At EVOO, we always had big buckets full of dill pickles. At lunch, we served them as a side on our sandwich plates; we also used them in whatever recipes called for dill pickles, such as roasted pepper-pickle relish, which we sometimes served with grilled meats. I also remember an olive-pickle compote that paired very well with grilled striped bass. Another favorite is potato-pickle salad, which I still make regularly. Of course, we would use these delicious dills in tartar sauce. We would also serve them as an accompaniment to many of our homemade charcuterie items, such as smoked bluefish pate, country pate, and liver mousse.
I miss these pickles.
That’s why I decided it was about time to make them at home.
I figured if I bought about 8 lbs, that would be sufficient to get me through until next year’s harvest.
Once again, I headed off to my local farmers’ market; the Arlington Market is my go-to on Wednesdays. I picked through the bin of pickling cucumbers; I favor the small to medium-sized firm cucumbers. In my opinion, they make the best pickles. If they’re too big, they tend to be soft and seedy. I like to pick cucumbers all around the same size, so that they all pickle evenly.
The first thing that I did was to trim the blossom end off of the cucumbers. There are some enzymes in the blossom end that will soften the pickles; I like firm, crisp pickles.
Be sure to rinse the cucumbers thoroughly under cold water.
All the ingredients are divided into 2 each 8 quart containers. Well, almost all the ingredients are in there; I still need to add a couple of grape leaves to each container. The grape leaves are tannic and will also help keep the pickles crisp and firm.
The Pickles are all set to be placed in the back of my refrigerator for at least a month before I give them a try; this I am looking forward to.
An added bonus to this recipe is that the onions and garlic are delicious pickles in their own right. At EVOO, we often batter and fry the pickled onion rings. I also recall making pickled garlic aioli that we used on several different dishes, including on a few versions of our “Burger of the Week” as well as an accompaniment to fried seafood. The pickled garlic is also great sliced thin and put on salads; the pickling takes the hot bite out of the garlic, leaving a nice crisp, flavorful garlic pickle.
Go to your local farmers’ market. Do it this week before it’s too late; the season will be over before you know it. Make it happen, grab several ears of corn, and process them. It’s just too easy not to do it. A little bit of effort provides you with delicious local corn throughout the year.
Corn from my local farmers’ market.
Here’s what I do: I shuck the corn, discard the husks, and wipe away the silk. Then, using a large, sharp knife, I cut the kernels off the cobs, making sure to cut as close to the cob as possible without cutting too deep; you don’t want hard bits of cob in with the kernels.
Shucked.
You could stop there, bag and freeze the kernels, and be done. However, I add a couple more steps to preserve even more corn flavor.
Corn cobs and kernels separated.
First, using the back side of the same large knife, I scrape the cobs, releasing the germ and some corn pulp that I will add to soup or risotto for a deeper corn flavor.
Scraped cobs for that little bit extra.
The other thing that I do is bag and freeze the cobs; I will use them to make the corn stock that I will use for soup and risotto.
The scraping do add up.
Another thing that I have done in the past is dry the cobs and use them in my smoker, adding a nice sweet smoke flavor to whatever I am smoking; this works best with fish and pork.
Cobs, kernels and scrapings bagged and ready for the freezer.
At EVOO, we did this every summer to smoke bluefish for our very popular Cob Smoked Bluefish Fillet with Corn Risotto, Grilled Zucchini, Tomato-Basil Relish and Spiced Popcorn.
EVOO’s bluefish with corn 3 ways.
Keep in mind that when the local corn season ends, Za’s very popular Corn Za will also be done until sometime next July. Get it while you can!
I love poblanos! Their mild earthy bitter pepper flavor is something I look forward to every summer. Every so often you may find one that is quite spicy, however that is not the norm.
For many years, at the height of the season, late summer, I have bought several pounds of poblanos to process them for use throughout the year.
Red and green poblanos on the grill.
Here’s what I do: on my outdoor gas grill set to high heat, I char the peppers, blistering the skins, which loosens the skin so that I can peel them, as well as cooks the peppers. After charring them, I let them sit covered, at room temperature, this step steams them a bit, which also helps loosen the skin for easier peeling. I then peel, de-stem and de-seed the peppers. From there I separate them onto small ziplock bags and freeze them for later use.
Separated into small bags and frozen poblanos
They are quite versatile, and I use them in several ways; this year, I have already made a batch of corn-poblano chowder. Throughout the year, I will use them in salsas, on salads, as a topping for baked potatoes, in enchiladas, and in chili. I also pick the nicest, most intact ones to use for making rellenos; for this dish I leave the peppers whole, making a slit from the stem to the tip, so that I can remove the seeds. I then stuff the pepper with whatever filling I choose at the time; chicken, beef, roasted butternut squash, and cheese are some of my favorites.
A blast from the past, a dish that was on EVOO’s autumn menu back in 2021: Poblano Chili Relleno with creamed corn and fresh tomato salsa.
With not too much effort, poblanos can be a year round staple in your local kitchen too.
I’m sure by now you know that EVOO has closed. Last June, after 26 years we decided it was time step back and take advantage of our health and good fortunes by spending more time with our friends and family; I hope they feel the same way as we do. With EVOO closed I find myself in a great place with less stress and more time to do the things that I have dreamed about doing.
Colleen and I enjoying a bit of our new found free-time.
EVOO had been a passion for me, I truly loved creating local-seasonal menus, the camaraderie and the rush of working a busy line shift. I am going to miss so many wonderful aspects of EVOO, especially the people, we were blessed with extraordinary co-workers and loyal guests, many of which have become good friends. That said, now several months after closing, I don’t in any way want to go back to long hours, working most nights, weekends and many holidays. Nor do I wish to have the daily stresses of running a chef-driven farm-to-table restaurant back in my life.
Randy and I on EVOO’s last day
Colleen and I still own and operate our pizza place Za in our hometown of Arlington, MA, which recently celebrated 20 years of being in business. Being less than two miles from home it’s a super easy commute, quite often done by bike. The staff, many of whom have been with us for more than a decade, not only do they make my new less stressful, less-hours job easy, they make it a pleasure to be there.
Za Arlington
With some of that extra time I find myself with a desire to continue to write about the things I enjoy. Most of my previous posts have been about EVOO. I now want to branch out and write about some of my other passions, such as the time spent with friends and family, the places I am fortunate enough to visit and sailing adventures may end up being subjects of future posts. I will also continue to write about food and the happenings at Za with an occasional recipe thrown in.
Speaking of sailing adventures, with my next blog I am going to introduce it’s new direction by sharing a multi-part post chronicling a sailing passage across the Atlantic Ocean which I took part in back in 2022. I documented our trip as it unfolded, writing details daily. I didn’t know if I would ever be able to partake in such an ambitious trip again and I wanted to have a keepsake, so I wrote about it. Follow the story and see how we delt with getting to the starting point in the Canary Islands while dealing in a newly post COVID world, provisioning the boat and overcoming a myriad of challenges along the way; ending in Guadeloupe 24 days after we initially set sail.
Bluefish… “blecchkk”, “it’s too fishy”, It’s too strong”, “it’s oily”.
Ahhhm, no, no, no and no!
Bluefish in the hands of someone who knows how to cook it, is an amazing versatile fish. Canned tuna and smoked salmon are perennial favorites to most and are way fishier, stronger and oilier than bluefish. Treat her right and you will end up with some great results.
Enter our end of summer bluefish:
cobb smoked Bluefish Fillet with corn risotto, grilled zucchini, tomato-basil relish and spiced popcorn
This dish is a hyper-local ode to New England. The fish is from the Cape, The corn and basil are from Verrill Farm in Concord, the zucchini is from Wards Berry Farm in Sharon, the tomatoes are from Kimball Fruit Farm in Pepperrell and the popping corn is from Hurricane Flats, in S. Royalton, VT. You can’t get much more local than this. We have been making this dish for many years. Some years, unlike this one, local peaches are available and we substitute peaches for the tomatoes in the relish.
To prepare this dish, first we fillet, portion and then brine the fish in a salt, brown sugar, water solution in the refrigerator overnight. The next day we give it a quick hot-ish smoke, over corn cobbs, (that have been dehydrated and are left over from making the risotto), being careful to not cook the fish through. At this point we’re looking to just add some smoke flavor and not cook the fish. The cobb smoke really shines with bluefish, it’s offers a sweet and not too pungent smoke flavor.
bluefish fillets in our smokerdehydrated corn cobbs, ready for the smoker
When an order comes into the kitchen we take a portion, give it a healthy dusting of our not so secret spice mix and pop it in a pan with a mixture of white wine, garlic and vegetable stock and into a hot, 450 degree oven. Then we bake it until it’s just cooked through. This could be anywhere from 3 to 9 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fillet. The best way to test the doneness of fish is with a cake tester, after a few minutes of cooking poke the thickest part of the fillet with the cake tester, if there is a change in resistance, it needs to cook longer, if it slides right through, it’s done.
I know this is a great dish, customers have been raving about it since it first hit our menu. However it was validated by the Great American Seafood Cook-off, an annual cooking contest held in New Orleans. In 2016 I was asked to represent Massachusetts. Of course, I was happy to do it; a weekend in The Big Easy, yes please. I went with Mark Dieffenbach, one of EVOO’s longtime sous chefs. I chose to cook this dish because, to me, it really does represent summer in Massachusetts and that was what I was asked to do. We had a blast, eating great food, a bit of drinking and I kind of remember some late night bowling with shots of whisky, and, oh yeah a cooking contest… We placed third, I wanted to win and if I said I was happy with third, I’d be lying.
not first placeMark digging the New Orleans vibes
Now let me digress, I have a family bluefish memory. It’s from when I was probably 8 or 10 years old. Some weekends my father would hook up with some of his buddies, head out on his boat in the Boston area or go to the cape on one of his friend’s boats to go fishing. Their goal was to to catch striped bass, but, inevitably the catch was bluefish, which my dad would bring home. My mom, a woman who’s lips, very rarely, if at all, allowed fish or any seafood what-so-ever to pass, would dutifully put the catch into the freezer and ultimately into the trash. However, one time, I’m thinking she wasn’t too happy with dad going fishing again, so she decided to cook it. She took the whole fish, guts, scales and all, covered it with mayonnaise, don’t ask me why, because I don’t know, and into the oven it went. About 2 hours later, which is at least an hour too long. Sunday dinner was served. The whole dried out stinking mess right in the middle of the dining room table. To my young eyes, it was scary. When mom served us fish, it was in the form of frozen fish sticks, never mind this big whole fish with sunken cooked out eyes and jutting teeth. I don’t think that anyone, including my father actually did anything more than poke at it. The stink of overcooked fish and guts remained for days. That was the only time that I can remember bluefish being cooked at home. On top of that my dad’s fishing trips with his buddy’s were scaled way back; I think he wanted Sunday dinner to remain as the usual- roasted meat and potatoes. This experience embedded lasting scars, it was a good 15 years until I tried bluefish again, not that I really tried it the first time. Which is another degression for a future blog post about fishing while sailing and cooking our catch.
grilled roasted garlic studded pastured MA Beef Tenderloin with sour cream whipped potatoes and orange bearnaise.
This dish has been on our menu since we opened in June of ’98. Yeah, that’s 25 years of making the same dish over and over again. We have perfected it.
I came up with this dish while I was still the chef of The Bostonian Hotel and it’s since closed, highly acclaimed restaurant Seasons. I was roasting lamb legs for a sandwich we had on the lunch menu, for extra flavor we would poke holes in the meat and stuff them with garlic before popping them into the oven. While the legs roasted the garlic would also cook seeping mellow sweet slightly caramelized garlic flavor into the meat. This process got me thinking about doing the same thing with individual beef tenderloin steaks. Since the beef would cook much faster than the lamb, I thought that using garlic that was already roasted would work with similar results. I was right, this dish is fantastic. The dish never made on to the Seasons menu, it came close though. I was planning on adding it to the fall menu when I decided that after almost 10 years at the hotel it was time for me to move on and open my own place. I knew then that this dish was coming with me and would be the star of EVOO’s menu for the foreseeable future, I was right.
The pastured beef we use is almost exclusively from Carne Locale, a Waltham, MA, based company, run by Andy Carbone. Andy works directly with Massachusetts livestock farms distributing their products to some of the areas finest restaurants.
The vegetable accompaniments change with as the local growing seasons change. Depending on the time of year you can get it served with carrots, mushrooms, broccoli, asparagus or as we are now serving it with green beans.
An testament to the love that this dish receives, my wife has often commented, hopefully jokingly, that she would “dump my ass” if I ever took it off the menu. So it remains…
This dish has been on our menu for more than 20 years, to say it is a crowd favorite is an understatement. We sell a lot of orders everyday, repeat customers exclaiming “it’s the only dish I ever order” or “I came here just for the Chinese Box”.
Here’s the deal with how I came up with it:
In the 90’s I was the Executive Chef of the Bostonian hotel and it’s fancy restaurant Seasons, where every entree was served covered with a silver cloche. The waitstaff would present the cloched entrees to the entire table of guests before uncovering all of the dishes simultaneously with white gloves and much fanfare, the guests loved it.
As the cloches were removed, unveiling the sights and smells of their entrees, the guests were wowed. It was more than a bit too precious for what I wanted for EVOO, I wanted to replicate that “wow” of the unveiling without the pretense.
It was one of those ideas that took a while to come to fruition, it was there, stuck in the back of my head, I new what I wanted to accomplish, I just couldn’t quite pull it together. I was thinking about what I could use as a cover, I even thought about getting some silver cloches to use as a homage to my time at Seasons.
One night after many months of mulling over different options, it just popped into my head. I was driving home after a busy night, thinking about what I often think about, food. POP there it is! Stack different layers of flavor and texture in a Chinese style to-go box invert it on a plate and uncover it at the table. That was the start, from there I had to come up with what the layers would be and in what order it would be stacked.
My notes showing how to “plate”
Inverted on a plate
Since I was using what in my part of America is a Chinese to-go container, the food would be Chinese influenced. I quickly thought that the rice should be placed in the box last, so when it was inverted onto a plate the rice would be on the bottom as a good base to hold up the other ingredients. From the get go I went with a surf-n-turf angle, the first iteration was with Seared Arctic Char, Gingered Vegetable Salad and Orange Braised Lamb. Then I tried Seared Sea Scallops with Braised Pork. Both iterations were very good, but not quite right. Neither had the mass appeal I was hoping for.
Eventually I settled on the current version: Mustard Glazed Rock Shrimp, Gingered Vegetable – Cashew Salad, Hoisin Braised Beef and Organic Brown Rice. Each layer offers something different to the whole. The shrimp layer is sweet ‘n’ spicy with honey-mustard and herbs. Clean, crisp, crunchy gingered vegetable – cashew salad makes up the top-middle layer. The rich, succulent hoisin braised beef is the next layer, sitting directly on top of the final layer of organic brown rice with it’s earthy nuttiness soaking up all of the other flavors and adding some of it’s own texture.
There have been a few changes to this version over the years, early on we were using Jasmine rice from Thailand, which I love. However, as I always try to do, I wanted to make it more local and preferably organic. So, I switched the rice to short grained organic brown rice from California, which doesn’t have the floral aroma and flavor that the Jasmine rice has. But, it more than makes up for that with its own nutty-earthy flavors, as well as being from California and organic, had a lot to do with my decision. Early on we braised beef flap meat from our local distributor, eventually I was able to find a consistent source for local pastured beef, so I made the switch to beef chuck. The most recent change was switching from Gulf Shrimp to Rock Shrimp. This change made the dish taste better, have better texture and made it easier to eat, especially with chop sticks.
So, all of this came from me wanting to add a little wow to our guest experience when a dish was served. It’s been on the menu for so long I sometimes forget how good it is. Every so often I try it again and realize why we sell so many orders. It has the “wow” and a whole lot more!
It is available for lunch and dinner, at dinner we offer it in two sizes and it is always available with organic Maine tofu and our in-house made Kimchi for a vegan variation.
Well, it’s that time of year where restaurants like ours try to entice you to bring your paramour to their establishment for what is promised to be an exquisite evening of fine food and wine, and, as a possible / hopeful prelude to uhm… other enticements.
We’re no different, this post is a shameless promotion of our Valentine’s Menu. Our locally sourced Here’s the Love Menu will be available starting at 5 pm on Friday, February 14. The menu is a prix fixe menu with several choices available in each course, priced at $65 for 3 courses and $95 paired with wines chosen by our beverage director Dan Harrington. The menu is vegetarian friendly and we can always accommodate our vegan friends.
Dock, Duck
Marinated baked Cod
If you’re trying to impress your date, don’t go to the super expensive, over-the-top formal place where their only concern is their bottom line. Impress them at EVOO where we believe that if we take care of our co-workers and our community, our bottom line will take care of itself.
We take pride in being the Massachusetts’s only Good Food 100 Restaurant. This is a really big deal to us. We have their highest rating of 6 links, which is solely based on our food purchases; it means the vast majority of the food we serve is sourced locally and ethically. The point i’m trying to make is- dining at EVOO will not only impress your Valentine, it will help us support our local farming community.
Me and my Valentine!
So, come on in and spend some time with me and my Valentine, we’ll both be here, working hard to exceed your Valentine’s expectations.
