Tag: 241219

Drinks with John Fladd

Cranberry Margarita

Everything was quiet, mostly.

Very few houses are actually quiet at night. Every time the wind blows, a house will usually flex a little, settling in one direction with a creak or a soft cracking noise. But around 2:30 this morning, everything briefly went completely quiet. If there had been anybody still awake, the sudden, complete silence might have startled them. That’s one of the things science fiction generally messes up on; if you’re dealing with a temporal anomaly — and how could you not be, if you’re trying to visit more than two billion houses in a night — sound doesn’t know how to work under those conditions.

The Old Man came down the chimney, set his bag to one side. He looked at the stockings waiting for him, but out of habit, looked for the traditional milk and cookies. Instead, his eyes fell on a waiting tray table. Laid out carefully, there was a small dish of cocktail peanuts, a cocktail shaker, an ice bucket and a martini glass. The Old Man’s eyes sparkled as he used the tongs that Rachel always left for him — always had, since she was a college student — and dropped three ice cubes into the shaker and shook himself a cocktail.

He carefully strained it into the waiting glass, helped himself to a few peanuts for the salt, then with a sigh, took a grateful sip of his margarita, and set to filling the stockings with his unencumbered hand.

Some parents just get it.

Cranberry Margarita

2 ounces Blanco tequila – I like Hornitos

1 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice

¾ ounce homemade cranberry syrup (see below)

Combine all ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker.

Shake this cocktail brutally, then strain into a coupé glass.

If you have something sweet and syrupy, you can almost certainly use it to make a pretty good margarita. Cranberry syrup takes things one step further, firmly into Delicious territory. Cranberry goes extremely well with lime. Both fruits are puckeringly sour and can stand up to the tequila’s assertiveness. The sweetness of the syrup mellows everything out and makes this smooth and very, very drinkable.

Cranberry Syrup Two Ways

Combine equal amounts (by weight) of frozen whole cranberries and white sugar in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, crush berries, and allow to steep for 30 minutes. Strain and bottle.

or

Combine equal amounts (by volume) of unsweetened cranberry juice and white sugar in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil. Leave on a boil for 10 to 20 seconds to make sure the sugar is completely dissolved. Remove from heat. Allow to cool, then bottle.

Either version will be delicious — like grenadine with a better personality. The whole-fruit version will be a bit thicker, due to the pectin in the berries. The juice version will be a little thinner and clearer.

In the kitchen with Edmond David Hood

Hood is a butcher and co-owner of Old Boy’s Butcher Shop (707 Route 101A, Merrimack, 699-8014). Dave Hood has been working a butcher counter since his teens.

“I worked in a grocery store — DeMoulas — since I was 15, and it was the department that paid the most. That’s how I fell into the profession,” he said. “I worked with Market Basket for 28 years. I was in management since I was 20 years old. We — my wife, Lindsey, [and I] — got out of the spotlight of corporate markets, and we figured we would do something on our own. We just opened up early June of this year. Old Boy’s Butcher Shop is a butcher shop and deli. We make sandwiches, but we specialize in our certified Angus beef program. … They’re free-range steer instead of quarantined. And they’re 100 percent grass-fed. If you’re going to do it, you’ve got to do it right. That’s kind of what sticks us out from the rest of the people. Just being around on a commercial basis and knowing what sells, people expect that consistency with quality. That’s why we decided to do the prime grades, even with our marinades.”

What would you have for your last meal?

Probably a rib-eye steak; it’s my favorite steak. It’s the flavor. It’s your most flavorful steak. It’s from one of the best locations of the animal. I love it.

What is your favorite local eatery?

Buckley’s in Merrimack. It’s the steakhouse with the best-quality meats. I order a rib-eye when I go there, every single time.

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

Keanu Reeves. He is one of the actors in one of my favorite movies. He stars in The Matrix. He’s very humble. I’m always impressed when people can keep their humility.

What is your favorite cut of meat that you sell?

It’s not what we sell; it’s who we’re selling it to. We carry a lot of things in our store from small areas in New England. We support a lot of locally based products as well. We love seeing people come back. They’re not spending a lot of money like they do in other places. We’re trying to offer that quality meats at a reasonable price.

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

I see a lot of carnivore diets, which really helps us, people just eating meats. I have clients coming from all the way from Londonderry, Hollis, northern Massachusetts coming up because they do like our grass-fed line.

What is your favorite thing to cook at home?

I love steak, but pizza is my second favorite. Everyone in my house likes their own. I’m a pepperoni type of person. My wife likes Hawaiian, and my son likes nothing on his pizza, just sauce and crust. He’s a purist.

As a meat expert, how would you recommend cooking a steak?

There’s a couple of ways. A lot of people like to cook with cast iron, which is a high-intensity heat; it pretty much sears the outside of a steak, so it prevents the juices from coming out of it. With a prime grade product the marbling keeps it juicy naturally. We also teach people to use cast iron to broil steaks. That involves the same key factors as grilling outside, despite the weather.

Compiled by John Fladd

Setting the scene – in chocolate

Chocolate bars serve as a canvas for edible art

Laurie Lowy sat at a small table in the corner of Dancing Lion Chocolate in downtown Manchester, bent over a 3- by 5-inch bar of chocolate, painting a winter scene. She dipped the tip of her paintbrush into one of the pigments resting in a warm-water bath just off to her right. Carefully, but without stress, she painted an olive green line on the chocolate in front of her, marking out the top of a small triangle. Another dip of the brush led to another, slightly larger triangle just below it, then another below that. All of us have tried to draw or paint a pine tree like this at some point, but when Lowy did it, a realistic-looking tree appeared on the chocolate.

“My background is art,” she said. “I went to the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida, but I’m here for a week on vacation, and I’ve been put to work.” Lowy is the mother of master chocolatier Richard Tango-Lowy, the owner of Dancing Lion. “I am painting chocolates here,” she said, “but I live in Florida.”

She looked up, smiled, switched brushes, then started to fill in her tree with a different shade of green. The brush put color on the chocolate less smoothly, adding texture to the tree.

“I mostly do mosaics now,” she said, “tables, backsplashes, that sort of thing. But these, for me, these are just fun. I mean, it’s creative, but it makes me pull for myself.”

One of the advantages to being the boss’s mother, she said, is a large amount of creative freedom. The chocolate bars she was working on this morning were all winter landscapes — one with a tiny, red-coated figure pulling a sled — but that was what she was in the mood for. “[I paint] whatever I choose to do,” she said. “When Richard and I talked before I got here, he said, ‘All right, Mom, what’s it going to be?’ And I said, ‘I think I’m doing trees.’ So that’s it; every single one of them I’ve done this time have had trees of some sort.”

Lowy switched brushes again, picking up one with a wider head, dipping it in white pigment, and started surrounding her tree with snow and dimpling the surface of the tree with small blobs of white. She cleaned the brush off, then dipped it into a completely different pigment, a muted gold color. With quick, smooth movements, she put gold highlights on the snow, and suddenly the scene was three-dimensional, and the light was the way it is on a late winter afternoon.

Lowy pointed to the jars of pigment in the water bath next to her. Although it makes sense to call what she does “chocolate painting,” she said, she doesn’t actually use paint. “It’s melted cocoa butter,” she said. Because it is a component of chocolate, it bonds easily to a chocolate bar, and is completely edible. “This,” she said, indicating the electric water bath, “keeps all these very melted. Because it’s chocolate. So, as soon as I turn this off, these harden, and then I can’t use them at all.”

She added some light gray tones to the snow in her tiny painting, and suddenly, there were snowbanks.

“The last time I did this — which was probably four years ago — we took pictures all over town,” Lowy said, reaching for a broad, feathered brush. “And I did pictures of buildings. It was very cool. But this time, I just wanted to go back to nature.”

Because Dancing Lion does not make chocolates from precise recipes, each batch is slightly different from any other, so each of these hand-painted chocolate bars is completely unique. “This is one-of-a-kind,” Lowy said. “A one-off. Every time I’m doing 12 and each one is entirely different.”

It’s hard to imagine someone actually eating one of these chocolate paintings, and Lowy said that sometimes people are reluctant to.

“That is a tendency,” she said. “But Richard always tries to explain, we create these things to eat.”

Chocolate art
Laurie Lowy’s hand-painted edible chocolate landscapes are available at Dancing Lion Chocolate (917 Elm St., Manchester, 625-4043, dancinglion.us/cacao) for $140 each.

This Week 24/12/19

Thursday, Dec. 19

There will be a 21+ Ugly Sweater Party and screening of 1989’s classic holiday movie National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation tonight at Chunky’s Cinema Pub (707 Huse Road, Manchester, 206-3888, chunkys.com) beginning at 8 p.m. Wear your ugliest sweater and you could win a Chunky’s Gift Bucket for Two. Tickets are $5.99 at the door or through Chunky’s website.

Thursday, Dec. 19

Legendary rock band Quiet Riot will take to the stage at the Tupelo Music Hall (10 A St., Derry, 437-5100, tupelomusichall.com) at 8 p.m. with special guest All Sinners. Tickets start at $50.

Friday, Dec. 20

The Rock Orchestra by Candlelight, a band of 14 classical musicians, breathing beautifully dark energy into rock and metal tracks, will perform at the Chubb Theatre (44 S. Main St., Concord, 225-1111, ccanh.com) tonight at 8 p.m. Bathed in candlelight, skeletal players with rhinestone masks will switch between haunting melodies and powerful walls of sound. Tickets start at $63.75.

Friday, Dec. 20

The rodeo is coming to the SNHU Arena (555 Elm St., Manchester, 644-5000, snhuarena.com). PBR’s (Professional Bull Riders) premier event, Unleash the Beast, will take place tonight and tomorrow, Saturday, Dec. 21, at 7:30 p.m. This is your chance to witness world-class athletes going head-to-head with powerful bucking bulls. Two-day tickets start at $73 through ticketmaster.com. Visit pbr.com/tours/unleash-the-beast.

Friday, Dec. 20

Vibe Yoga and Aerial Moon (182 Main St., Nashua, 759 8432, vibeyoga603.com) will host a Winter Solstice Celebration and Journey, tonight from 7 to 9 p.m. Mark the rebirth of the sun during this two-hour winter solstice celebration and Shamanic Journey led by Jeanelle Boyer. Register through the Vibe website. The cost is $35.

Saturday, Dec. 21

Celebrate the holiday season with Canadian Brass tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Nashua Center for the Arts (201 Main St., Nashua, 800-657-8774, nashuacenterforthearts.com). Tickets start at $39.

Saturday, Dec. 21

Get ready to embrace the holiday spirit with an unforgettable evening of music, dance and festive cheer as Christmas with the Celts takes the stage at the Stockbridge Theatre (22-98 Bypass 28, Derry, 437-5210, pinkertonacademy.org/stockbridge-theatre) tonight at 7p.m. Tickets start at $35.

Saturday, Dec. 21

There will be a Christmas Contra Dance with Dudley Laufman & Friends at the Citywide Community Center (14 Canterbury Road, Concord, 225-8690, concordnh.gov/1364/Community-Center) tonight from 7 to 10 p.m. Beginners, singles and families are welcome. The cost is $10 for adults, $5 for ages 15 to 20, and children under 15 can dance for free. Visit concordnhcontra.wordpress.com.

Save the Date! Saturday, Dec. 28
Don’t miss your chance to see what fans love about the Harlem Globetrotters: the dunks, alley-oops, looooong shots, magic, history and more. See Globetrotter stars and their renowned rivals, the Washington Generals, at SNHU Arena (555 Elm St. in Manchester; snhuarena.com). There will be shows at 2 and 7 p.m. Tickets start at $35.

Featured photo: Ugly Sweater Party at Chunky’s.

Quality of Life 24/12/19

Green light in the sky

As reported by WMUR in a Dec.10 online article, a comet will be visible in night skies in January, after an absence of 50,000 years. Discovered two years ago, the comet, whimsically named C/2022E3 (ZTF), “will make its closest approach to the sun on Jan. 12, according to NASA,” the story reported. This loop around the sun represents the near edge of an orbit that normally takes the comet through the extreme far edges of the solar system. “The icy celestial object,” WMUR reported, “which has steadily brightened as it approaches the sun, will subsequently make its closest pass of Earth between Feb. 1 and Feb. 2, around 26 million miles away, according to EarthSky — as the comet nears Earth, observers will be able to spot it near the bright star Polaris, also called the North Star, and it should be visible earlier in the evening.”

QOL score: +1

Comment: While keen-eyed observers might be able to see the comet unaided at the end of January, most sky-watchers will need the help of binoculars or a telescope.

A rude shock for Rochester dogs

According to a Dec.11 online story by WMUR, Rochester City officials are investigating a number of complaints from pet owners that their dogs have been shocked while peeing against city light poles. WMUR quoted dog owner William McKay: “I walked him over to a pole, he lifted his leg up, and then he just screamed real loud, jumped up in the air and ran away.” According to the report, this has been traumatic for pet owners as well. “My dog started walking,” the story quoted Rochester resident Ryan Naples, “and he lifted his leg to pee, and all of a sudden, it was the most excruciating noise I’ve ever heard in my life. For about 30 seconds, he was just screaming and panting, laying on the ground, freaking out.”

QOL score: -1

Comment: As reported by WMUR, “The city said it’s looking into what’s causing the shocks. It has cut power at all the reported sites as the investigation continues.”

The odds may be in your favor

A recent study by VegasInsider.com compared payouts in lotteries across the country and found that “New Hampshire had the best overall chance of winning any sort of prize, with a 1-in-10 chance of winning something,” according to a Dec.12 press release. The study used the official websites and odds chances of state lotteries. “The results showed that the games specific to New Hampshire, Kentucky, Iowa, and New Mexico have the most likely odds of winning the big prize of 1:10,000,” the press release read.

QOL score: +1

Comment: New Hampshire’s relatively small population might be responsible. According to the press release, “bigger populated states with bigger state lottery jackpots were the least likely to succeed for the top money. New York had the worst chances, with a whopping 1-in-45,047,474, followed by Texas and Florida, which had chances of [one in] over 20 million.”

Last week’s QOL score: 72

Net change:+1

QOL this week: 73

What’s affecting your Quality of Life here in New Hampshire?

Let us know at [email protected].

Bye-bye to Belichick

The Big Story – Coach B Heads to Chapel Hill: Well, I was wrong — Bill Belichick was serious about coaching in college. And it was such big news here that it blew the Red Sox trade for the top-of-the-rotation pitcher (Garrett Crochet) they desperately needed off the front page.

BB moves to college as the leader in Super Bowls won with six. The move likely finishes his quest to pass Don Shula as the NFL’s winningest coach in history. But it accomplishes two important things. (1) It ensures he will coach in 2025. (2) It gives him complete control to run the program and pick his own groceries as he did for 20 years here. Not exactly the ending to the legendary career I hoped for, but it apparently is what he wanted.

Sports 101: Name the seven players who have won the Cy Young Award in both leagues.

News Item – Sox Get Top-of-the-Rotation Starter: After losing out on free agent lefty Max Fried when he signed with the Yankees for giant money, the Sox pulled the trigger on the long-rumored deal for White Sox lefty Garrett Crochet. To do it they (sorta) went the Brad Stevens route of proven production over future promise by sending four minor-leaguers west, including highly touted catcher Kyle Teel.

I say sorta because Crochet comes with red flags. Only deranged stat geeks can proclaim a guy who was six games under .500 (6-12) and never pitched more than four innings in any start after July 1 “among the AL’s best pitchers last year” as Boston Globe beat writer Julian McWilliams did Sunday. But at 25 the stuff was good enough to strike out 208 in a career-best 146 innings. So they rolled the dice on that and the much cheaper annual price tag over the red flags.

News Item – Alumni News Yikes Department: First there was one-time walking Patriots disaster Jonnu Smith killing them with Miami. Today it’s last year’s couldn’t make a big kick if his life depended on it Chad Ryland. He was three for three on FG tries for Phoenix in Sunday’s dismal 30-16 loss. He also has three-game winning walk-off FG’s to his credit already.

The Numbers

16 – million-dollar increase to North Carolina’s NIL recruiting money from last year’s $4 million to the $20 million it’ll be with Belichick as HC of UNC.

1 – billion with a B that the Dodgers now owe in deferred payments to players after signing Blake Snell.

… Of the Week Awards

Thumbs Up – Nico Collins: “It was definitely worth it ’cause it was caught by a kid” – Texan wide receiver in response to being fined $5,000 by the NFL for throwing a ball underhand to that kid after he caught it for a TD.

In Case You Missed It – Teddy Bridgewater:The one-time first-round NFL pick’s Miami Northwestern won the Class 3A championship in his first year as a high school coach with an epic playoff round run where they outscored their five opponents 262-12.

Random Thoughts:

A Little History – Team Support: Before the geeks whine that Crochet got no support from the horrible White Sox: Steve Carlton won 27 games for the Phillies when they won 59 in 1972.

Sports 101 Answer: The seven NL and AL Cy Young winners are Gaylord Perry, Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens, Roy Halladay, Max Scherzer and Blake Snell.

Final Thought – Should Jerod Mayo Return? The real issue for a change is not improvement, it’s is he the right fit for the circumstances? And since the Pats’ biggest priority is maximizing the development of their prime asset, Drake Maye, the answer is no.

We’ve learned two things in recent years about the Coach-QB relationship: (1) the right QB is more important than the coach, no matter who he is; (2) Matt Patricia and Mac Jones clearly showed that the wrong coach overseeing a young QB can kill his development. How is Mayo’s background any different from Patricia’s? Answer: in this crucial area, not much.

Instead they need an imaginative offensive mind guiding Maye. Like Detroit OC Ben Johnson, who leads the NFL’s highest-scoring club and, outside of KC, its most creative attack. He also helped Jared Goff evolve into an MVP-caliber player after the 2016 first overall pick floundered in L.A. before being dumped for Matthew Stafford. And look what draft bust turned MVP candidate Sam Darnold has done under ex-Patriot QB Kevin O’Connell in Minnesota.

If Mayo were taking over the defense-dominant 1985 Bears I’d probably stick with him. But that’s not what the Pats are. It’s an offensive league now and Maye is key to their revival.

So Bob Kraft, admit your mistake and then go get someone like Johnson, O’Connell or a young Andy Reid. Because that’s what’s needed going forward.

Email Dave Long at [email protected].

Stay in the loop!

Get FREE weekly briefs on local food, music,

arts, and more across southern New Hampshire!