Tag: 220505

Cape crusaders

Falmouth’s Crooked Coast hits Manchester

On its latest EP, Glass House, Crooked Coast turns in a heavier direction. Songs like “Hell in a Handbasket” and the title cut are as edgy and gray-limned as 2017’s reggae romp “Go Slow” was buoyant and bright. Some of the shift came with urging from producer Courtney Ballard (Good Charlotte, All Time Low), but much of it reflected the challenge of making music in a pandemic.

“There was so much uncertainty; it was just a crazy time to be in the studio writing with everything going on,” guitarist, singer and lyricist Luke Vose said by phone from his home in Falmouth, Mass. “It wasn’t a conscious decision. We just kind of followed the sound that was exciting us.”

Vose, along with co-guitar player and vocalist John McNamara, bassist Ben Elder and drummer Shaqed Druyan, worked hard to maintain the momentum of a band that had sold out their first hometown CoastFest in 2019 and had big plans for the following year before it was cut short. They played a series of shows in fans’ yards on a flatbed truck, and on the water for a Fourth of July concert, which was filmed for a documentary.

“Your limits were your imagination, because nothing traditional was happening,” Vose said. “So it was like, what can we do that’s totally out of left field? That was something we came up with, and it was super fun. We didn’t announce it or anything, we just popped up there for anyone who was in the area, in kayaks or on the shore.”

As with many independent bands, the music is only the beginning with Crooked Coast; branding and building buzz are vital, and their job. Uniquely, they also run their own retail store, an effort born of necessity when Vose needed to convert a second bedroom he used as a merch warehouse into a nursery. Fortuitously, a rental car agency had vacated the floor below their rehearsal space, and the price was right.

The shop has become a community hub.

“When we’re in town on the weekends, we open it up, we do special events, art shows; we did a book signing,” Vose said. It’s also a tourist attraction. “We have people come from out of town to visit the Cape, and now it’s like a part of their trip.”

On his own, Vose boosts the regional scene by writing about it in a column for the Falmouth Enterprise called “Listening Local.” When he took it over in the mid-2010s, Vose wasn’t a journalist.

“It definitely was a learning curve, but I wound up really enjoying it,” he said. “I really liked hearing other musicians’ stories, and every time I talked to someone I got a new perspective on something in life.”

Crooked Coast is expanding Glass House into a long-player they hope to release later this year. A single will drop in May.

“We’re doing what we can to line up business-wise and get the best splash the album can make,” Vose said, noting that the harder mood continues on it, “but there’s some more poppy stuff, and our bass player actually sings lead on a song that he wrote, which is awesome.”

If plans play out, the new record will coincide with Crooked Coast’s Memorial Day set at Boston Calling, where they’ll share the stage with Metallica, Weezer, Glass Animals and several other acts. In August they’ll appear at the three-day Beach Road Weekend festival on Martha’s Vineyard. The event includes national headliners like Wilco, Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, The Avett Brothers, Guster, Dawes — and one that Vose is particularly excited about.

“I grew up a big fan of Beck, so that’s a little surreal … me as a young kid would have been very impressed to hear some day you’re going to play on the same stage as him,” he said. “We’ve been working on the Vineyard for quite some years now, building a following. To see our name on that poster is pretty awesome.”

Crooked Coast
When: Friday, May 6, at 9 p.m.
Where: Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester
Tickets: $10 at the door;crookedcoast.com

Featured photo: Crooked Coast. Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 22/05/05

Local music news & events

• Double play: Regional prowess is on display as Cold Engines and Trade share the stage at a show that was scheduled for Spring 2020 and postponed because, well, you know why. Fronted by guitarist Dave Drouin, the prolific powerhouse band has released 10 albums since forming mid-decade, most recently Flower Covered Hills, which dropped late last year. Concord-based Trade elegantly blends soul, jazz and funk elements. Thursday, May 5, 8 p.m., Bank of New Hampshire Stage, 16 S Main St, Concord, $15 at ccanh.com.

• Femme funny: Kick off Mother’s Day Weekend with Funny Friday, a trio of female comics dubbed Moms In Hats. It’s headlined by Vermont’s Maya Manion, who, her bio says, “travels as far as she can go in a night to perform, because no one will watch her kids for longer than that.” She’s joined by Worcester’s Cindy Gray and actress turned comedian Sara Poulin, a rising star on the Maine comedy scene; Randy Williams hosts. Friday, May 6, 7:30 p.m., Lions Club, 256 Mammoth Road, Londonderry, $10 at eventbrite.com.

• Ivory tickler: Returning favorite The Eric Mintel Quartet play jazz standards. An only child, Mintel spent a lot of after-school time at the family piano, teaching himself to play by transcribing theme songs from his favorite cartoons. One day, while rummaging through his parents’ record collection, he found an old Dave Brubeck 45 with “Take Five” backed by “Blue Rondo a la Turk” and was transfixed by jazz. Saturday, May 7, 7 p.m., Spotlight Room at the Palace, 96 Hanover St., Manchester, $29 at palacetheatre.org.

• Brunch music: A fixture for red letter days at this Henniker country inn, Brad Myrick & Eric Lindberg play smooth instrumentals for the Mother’s Day brunch crowd, reprising their Easter event from a few weeks back. Myrick is a gifted guitarist and scene booster who books venues throughout the state with the NH Music Collective agency and helps local acts document their artistry at Lakes Region recording studio The Greenhouse. Sunday, May 8, 11:30 a.m., Colby Hill Inn, 33 The Oaks, Henniker. See bradmyrick.com.

• Song master: Celebrating his 80th birthday, Gordon Lightfoot is a Canadian troubadour with a staggering catalog of songs amassed during his storied career. “Early Morning Rain,” “If You Could Read My Mind,” “Carefree Highway,” “Sundown,” “The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald,” “Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” and “Rainy Day People” are some of his hits over 50 years as a performer. Wednesday, May 11, 8 p.m., The Music Hall, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, $48.75 at themusichall.org.

The Homewreckers, by Mary Kay Andrews

The Homewreckers, by Mary Kay Andrews (St. Martin’s Press, 437 pages)

Mary Kay Andrews is, by many accounts, “queen of the beach read,” although Elin Hilderbrand would probably like a word about that. So would Emily Henry, the Ohio author who published a book called Beach Read in 2020.

It’s a little early for beach reading in New England, but Andrews’ latest, The Homewreckers, is a doorstop of a novel at 437 pages, so if you start now, you might finish by Labor Day. Hard-working readers can get through it quicker, but not without pain.

It’s not that Andrews isn’t an expert wordsmith; she’s written 30 books in 30 years and so has well more than 10,000 hours invested in her craft. It’s just that the story isn’t interesting enough to hold our attention for that long. As either Blaise Pascal or Mark Twain said (depending on which book of quotations you consult), they would have written shorter if they’d had more time. Andrews must have written The Homewreckers very quickly.

The premise is decent enough: A Hollywood producer visiting the charming Deep South town of Savannah, Georgia, encounters Hattie Kavanaugh, a young woman who works with her father-in-law restoring homes. In a bit of slapstick comedy that serves little purpose other than setting up a scene for a TV movie, the producer literally falls through a rotting kitchen floor on top of her.

Although Hattie is a widow who’s still not fully recovered from her husband’s death in an accident, she operates in the high rungs of Maslow’s tiers of self-actualization and is not impressed by the credentials of the man who fell on her while she was crawling around under the house inspecting its plumbing. She merely observes to her friend and co-contractor that Mo Lopez appears to have all his teeth before shooing him away.

Mo, however, has not only teeth but vision. He works for a TV network that specializes in home fix-up reality shows; his most recent was Killer Garages and he needs a new show. He sees past Hattie’s grungy work boots and dirty coveralls and sees a TV star. Also, in case we need to know on page 17 where this is going, he sees “hazel eyes and full lips,” someone who “had that fresh-faced girl-next-door-thing going on, her hair in a careless pony tail. Slender, but curvy in the right places.”

He — and I quote — “couldn’t manage to get Hannie Kavanaugh off his mind.”

At this point, you might be tempted to toss The Homewreckers and look for a mountain read instead, but give the queen of beach reads her due. There are challenges to be overcome here, not least of which is that Hattie Kavanaugh has no interest in being a star of a reality show. She does need money, however, and it doesn’t take long for Mo to convince Hattie to be part of a show called “Saving Savannah” — pitched to her as a sort of love letter to her work. The show would follow her as she takes a deteriorating home with good bones and loves it back to life. Hattie thinks hopefully that something like this might inspire other people to do the same.

In her first reel of video, she says, with sweet sincerity, “I’m Hattie Kavanagh. And I’m saving Savannah. One old house at a time.”

Problem is, the cynical executive back in L.A. doesn’t see anyone watching that sappy drivel. So she renames the show and revamps the concept. “Homewreckers” will be “the space where a dating show meets a flip show.” She sends in a sexy, big-city designer to “help” Hattie, in hopes that there will be real-life sizzle between them, to add to the drama.

Hattie, of course, doesn’t know this. Mo, who knows it, doesn’t like it. But Hattie has signed the contract, and off to the races they go.

This seems enough drama for a beach read, but there’s also a murder mystery entwined, which is kind of distasteful, given the lighthearted fare that surrounds it. “Love, murder and faulty wiring” is the tagline on the cover. Three of these things are not like the others. “Let’s throw in the murder of a 25-year-old mother” to add complexity to a beach read is a painful stretch.

Ultimately, the problem with The Homewreckers is not the bloated verbiage, or the predictable ending, or the never-ending yapping about Savannah, but that I didn’t care about the characters to hang with them as long as was required of me. This was surprising because Hattie is not a one-dimensional character; she is still mourning her husband and has a fraught relationship with her felonious dad; there are layers to this story, and genuine humor. Hattie’s father-in-law is named Tug and has a penchant for exclaiming “Jesus, Mary and Fred.” And Andrews can throw out some good lines as when she has Mo tell Hattie she smells like rainbows and joint compound.

Granted, I’m a person who thinks a beach read is a magazine — something easy to hold and easy to discard when it gets wet and smells like beer. So maybe you’ll love it. But more likely, Elin Hilderbrand has nothing to fear. B-

Book Notes

In this age of body positivity, we aren’t supposed to talk about beach bodies, except in the concept of the meme that says “How to have a beach body: 1. Have a body. 2. Go to the beach.”

True that, but it’s also true that some of us might be a little more comfortable at the beach minus a few pounds. If you are in that camp, please know that everything old is new again when it comes to diet books. In other words, old diet books never die, they just get reissued.

Behold the “New 2022 Edition!” of The South Beach Diet, introduced in 2003 by Florida cardiologist Andrew Agatston. Yep, he’s still around and runs the Agatston Center for Preventive Medicine, which these days promotes intermittent fasting. The South Beach Diet has been so popular for so long that it has its own category on Amazon.

Dr. Agatston did issue a new paperback version of The South Beach Diet in 2020 (Rodale, 336 pages). But the hottest-selling diet and fitness book right now is The Whole Body Reset (Simon & Schuster, 400 pages) by Stephen Perrine. It may or may not be a selling point that Perrine is editor of the AARP magazine, which explains why the book is targeted at people in midlife or beyond. Like South Beach, it promises a flatter belly and overall improved health with a focus on protein with fewer carbs.

Another new health book that promises weight loss is Glucose Revolution (Simon & Schuster, 304 pages) by Jessie Inchauspe. She’s a social media influencer (@Glucosegoddess on Instagram) but, interestingly, has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a master’s in biochemistry and comes to the subject well-educated. Worth a look.

Finally, I’m interested to read the provocatively titled Drop Acid (Little, Brown Spark, 336 pages), the latest offering from Dr. David Perlmutter, the controversial physician-author who wrote 2013’s Grain Brain and several follow-up books that posited that grains and sugar are the brain’s “silent killer.” In this book, the villain is uric acid, which is a waste product that circulates in our blood. Perlmutter argues that elevated levels of uric acid, caused in part by consuming too much fructose, are contributing to obesity, cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline and other ills.

At this rate, there will be nothing left for us to consume but water, which naturally leads to the best title ever for a health book: You’re Not Sick, You’re Thirsty. For all I know, it could be malarky, but the title is good for a smile. It’s an oldie, from 2003; Warner, 304 pages.

Book Events

Author events

• ANDREW BIGGIO Author presents The Rifle. Tues., May 10, 7 to 8 p.m. The Wright Museum of WWII (77 Center St., Wolfeboro). Seating is limited, and reservations are required. Admission costs $5 for museum members and $10 for non-members. Call 569-1212 or visit wrightmuseum.org.

• DONALD ANTRIM Author presents One Friday in April. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Tues., May 17, 6:30 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• R.W.W. GREENE Author presents Mercury Rising. Bookery, 844 Elm St., Manchester. Fri., May 20, 5:30 p.m. Visit bookerymht.com or call 836-6600.

• TAMMY SOLLENBERGER Author presents The One Inside: 30 Days to Your Authentic Self. Bookery, 844 Elm St., Manchester. Wed., June 1, 6 p.m. Visit bookerymht.com or call 836-6600.

• PAUL BROGAN Author presents A Sprinkling of Stardust Over the Outhouse. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Thurs., June 30, 6:30 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• CASEY SHERMAN Author presents Helltown. Bookery, 844 Elm St., Manchester. Sun., Aug. 14, 1:30 p.m. Visit bookerymht.com or call 836-6600.

Book sales

• SPRING BOOK SALE Bag sale features thousands of hardbacks and paperbacks including fiction, nonfiction, mystery and a variety of children’s books, plus a large selection of DVDs, CDs and audio books. Baked goods will also be sold. Brookline Public Library, 4 Main St., Brookline. Sat., May 14, and Sun., May 15, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Poetry

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

Writers groups

• MERRIMACK VALLEY WRITERS’ GROUP All published and unpublished local writers who are interested in sharing their work with other writers and giving and receiving constructive feedback are invited to join. The group meets regularly Email [email protected].

Album Reviews 22/05/05

Sue Jeffers, Up With the Masses (FBI Records)

I’m a bit late to the party with this full-length, but this veteran folkie’s messages are timeless until further notice; she eschews widening the typical (and oh-so-unconstructive) red-vs.-blue divide in favor of a far more positive worker-unification slant in the manner of Woody Guthrie. So, yeah, you can smell the patchouli from here, but she’s got the receipts, being that she’s old enough to have known what was going on in her former town of Kent, Ohio, when the tin soldiers and Nixon showed up to squash the Vietnam War protests. Yeah, she was there, right in the thick of all that, so she knows to tread a bit lightly when confronting the issues of our time. Over gentle acoustic strums and piano tinkling, Jeffers volunteers her Marianne Faithfull-ish warble for service in the Black Lives Matter cause (“Lives Stolen”) and protest chestnuts (a cover of Woody Guthrie’s “1913 Massacre”), but her best moment comes when she flexes a Bob Dylan-ish knack for working-person’s lyricism while calling for a general strike in her “Essentially Expendable,” where she proves that her generation is still plugged into all our grim realities. A

Christian Lee Hutson, Quitters (ANTI Records)

I’m sure it must be pretty weird to live in Los Angeles to begin with. Despite the fact that I know a few people from there who seem really nice and not so — I don’t know, self-serving, disposable and/or fame-hungry as I’ve caricatured in my head, I still picture L.A. as a place that’s even more impossible to conquer than New York City simply because normies expect less from its star-making machinery. Contrast that with this busking, Sufjan Stevens-ish songwriter’s experience of it, a place that’s got a soul in there somewhere, whether we northern Vikings can believe it or not, and its denizens are well aware of its temporariness: It’s “a place where everything in the end gets blown away and paved over with something new, where even the ocean and fires are always whispering, ‘One day we’ll take it all back.’” So these songs are pretty, banjo-and-dojo-lazing things, Americana with only the slightest West Coast tint, occasionally bursting into full big-production bombast. This guy’s really good, is what I mean. A

PLAYLIST

• Hey, man, if there’s anything that’ll get us through these hard times, it’s great rock ’n’ roll, you know? I’m still waiting for that very thing, but you never know what a fresh batch of new releases will bear, maybe there will be some keen and groovy and awesome and dope rock ’n’ roll in the barrel of new stuff coming out on May 6, and as always, I have every expectation that my mind will be blown, so I’m going to look at what’s coming our way, right now! Uh-oh, maybe I spoke too soon, because what to my wondering eyes should appear but none other than fluffy whitebread-twee silly-willies Belle and Sebastian, with their new album, A Bit Of Previous! Oy vey, they’re still a band, I can’t believe it, but I’m forcing myself to keep an open mind, because maybe this will sound unlike anything they’ve ever done before, and I won’t have to wash my ears out with Iggy Pop or Al Jolson after I subject myself to the new single, “Unnecessary Drama.” Huh, the song doesn’t start out like the usual dreck that made them famous; there’s someone playing a harmonica, and there’s some actual rock ’n’ roll going on — aaaand it’s awful, the chorus is something that belongs on an old episode of Gilmore Girls in which the whole town of Faerie Depot or whatever they call it is just cold rockin’ out and banging their heads around the town gazebo while a bunch of grandfathers bring down the hipster thunder, and there’s Rory Gilmore giving awkward glances at Sebastian Bach or whatever annoying boy she was dating in that show. Wait, maybe someone will smash a guitar and raise my pulse past clinically dead level — hm, nope. Nope. Thanks for nothing as always, Belle and Sebastian! (Serious question, does anyone still listen to awkward-’n’-quirky aughts-era twee for enjoyment anymore? Hasn’t it gone the way of Milli Vanilli and Chuck Berry by now? No?)

• Wait a second, whoa, this might be OK, it’s a new album from Sacramento, Calif., indie-rock band !!! (No, that’s their actual band name, one of the stupidest ones ever invented; it’s so stupid that every time someone writes about them, they have to add “[Chik Chik Chik]” so people will know who they’re talking about, isn’t that so aughts-indie?). No, funny story, the other week someone on Twitter asked the entire internet what they thought was the best bass line ever, and I tweeted that it was the bass line from !!!’s tune “Myth Takes,” and nobody hit Like on my tweet because no one on Twitter cares about music except when rappers get into “beefs.” Anyway, good lord, folks, YouTube can’t even find anything from this new !!! album, Let It Be Blue, because it probably crashes YouTube’s server whenever someone inputs “!!!” in the search thingie. Do you now see how stupid that band name is? OK, I tricked it, and am now listening to the single, “Storm Around The World.” It’s basically like Modest Mouse but more urban-asphalt-y, mid-tempo, mildly funky. It’s OK.

• Canadian pop-punkers Simple Plan are back, with their sixth album, Harder Than It Looks, and its single, “Congratulations,” which probably sounds like a Blink-182 B-side. Yup, it does, no need to sacrifice any further syllables on this.

• We’ll close the week with wine-indie Canadians Arcade Fire, whose new LP, WE, is here, just to annoy me. No, I’ll shut up, there are a couple of Arcade Fire songs I’ve liked, and this new single, “The Lightning I, II” is nice and bombastic and hormonal, a song that will work great while you chug Red Tail chardonnay and fill out your divorce papers or whatever people usually do when they listen to Arcade Fire.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

An ode to Land Shark

Keep it simple on vacation

It had been a long day. My wife and I, together with our three children, packed our bags, got ourselves to the airport, made it through security unscathed, successfully boarded a plane, flew to points south without delay, procured our bags at the baggage claim, secured a rental car and drove to our final destination while my kids screamed in unison about the severe hunger from which they were suffering.

At some point during that rather lengthy sentence, you have to have been thinking, “This guy needed a beer.” And I did, very much.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes in moments like those when you’ve just had yourself a day, you really don’t want a brew that’s especially unique or that requires your consideration. You need something predictable, something you can count on, and definitely something you don’t need to think about.

I didn’t need a quadruple dry-hopped IPA or a stout that’s been aged in brandy barrels and finished with vanilla beans and cinnamon.

I know I overuse it but I just needed a beer that tasted like a beer. I sprinted to the closest convenience store and was actually pleased to see the establishment had very little to choose from. As I was in vacationland, I paid what can only be described as a premium price for a six-pack of Landshark Island Style Lager, which is apparently brewed by Margaritaville Brewing Co. in St. Louis, Missouri, and I never looked back.

The beer is simple yet so pleasing. It’s light, refreshing, easy to drink and just enjoyable. No one could drink this beer and say, “That tastes bad.” Some would, I know, but they’d be lying.

As beer drinkers today, we have an incredible array of options to choose from. Brewers are doing some amazing things and perhaps above all else, as far as I can tell, we’re all within a short drive of fresh, on-tap beer right from the brewery. Think back 10 or 15 years and it’s hard to fully appreciate how the craft beer scene has evolved and grown since then. The variety and the quality is off the charts today and that’s a great thing for beer drinkers everywhere.

But sometimes all you need is something pleasing and simple. I think vacation, and the first couple days of vacation in particular, is often one of those times. You’re visiting new places, experiencing new things, getting yourself settled, and yeah, you’re probably a little stressed from the travel.

For me, beer is one thing I really don’t need to spend a whole lot of time considering when I arrive in a new place. So keep it simple, stupid.

Sure, after you’re settled, by all means, try some new things and explore some local breweries. I’m never going to tell you not to do that, but Day 1, grab a Landshark and relax.

I’m not suggesting you have to stick to mass-produced brews like Landshark, but I do think it makes sense to lean toward brews that offer pleasing simplicity, like Pilsners in particular. Most local craft brewers wherever you are will have something simple, light, refreshing that you can embrace without thinking.

For example, Liar’s Bench Brewing Co. in Portsmouth was pouring a John Grady Kolsch and a No Dice Pilsner as of last week, while Kettlehead Brewing Co. in Tilton was pouring Nuevo Fresco, a Mexican-style lager. You’ll have easy-drinking options wherever you go.

All of this said, you should probably also think about ordering a margarita if I’m being completely honest.

What’s in My Fridge
Green State Lager by Zero Gravity Brewing Co. (Burlington, Vt.)
Speaking of beers that would work on vacation, this would be perfect. Light, crisp, flavorful and refreshing, this brew is delightfully easy to drink. I had a couple of these after a long afternoon of dethatching my lawn and let’s just say it was the right choice. Grab a chilled glass for this one. Cheers.

Featured photo. Go ahead and have a Landshark Island Style Lager. Courtesy photo.

Chocolate-covered cherry biscotti

Mother’s Day is only a few days away. Let me offer some advice. Don’t order an overpriced bouquet of flowers. Skip the candy store and its box of chocolates. Instead, make her a homemade gift, like these biscotti — made from the heart, and delicious!

Biscotti may be the perfect baked good to give as a gift. You can make them in advance, and they won’t lose any of their texture or flavor. They’re meant to be crunchy. Plus, they will keep well once delivered, so the recipient can savor them as slowly as she wants.

If you decide to make these, there are two ingredient notes. First, you must use dried cherries. Fresh cherries are way too juicy to be part of a cookie that is meant to be crisp. Second, I recommend using milk chocolate chips because I prefer a sweeter chocolate. However, you definitely could switch to semisweet or dark chocolate, if the recipient prefers.

Chocolate-covered cherry biscotti
Makes 30

⅓ cup unsalted butter, softened
1¼ cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped dried cherries
½ cup milk chocolate chips
1 teaspoon shortening

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Beat butter and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer on speed 2 for 2 minutes.
Add eggs, one at a time, beating until incorporated.
Add vanilla extract, beating until smooth.
In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt.
Add flour mixture to wet ingredients and mix until fully combined.
Stir cherries into dough.
Divide dough in half.
Shape each half into a 10″ x 4″ rectangle, using floured hands.
Set loaves 2 inches apart on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet.
Bake for 30 minutes or until the dough is set.
Leaving the oven on, remove the biscotti loaves and cool for 15 minutes on the baking sheet.
Using a butcher’s knife, cut the loaves into diagonal slices, ½ inch thick.
Place slices on the baking sheet with the cut sides down. Bake for 8 to 9 minutes.
Turn over slices, and bake for 8 to 9 minutes more.
Remove biscotti from oven and allow to cool completely on a baking rack.
Combine chocolate and shortening in a small microwave-safe bowl.
Microwave for 30 seconds, then stir.
Continue heating chocolate in 15-second increments, stirring in between, until chocolate glaze is smooth.
Using a spoon, spread a layer of glaze on the top of each biscotti.
Return to parchment paper-lined tray.
Refrigerate for 15 minutes to set glaze.

Featured Photo: Chocolate-covered cherry biscotti. Photo by Michele Pesula Kuegler.

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