Category Archives: mason jars

New Vegetarian Dish

Polenta Croquette with Braised Spinach, Stracciatella, Parmigiano-Reggiano, Parsley, Last Summer’s Tomato Sauce and Pine Nut Crunch  

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I have written in the past about my approach to vegetarian dishes, you can check out my previous post here.

 

This dish came about when I was thinking about what should we do with all of the plum tomatoes that we put up in Mason jars this past summer.  To me that’s the coolest thing about this dish; we are using local tomatoes in the middle of January. Sure they’re not fresh tomatoes. However, they were bought from local farms (Drumlin Farm in Lincoln, MA and Kimball Fruit Farm in Pepperell, MA) during the height of the local season. So.. we are still supporting the local community and best of all- they’re freaking delicious!

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To go with the tomatoes-we made polenta croquettes with Four Star Farm’s (Northfield, MA) cornmeal.  We braised The Food Project’s (Roxbury, MA) spinach and topped the croquette with  stracciatella from The Mozzarella House (Peabody, MA).

This one of the many vegetarian dishes that we have produced where you don’t have to be a vegetarian to enjoy.

National Margarita Day, celebrate with EVOO’s Jalapeno Margarita

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Thursday, February 22 is National Margarita Day

One of the added benefits from all of the preserving we do at EVOO is we have these great locally sourced in-house-made flavor bombs that we can add to our cocktails.  Our specialty drinks are often flavored with things like apple butter, peach butter, berry jams, preserved cherries and pickles, which we use to flavor a multitude of our specialty drinks. The most popular of these drinks is our Jalapeno Margarita, made simply with just the finest ingredients: Jalapeno Tequila, fresh squeezed lime juice, agave nectar and EVOO’s sweet pickled jalapenos all shaken together with some ice and then strained into a salted rimmed cocktail glass.

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EVOO’s Jalapeno Margarita:

2.5 ounces   Tanteo Jalapeno Tequila

1.5 ounces   fresh squeezed Lime Juice

.5 ounces   Light Agave Nectar

4 each   slices of EVOO’s sweet Pickled Jalapenos, plus 1/2 ts of the Jalapeno Pickle Brine

Shake well with ice, strain into a salted rim cocktail glass, garnish with a few additional slices of jalapenos.

note: most likely you won’t have a jar of EVOO’s jalapenos in your cupboard.  You can substitute your favorite brand; most brands are not sweet, just add an extra squirt of agave nectar if desired.

 

 

What’s Cooking: Keeping it local in January

Okay so it’s late January and nothing is growing in the fields of New England. What does a restaurant that prides itself on really being farm-to-table do to maintain a menu that is true to their ideals during a long cold winter?

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Local cellared roots

Well, fortunately for us more and more local farms either have, and are now using or they have installed root cellars.  These farms are able to supply us with all the root vegetables, winter squashes and cabbages we need.  Great local carrots, beets, turnips, parsnips, radishes, kohlrabi and potatoes are easy to come by.  Many farms also have have heated greenhouses that provide us with lettuce, arugula, spinach, pea greens and even some herbs.  Getting local  sustainable livestock is not a problem, all of the land-based proteins used at EVOO year round are from independent small family-owned farms.

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A greenhouse at Red Fire farm in Granby, Ma

However, the most important thing we do is plan for it.  Throughout the local growing season starting in the late spring and finishing well after the hard frost we pickle, can, preserve, dehydrate and freeze.  This is a lot of work and it comes at great expense to us.  But, we made a commitment to ourselves and our community, to be as local and sustainable as possible.

Some of the items we pickled this year include: asparagus, rhubarb, fiddlehead ferns, garlic scapes, cucumbers, onions, garlic, okra, beets, green beans, peppers, jalapenos, cauliflower and green tomatoes.  Some of the pickles are sweet, some are dill and some are fermented.  Many pickles are canned in glass mason jars, while others are in big buckets finding their way to the inner depths of our walk-in refrigerators.

 

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We make gallons upon gallons of apple butter, which we use in our apple crisp at EVOO, on a winter squash pizza at Za and whatever other way(s) we can come up with.  Big vats of jalapeno and habanero hot sauces are made, processed and put-up. Many flats of local berries and grapes, at the peak of their ripeness are made into jellies and jams, and we canned more cherries than anyone would ever want to pit.

 

a stash of local goodies
pickles stored in our dining room
Some backroom storage
Pickles and Jam
Bread ‘n’ Butter Pickles and Pickled Cauliflower

 

We oven-dry and vacuum seal cases of plum tomatoes, so that in the dead of winter we are still able to have local tomatoes on our menu.

 

Plum tomatoes starting to dry
The finished product, vacuum sealed with EVOO

 

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We shuck, vacuum seal and freeze bushels of corn. We had local corn salsa on our menu last week with a pastured MA beef empanada.

 

 

 

 

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Kohlrabi Kimchi

We also make buckets of kimchi, some using the traditional napa cabbage, while others are made with kohlrabi and still others are with zucchini or butternut squash.

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Dried mint and basil from our Rooftop garden

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Dried chives from our Rooftop Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our rooftop garden often provides us with more herbs than we can use, so we dry them for use in the winter months.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aleppo style peppers before they are dried
Dried cayenne peppers

We dry and grind locally grown chile peppers, using them wherever a little bit of heat is needed.

Running a sustainable restaurant in Massachusetts has its challenges and we have been taking them head-on for years.  During our 20 year tenure it has gotten a whole lot easier, the local movement has helped us immensely.  Farmers who used to look at winter as a time for a short break and planning for the upcoming season are now figuring out ways to grow, store and sell more to restaurants and at winter farmers markets.  We have also learned how to plan better for the winter, making sure we take the time to preserve our short growing season’s bounty for use throughout the whole year.

If you’re into root vegetables, pickles, preserves and greenhouse greens, come on in and see how we are serving them, at the same time you will be supporting us and your local farming community.

A link to our menu:

http://evoorestaurant.com/#menu

Mason Jars

During the local growing season we fill a great quantity of Mason jars.  In an effort to prolong the local growing season, we pickle, can and preserve a variety of local ingredients; keeping us stocked-up with locally grown produce through New England’s long winter.  We make sweet pickles, dill pickles, pickled cauliflower, pickled peppers, pickled onions, pickled garlic, pickled okra, pickled rhubarb, pickled fiddlehead ferns, pickled ramps and pickled scapes.  In addition to all of the pickles we make a variety fruit jams, this year we made grape jelly, raspberry jam, strawberry jam and plum jam.  We also canned cherries soaked in spiced red wine, and we finish our canning season with many jars of apple butter.  Having all of these pickles and preserves available to us allows us to add locally grown sweet, spicy, acidic and interesting flavors to our menu.  Making all of the pickles and preserves is no small feat, many man (or woman) hours are used every week to stock up our inventory.

Bread ‘n’ Butter Pickles and Pickled Cauliflower
Concord Grape Jelly
Pickles and Jam

At the end of September when habanero pepper season is in full swing, and carrots, onions, garlic and tomatoes are all still readily available, we make enough hot sauce to last us the entire year; this year we made 15 gallons.  We use the hot sauce in our habanero coleslaw, it often finds it’s way into hollandaise, tartar sauce and wherever we need to add some heat.

EVOO Habanero Hot Sauce

Habanero Hot Sauce

Our most popular and most utilized Mason jar fodder is jalapenos.  We fill more than 200 quart sized Mason jars with our sweet – spicy pickled jalapenos.  During the local growing season, which runs from July through first frost, Kimball Fruit Farm in Pepperell, MA, supplies us with a bushel or two each week.  Fredy, our prep cook extraordinaire slices the peppers, rinses them with cold water to remove excess seeds; which contributes to the spicy heat, and then he prepares the brine.  He sterilizes the jars, fills them with the rinsed peppers and hot brine and finally he processes them in a hot water bath.  We set them up in hopes that we have produced enough for the full year, until we can make more.  I don’t want to run out of these peppers they are too popular.  At every family or friend  gathering I get hounded for these peppers.  I make sure a bring several jars with me to keep everyone from twitching.  I get it, I personally go through three to four Mason Jar quarts a year. They are really that good.

Fredy pickling jalapenos
Filling the jars with hot brine before processing them.
The finished product

At EVOO we always have our pickled jalapenos on our lunch menu, served on our chicken sausage sandwich.  At Za our sister we use them as a pizza topping and in as an ingredient in our avocado salad.  Any recipe that I write that calls for jalapenos we use our home made pickles. Just like any of the other pickles you find on our menu they are all made in house, with recipes that we have spent a long time perfecting. We never use store bought pickles.

Chicken Sausage Sandwich with Pickled Jalapenos, VT Cheddar and Knee Slapping Good Barbecue Sauce
One of Za’s Pizza’s topped with our pickled jalapenos.