki practice. Wellness Village offers a myriad of services such as therapeutic massage, reiki, chiropractic care, doula services, education, countless workshops, support groups and a variety of therapies.

Why do you think people start to think about their health and wellness in January?

Well, we’re trained to by this point, right? It’s the new year, new leaf; there’s all this terminology around it. It’s a time to think, we have some space to think, honestly, some space to maybe create.

What sorts of services do you all offer?

We have a full gamut of services. We have classes and workshops and we have Reiki, massage, we have biomagnetism, we have doula services, we have classes that include nutrition. A doula is a person who is there to support the birthing person, so the doula services include a birth doula, postpartum doula, who will be there after the baby comes and helping the family make the transition with the new little one. Other services are the education aspect, so newborn care, lactation classes, birth classes, that kind of support.

How important is nutrition to someone’s health and wellness?

It’s right up there but what we consume in our bodies is the core of it all, so nutrition, what we’re consuming as far as hydration, sleep … those are all foundational. Our bodies can’t operate without correct fuel but there’s a lot of ways to approach that. There’s not one way to support health in that way.

If someone is looking to become healthier, what are some simple tips that they can follow to start on that path?

I think from my perspective, it’s about following their own intuition. If they’re feeling pulled to move their body, then they’re going to want to start their exploration there. If they’re feeling pulled to clean up the way their stomach is feeling, how their gut is feeling, that would be the place to start. Try to find ways to sample those opportunities. If you want to get into nutrition, find a workshop. That is a low-risk way to explore what those people are talking about and see if it resonates.

How important is sleep to overall health and wellness?

It’s really important. It’s super important. I’m not sure that we can even overstate how important it is. But you know, that all being said, I think we all know that and it’s just really hard to get that right. There’s a lot of reasons for it.

Are there any workshops coming up in January that you’d like to talk about?

In January, for instance, we have a reiki share at the end of the month, which is a super opportunity to experience reiki if you haven’t had a chance to do that… .

Do you want to talk about the different support groups?

Getting together with people going through the same things that you’re going through at the same time is really important. Right now we’re running prenatal support groups. Prenatal and postpartum support groups. Those are people coming together at a really specific time in life and they’re there to support each other. It’s amazing. We have hopes and plans for other supporters coming down the line. … We do have some nutrition coming up and other workshops. …

Are there any other services here that you’d like to mention or talk about that I haven’t asked you?

We are also a milk depot. So we accept breast milk donations here once a donor has been screened through Mother’s Milk Bank Northeast. We’re really proud of that. It literally saves the lives of newborns, premature newborns. It’s a really important, beautiful gift that these women are giving.

Holistic Prep for Birth (one-day class)
When: Saturday, Jan. 11, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Where: Wellness Village NH, 660 Mast Road, Manchester
More: wellnessvillagenh.com, 935-9556

—Zachary Lewis

Featured image: Left to right: Morgan Doherty, Allison Morgan, and Nancy Doherty.

In the kitchen with Lin Theth

Chef at Street (76 N. Main St., Concord, 333-2125, streetfood360.com)

“I started in the industry as a student. I went to high school in Dover, and I took their culinary program,” Theth said. “I did that program for two years and then proceeded to go to Johnson & Wales for school. I completed my degree there in culinary arts, and I began working at first in Portsmouth, to finish my degree. I had to do an internship, so I did it at Vida Cantina in Portsmouth. I was there for about five or so years. I started as an intern, worked up to line cook, and then I was the chef there for the last couple of years. I began working at Street at our flagship restaurant in Portsmouth. From there, I helped open their secondary location in Exeter, and then I’m currently working at their third location in Concord.”

What’s your must-have kitchen item?

Definitely a knife. Having a good chef’s knife is everything. If you pick the right one, something that’s comfortable, something that’s really tuned to your hand as an individual, you know, you can almost use it for anything.

What would your last meal be?

Anything that my mother would make me, I would gladly have. I grew up eating a lot of pho and that’s something that I could never say no to, so I’d probably say that.

What’s your favorite place to eat out at?

I’ll be honest, I don’t go out much. I typically, you know, as the industry goes, I work a lot of hours, and aside from that, I just prefer to be at home. There’s a restaurant in Lynn, Mass., called Nightshade Noodle Bar and in the summertime they do like a seafood shack situation where they do Vietnamese Cajun cuisine. And I’ve never had it, but I’ve always wanted to try. Fun stuff like that is always very interesting to see.

What’s your favorite thing on your menu?

When I first started here at Street, I used to take the Singapore salad and what I would do is I would have that with a side of Korean tenders, but I would take it and wrap it up in a falafel pita and eat it like a pita.

What’s the biggest food trend you see in New Hampshire right now?

Anything that you see on social media is huge right now. I feel like the fusion is something that people have been really gravitating toward recently. Just like the mix and match of different cultures and a single dish and that kind of thing. I’ve seen a lot of dishes like birria ramen and stuff like that, which is very interesting.

What do you cook at home?

Breakfast is huge for me. I love waking up in the morning, having my cup of tea or cup of coffee and just making breakfast. That’s always one of the staples for me. Just, you know, scrambled eggs, good scrambled eggs, some seasoned potatoes, things like that.

Dipping Sauce
From the kitchen of Lin Theth

This is something that I like to do as just a dipping sauce for proteins — chicken or whatever:

It’s a couple of tablespoons of simple syrup. You can just make it on the stove; just cook [equal amounts of] sugar and water and boil that until the sugar is dissolved. Add a little bit of garlic and chili, just to bring in some heat, just a little zestiness from the garlic. Once that’s cooled, add a couple tablespoons of fish sauce to it and a fat squeeze of lime juice.

It’s pretty simple and easy to make, but it’s one of those things where you have a little bit of everything. It’s sweet, it’s spicy, it’s salty from the fish sauce. It’s great.

On The Job – Barry Poitras

Martial Arts Instructor

Sensei Barry Poitras teaches at Granite State Kendo Club (52 E. Derry Road, East Derry). Kendo and Iaido are two traditional Japanese martial arts that focus on swordsmanship. Poitras has achieved the rank of Godan (fifth degree black belt) in Kendo and Rokudan (sixth degree black belt) in Iaido, which are advanced levels requiring years of practice. Practices take place on Sundays at the Club: The first and third Sunday of the month has kendo kata from 1 to 2 p.m. and kendo practice from 2 to 4 p.m.; the second and third Sunday of the month has Iaido practice led by Sensei Barry Poitras and then kendo practice from 2 to 4 p.m. Call 235-6229 or visit granitestatekendoclub.com for more information.

Explain your job and what it entails.

Sensei basically is the title. I teach kendo and iaido, which is basically a Japanese martial art, Japanese swordsmanship. Kendo is fencing with armor. You use a two-handed sword, bamboo, and you wear armor, and you score points. Iaido is a little different. It’s drawing the sword with imaginary opponents, so you do all these sword draws, cuts, re-sheathing kind of movements, but imagining opponents. They’re kind of like sister arts, they work together… .

How long have you had this job?

I’ve been studying and teaching for over 37 years, somewhere around there…

What kind of education or training did you need?

It’s an interesting kind of pursuit. You have to find an instructor, which obviously back then was extremely difficult. It was such a rare sport in, not only the United States, but even just New England. I started basically with the Boston Kendo Group right down in Somerville, Massachusetts, in 1992-ish range. Then I slowly got my training through the folks down in New York who were mostly Japanese sensei. … I started my school, pretty much, in 1994 in Acton, Massachusetts. And when I moved to New Hampshire, I started up here, and now I’m helping out the Granite State Kendo with their program.

What is your typical at-work uniform or attire?

We wear traditional Japanese hakama and keikogi. Basically, kendo players wear a blue, indigo blue hakama, which looks like a long skirt. Basically, it’s pleated pants. a heavy kote,indigo dyed blue top, and then the armor basically is headgear, breastplate around the lower abdomen, hand and wrist protection, and then a sort of a tare; it wraps around the hips and groin. …

What is the most challenging thing about your work and how do you deal with it?

I think the most challenging thing is even today, kendo in the United States is probably played with under probably 4,000 people nationally. … If you get to a higher level, you’re going to need to travel. I need to go to New York. Nationally I go to national seminars in basically all the country as well as Canada. …

—Zachary Lewis

Five favorites
Favorite book: Autumn Lightning by Dave Lowery
Favorite movie: The Billy Jack movie — that was it. I was hooked. I said that’s what I want to do, and I walked into a karate dojo, and never changed, never turned, never walked out.
Favorite music: I’m actually a guitar player. Right now I’m actually doing a lot of blues music, so I’d say anything blues.
Favorite food: Sushi
Favorite thing about NH: I love the mountains, being able to access the mountains because I’m an avid hiker. I love the accessibility to the seashore. And I think the life in New Hampshire, the music scene, is one of the favorite things I love.

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