Tag: 250109

Zabaglione

When most of us think of Italian desserts, what come to mind are multi-colored wedding cookies, or cannoli, or maybe ricotta pie, but zabaglione is a feather-light, wine-based custard that sophisticated — dare I say fancy — Italians have after dinner. Actual Italians would sneer at the idea of drinking espresso in the evening, but it has to be said that this goes really, really well with it.

  • 4 room temperature egg yolks
  • 2 Tablespoons sugar
  • ¾ cup (170 g) Marsala or Amontillado wine
  • A pinch of ground cinnamon

Heat 2 inches or so of water to not-quite-boiling in a medium-sized saucepan. If you’re really into precision, you can use a thermometer and bring it to 200°F, or 95°C. Alternatively, you can bring the water to a boil, then turn down the heat until it just stops boiling. It’s a philosophical decision.

In a glass or metal bowl, beat the egg yolks with an electric hand mixer until they are pale and a little fluffy. If you own a stand mixer, your hand mixer has been biding his time at the back of the cabinet under your counter, waiting to be needed again.

While still beating the yolks, sprinkle the sugar in, a little at a time. The yolks will lighten in color and thicken slightly. Still beating, sprinkle the cinnamon into the mixture. If you want to do this with a flourish from a great height like a fancy chef, you absolutely should. You’ve earned it.

Still beating the mixture, gradually drizzle in the wine. When everything seems well-incorporated, turn off the mixer and set it down. Get a glass of water or some more of the Marsala; even if you’re not normally a sweet wine person, this is a perfect excuse to drink a little without threatening your self-image. You’re going to be stuck in place at the stove for the next 20 minutes or so, and it would be a shame to stand there thirsty.

Move your bowl of eggy wine to the stove, and place it on top of the pot of not-quite-boiling water. (You’d forgotten about that, hadn’t you?) If you’ve heard the term “double-boiler” and wondered what that was, congratulations, you just built one. This is a way to cook something very, very gently. Your bowl isn’t being heated directly on a burner; it’s being heated indirectly from below, by the steam from your not-quite-boiling water. This is a technique generally used to melt chocolate or thicken a custard. Or, if you’re fancy like us, a zabaglione.

Beat your proto-zabaglione with the hand mixer (who will be feeling positively smug by now) while heating it in your double-boiler. If the temperature of the water rises above the boiling point, the steam will make your bowl rattle, in which case, reduce the heat slightly, and move the pot halfway off the burner to regulate things until the temperature comes down.

At this point you should take the opportunity to sink into a deep meditative state or catch up on your favorite podcast, because the zabaglione is going to take a while to come together. Eventually, though, your patience will be rewarded and it will thicken to a texture a little lighter than whipped cream.

Remove your bowl of zabaglione from its steam bath, and turn the stove off. Use a silicone spatula to gently mix your foamy cream to incorporate any syrup that may have settled in the bottom of the bowl. Gently fill several cocktail or coupé glasses with the finished custard, and serve immediately.

There are some dishes that will be as patient as a hand-mixer, that will wait for your dinner guests to linger over dinner, or will travel well to a potluck dinner, but zabaglione isn’t one of them. It is a light, almost ephemeral dessert. It dances across your palate as you eat it, waving coyly to your cup of espresso. It is surprisingly, almost assertively, sweet, but at the same time, as light as a sigh that leaves you with a quickly fading memory of the taste of wine on your lips, prompting the next spoonful, then the next.

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.

Local flour for better bread

How one baker focuses on the grains for better baking

Michael Williams is getting closer to baking his perfect loaf of bread.

Williams, co-owner and bread baker for Eden’s Table Farm in Dunbarton, has spent the past couple of years polishing his bread game.

“I got exposed to great bread when I went to Germany,” he said, “to flour that was local and freshly milled, and bread that was made with a natural starter. That was what was most easily available in the bakery in our tiny little 1,100-person village. I’ve been chasing that bread ever since; every refinement has been getting me closer to that experience.”

Williams and his wife, Addie Leader-Zavos, combine their passion for growing fresh, organic produce and locally made artisanal foods. While Leader-Zavos bakes virtually everything else, Williams is in charge of the bread.

The journey toward the very best bread takes the form of tiny, incremental steps, but he sees constant progress. “The best example I can give you is actually the Swedish rye. I made that for Addie on our second date. And I was using King Arthur flour, then I was using a sifted rice flour. I was using molasses instead of beet syrup, but now I’m using a Swedish baking syrup that’s beet-based. Over time, I’ve whittled it down to the essentials and getting the absolute best ingredients I can. The pursuit of that led me to constantly question, ‘Where is this coming from? How is it being processed?’ I ask that over and over and over again.”

Because his platonic ideal of a loaf of bread has very few ingredients — flour, salt, a natural sourdough starter, something to help feed that starter (that’s where the Swedish baking syrup comes in), and water — Williams has put more thought into the flour he uses than most people put into planning their retirement.

“I wanted flour that was what I refer to as ‘live flour.’ It has never been separated, and it has never been irradiated. Industrial flour is almost always separated. It is sifted hot, or it is milled hot, separated into its component parts and the germ is irradiated to denature volatile oils. When they oxidize, they become rancid. It’s a very distinct odor and it’s very unpleasant. It totally makes sense why they would not want that in their product going out into the world but unfortunately most of the nutrition is in those oils, because the best nutrition in the grain is fat-soluble. So not only that, but that’s where all the flavor is. That’s where all those aromatic esters and aldehydes are, and they get destroyed by the same process that denatures those easily oxidized oils.”

Once Williams had defined what he was looking for in a bread flour, he started using flour that was shipped from a regional mill in South Carolina. Eventually he found a mill closer to home. “We found a couple of different options, and the one that really struck us was this place in Cambridge [Massachusetts] called Elmendorf Baking Supplies. They have a mill, and they mill for themselves and for some other people. And so we started ordering from them. They source their grain regionally from small regenerative farms. They work with private grains. They work with farms in New York and Maine and Massachusetts. The step we took here, we were getting bread flour from a variety of wheat called Glenthat is 15 and a half percent protein, which is astronomically high.”

(As a point of reference, King Arthur’s bread flour, which has an excellent reputation, has a protein content of 12.7 percent. The amount of protein in a flour determines how well a baker can develop gluten, the elastic material that gives a loaf of bread a chewy texture and traps carbon dioxide to make it puff up as it bakes.)

Williams uses a mixture of the Glen flour and rye flour to make his Swedish rye bread. “One of the tricky things about baking with rye flour is that rye notoriously destroys gluten structures,” he said. “So rye has almost no protein in it. This rye bread is only like 31 percent rye. It’s not a high rye, but the blend really does a great job of holding up with that rye in it.”

But for Williams, this flour is just one more step toward a truly great bread. Eventually, he said, he and his wife would like to mill their own flour. “It’s a process of evolution,” he summed up, “First the flour, then the mill, then a wood-fired oven, because I would much rather bake bread on a wood fire.”

Bread
The farm stand at Eden’s Table Farm (240 Stark Highway North, Dunbarton, 774-1811, edenstablefarm.square.site) is closed until Feb 5. Hours when it reopens will be Wedensday-Friday 1-7pm and Saturdays from 9am-5pm.

The Weekly Dish 25/01/09

New international cuisine in Nashua: A new restaurant with a menu inspired by world street food has opened in Nashua. Local Street Eats (112 W. Pearl St., Nashua, 402-4435, local-streeteats.com) offers small bites, salads and more substantial fare including Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Indian, Central American and regional American classics.

Bottomless kolsch: Thirsty Thursdays at To Share Brewing (720 Union St., Manchester, 836-6947, tosharebrewing.com) in January will celebrate the brewery’s Krone Kolsch “via traditional service in the taproom, every Thursday until the Krone is gone,” according to a post on To Share’s Facebook page. “A server will bring around a tray (traditionally referred to as a kranz) of fresh Krone. If yours is empty, we’ll deliver a new one and mark a notch on your coaster. We will keep the fresh pours coming each time you have an empty glass. Place your coaster on top of your glass to let us know you’re done.”

Zero-proof wines: Wine on Main (9 N. Main St., Concord, 897-5828, wineonmainnh.com) will host a free tasting of non-alcoholic wines with Emily from Vinilandia, Saturday, Jan. 11, from 1 to 4 p.m. Anyone observing Dry January or just “sober-curious” is invited to taste some of the new wave of alcohol-free wines. “Technology and winemaking has come a long way and these are not the non-alcoholic options of years past. These are actual wines by established winemakers that then have the alcohol naturally removed at the end,” Wine on Main writes on its website.

Wine fun: Vine 32 Wine & Graze Bar (25 S. River Road, Unit 107, in Bedford; vinethirtytwo.com) has a few Valentine’s related events on their schedule. On Thursday, Feb. 13, from 6 to 8 p.m. it’s a Galentines Charcuterie Workshop. On Friday, Feb. 14, Partners In Wine will offer seatings for wine, charcuterie and a dessert to share at 4, 6:15 and 8:30 p.m. On Saturday, Feb. 15, it’s Galentines Barre at the Wine Bar at 1 p.m. with Barre Life. See the website for details.

Kiddie Pool 25/01/09

Family fun for whenever

Museum fun

It’s the Second Saturday at the Currier Museum of Art (150 Ash St. in Manchester; currier.org) when admission is free for New Hampshire residents. The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Current exhibits include “The Legend of the Poinsettia: Paintings from Tomie DePaola’s Holiday Classic,” “Jean-Michel Basquiat and Ouattara Watts: A Distant Conversation,” “Dan Dailey: Impressions of the Human Spirit” and “Olga De Amaral: Everything Is Construction and Color.”

The Children’s Museum of New Hampshire (6 Washington St. in Dover; childrens-museum.org) will present “Ocean Adventures” performance with the Portsmouth Symphony Principal Winds on Saturday, Jan. 11, at 2 p.m. The performance is part of admission for the 1 to 4 p.m. playtime, which costs $14.50 for everyone over 12 months (children under 12 months get in for free; admission for 65+ costs $12.50). Go online to reserve tickets.

Storytime

Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St. in Concord; gibsonsbookstore.com) will host a storytime with authors David Preece and Jim Webber with their two Mr. Higgins picture books on Saturday, Jan. 11, at 11 a.m. Mr. Higgins, a black Scottish terrier the authors adopted in 2014, is the star of two books: A Home for Mr. Higgins and Mr. Higgins Takes A Stand, according to the website.

S’mores and sparks

Joppa Hill Educational Farm (174 Joppa Hill in Bedford; theeducationalfarm.org) will hold a Burning of the Greens on Saturday, Jan. 11, from 5 to 8 p.m. The Bedford Fire Department will be on hand for the bonfire, where you can dispose of your Christmas tree, according to the website. Drop off trees (undecorated) by 10 a.m. on Saturday at the farm’s parking lot “between the silo and the dumpster,” the website said. The farm will sell hot cocoa and s’mores from 5 to 7 p.m. and the farmstand will be open for its final day until Easter, the website said. No registration is required.

On the ice

The SNHU Arena (555 Elm St., Manchester, snhuarena. com)will present Disney on Ice Presents Mickey’s Search Party with seven shows Thursday, Jan. 9, through Sunday, Jan. 12. Tickets start at $15.

Looking for some hockey? See two hometown teams face off when the Saint Anselm Hawks men’s ice hockey team takes on the Southern New Hampshire University Penmen at Sullivan Arena (100 Saint Anselm Drive, Manchester), on both Friday, Jan. 10, at 7 p.m. and Saturday, Jan. 11, at 4 p.m. The Hawks women’s ice hockey team takes the ice on Friday at 4 p.m. and Saturday at 1 p.m., both games versus Sacred Heart University. See saintanselmhawks.com.

The Rivier University Raiders men’s ice hockey team will play at Conway Arena (5 Stadium Drive, Nashua) on Saturday, Jan. 11, at 6:40 p.m. versus Westfield State University. See rivierathletics.com.

On the court

Saint Anselm College Hawks basketball teams will hit the court on Saturday, Jan. 11, against Pace University with the women’s team playing at 1:30 p.m. and the men’s team playing at 2:30 p.m. All Saint Anselm home games are played at Stoutenburgh Gymnasium on campus and admission costs $10 (see saintanselmhawks.com).

Rivier University Raiders basketball teams will hit the court on Saturday, Jan. 11, at the Muldoon Center in Nashua when they take on the New England College Pilgrims. The men’s team plays at noon and the women’s team plays at 2 p.m. See rivierathletics.com.

At NHTI, the men’s basketball team will play on Saturday, Jan. 11, at 1 p.m., with the Lynx taking on Massbay Community College. See nhtiathletics.com.

Save the date

Reserve a spot now for Bedford Winterfest, hosted by The Bedford Mom. Day 1, Saturday, Jan. 25, will take place on the sledding hill behind Ann DeNicola Memorial Playground and feature sledding, activities for kids, face painting and more from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.; see thebedfordmom.com. Admission is free but reservations are required.Day 2 will take place at Joppa Hill Educational Farm (174 Joppa Hill in Bedford; theeducationalfarm.org) on Sunday, Jan. 26, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Admission is free but reservations are required. Activities will include sledding, crafters, farm animals, s’mores, hot cocoa, arts and crafts, scavenger hunts and more, according to the website.

Treasure Hunt 25/01/09

Dear Donna,

My family has had this cedar chest for many years now (given to us by a family friend who no longer had room for it), and we are finally thinking of selling it. Any information you might have regarding it would be most appreciated!

Kindly,

Nathan

Dear Nathan,

Can I say it’s hard to find an older estate that doesn’t have a cedar chest. We still have one from my husband’s parents.

Lane Co. was around from the early 1900s until it closed in the early 2000s. Even though other furniture companies produced cedar chests, Lane is the name remembered.

The chests go back further than that. They were called dowry or marriage boxes. They were to store items being saved for a woman’s dreams of her wedding. Interesting items they were.

When I was growing up they were used to store everything you wanted to keep bug-free and safe. Being cedar wood lined made them desirable. Even though today’s information is controversial about that.

The value on them, Nathan, is in the range of $100 in good condition. They can be tough to market, though. Not sure of the secondary interest for them. I also remember using ours for a coffee table for a period of time. So maybe a new use?

I hope this was helpful and thanks for sharing with us, Nathan.

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