The local growing season is winding down, and it’s time, before the first frost, to preserve your herb garden. I’m gonna start with basil.
Genovese Basil in my garden.
Every year I plant a lot of basil; “a lot’ is a relative term; it’s a lot for my personal use, usually in the range of a dozen plants. This year was no different. I planted 8 Genovese (Sweet Italian) Basil plants, 2 Thai Basil and 2 Piccolo Basil plants.
Throughout the growing season, I pick leaves and use them as needed. Genovese in salads, on pizza, sandwiches, and whatever Mediterranean-style recipe calling for fresh basil. The Thai basil gets used in, you guessed it, Thai dishes as well as other Asian style stir-fries, salads, or wraps I happen to make. The Piccolo, I mostly use for dried basil; I will probably write about this in another upcoming “Preserving the Season” blog about drying herbs.
Throughout the season, as the plants produce buds, I pull them off and place them in little bowls on a sunny windowsill in my kitchen to let them dry, before placing them in airtight containers for use throughout the year.
Basil buds drying on my windowsill.
The bulk of the basil that I grow goes into making pesto. Using the Genovese basil, toasted pine nuts, Parmigiano Reggiano, EVOO, garlic, and salt, I make big batches. After making the pesto, I separate it into 4-ounce cups and freeze it for later use. As of now, I have about 30 of these 4-ounce pesto cups in my freezer, ready to go.
We will be having a lot of pesto-based meals in the future; this is not a bad thing. Pasta with some veggies and pesto can be made in the time it takes to cook some high-quality dried Italian pasta. A delicious, inexpensive 20-minute dinner is at times just what is needed.
Don’t limit the pesto use to just pasta; it’s also great on chicken, pork, salmon, in sandwiches, with burrata, drizzled on a rustic soup, in potato or bean salads. It’s very versatile; just use a little bit of imagination and run with it. If you’re adding pesto to a dish, you’re bound to be making that dish better.
My go-to recipe uses pine nuts; you don’t have to, they tend to be expensive and sometimes hard to find. I have seen them at Costco, in bulk, 2-pound bags, at reasonable pricing. You can substitute other nuts with great results. I have made pesto with almonds, walnuts, and hazelnuts in the past; all were great.
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.
Once again, it’s that time of year; where did the summer go? It’s time to preserve the summer’s local bounty, starting with canning tomatoes.
Here is a pictorial of how I canned more than 2 cases, about 50 pounds of local tomatoes. 40 pounds came from Verrill Farm in Concord, MA; the remaining 10 pounds were from my backyard garden.
First, using a small sharp knife, I cut the core out and put a shallow X, just through the skin on the opposite side of each tomato. I then blanched the tomatoes, in several batches, in simmering water for not more than 30 seconds, then I placed them in an ice bath before removing and discarding the skins.A bucket full of peeled tomatoes.I then cut all the tomatoes in half along the equatorial line.I then gently squeezed out the seeds, reserving and straining them, pouring some of the strained liquid into the pot with the peeled and seeded tomatoes. I wanted to have some liquid in the pot for when I started to cook the tomatoes; this will cut down on the possibility of burning the tomatoes before they break down from the heat in the pan.50 pounds is a lot of tomatoes! This 4-gallon pot is almost full and all set to be cooked.The tomatoes are on the heat and are starting to break down.After about 45 minutes on medium-high heat, the tomatoes were fully cooked and mostly mushy. At this point, I ran them through the coarse die of a food mill.Hot milled tomatoes are ready to be placed in mason jars.All jarred up, in a simmering water bath for 15 minutes.50 pounds of tomatoes worked down to 13 quart jars.Jars are dated only with the year. I won’t be doing more tomatoes this year, so the year is the only date that I need.Put-up in the cellar for use throughout the following year.
In 2022 the extended McCarthy family took another vacation. This one to Portugal, 18 of us spent a week holed up in a luxurious newly built villa the Algarve followed by 4 days in a large, very hot, air-conditionless, downtown Lisbon townhouse.
In true McCarthy fashion while in the Algarve we had a blast, whether we were hiking on top of cliffs overlooking the Atlantic, riding on some highly powered R.I.B.s (Rigid Inflatable Boats) looking up at and entering caves under those same cliffs, swimming in one of the villas two pools or at the near by beach, it was nonstop fun.
We also ate and drank very well, there were many beachside restaurants serving classic Portuguese favorites like bacalao and sardines. With 2 professional chefs and several aspiring way-better-than-most-home-cooks amongst our ranks we did not suffer when we did our own cooking. As far as drinking, the local Portuguese wine was inexpensive and plentiful, the beer was crisp, cold and also cheap. Several of the teenager McCarthy’s took advantage of the lower and laxer drinking age requirements (hello Shane).
After the week at the beach we headed to Lisbon for a few days. I do love this kind of vacation, chilling at the beach followed by exploring in the city. Lisbon and our day trip to the small, mountainous town of Sentra were great, we jammed so many memories into such a short period of time.
This photo was not one that I had much time to think about, we, some of us, not all 18 of us, were walking near the rented townhouse and I saw the streetcar coming down the street. It stopped a few feet in front of us and I looked up thinking that it would be a good photo. I had just enough time to dig my phone out and take quick photo before the street car stared moving again heading directly towards me. I got lucky, the photo came out great and whenever I see it it conjures up some cool memories, the photo hangs in Za’s women’s restroom. Because of its location I do not see this photo everyday, when I do it always congers up some great memories.
Here’s a few more photos from our family’s 2022 Portuguese adventure.
This recipe is not my best, nor my favorite, it’s not even a recipe that I have ever used at any restaurant that I’ve owned or worked in.
It’s my #1 because it’s the one that I have made and still make the most, almost every week, sometimes twice a week. There is never a long period of time in which I go without making this recipe and I eat at least 80% of it myself. My daughter tells me that I am addicted, I am not denying her.
This recipe is based on a recipe that I got from my good friend and brother-in-law Dan. I have adapted it into my own, trying different variations, liking most of them. However, I have settled on the variation I like best.
Dan found this recipe online about 25 years ago, it is called “Restaurant Style Salsa”. It is very simple to make, as is my version, really just chop a bunch of ingredients in a food processer for less than a minute and your done.
A photo of the “Restaurant Style Salsa” recipe that Dan passed along to me.
I’ve tried substituting canned fire roasted tomatoes for the canned whole peeled tomatoes, which totally changed the salsa, giving it a strong roasted somewhat smoky flavor, which is nice for a change. I’ve even done half fire roasted and half not, also good.
Another time or two I have substituted chipotle pepper (canned in adobo sauce) for the jalapeno; the chipotles added some nice leathery smoke. If used in a batch that also contained the fire roasted tomatoes the chipotles brought the salsa to another level; very good, but still not my favorite variation.
In addition to those substitutions, I have, at times tried adding grilled/roasted peppers, roasted garlic and/or grilled/caramelized onions to this recipe and it’s top-notch. However, the recipe goes from whirling some stuff in a food processor to having to grill, roast and caramelize. Which can be time consuming endeavors. However, if I were to have one or more of these ingredients ready to go in my fridge, I’d add some, though I probably wouldn’t prep them specifically for this salsa recipe.
The brand of tomatoes also makes a difference, be sure not to use tomatoes packed with basil or San Marzano tomatoes; some brands are packed with heavy puree, don’t use these either, the results are too tomatoey and too thick. One of my favorite brands, especially because it’s local, is Pastene, I don’t use it for my salsa though, it falls under the too tomatoey and too thick category. I do, however, use Pastene for Italian style tomato sauces. I’ve found that the cheap store brands of whole peeled tomatoes, organic or not, are usually best for this recipe.
For me I want to be able to make, and clean up after making this recipe in less than 10 minutes. This is more than doable, I’ve done it in less than 7, and yes I have timed myself.
My “go to” version of this recipe is the recipe that Dan gave me all pumped up. I double the amount of onion and garlic called for in the original recipe. I’ve also at least quadrupled the amounts of all of the spices. And I’ve also added a few ingredients to my version including a very generous amount of freshly ground black pepper, some finely grated carrot, which I love in this recipe, it adds color, texture, sweetness and earthy carrot-ness. On top of that I’ve also added smoked paprika, this adds some deep background smokiness without overpowering the other ingredients.
My pumped-up salsa recipe.
Whether you follow Dan’s “Restaurant Style” or my pumped-up version, the end result will be far superior to any store bought national brand salsa. I find most of them to be too sweet, too cooked, too starchy, too mushy, too cloying and lacking in texture as well as depth of flavor. Overall I think they kind of suck.
Don’t limit your taste enjoyment of this salsa to just a dip for corn chips. It also is great baked with flakey white fish such as cod, haddock, hake or pollack. All you have to do is generously slather the fish with the salsa and bake in a 375 degree oven until the fish is cooked through; depending on the thickness of the fish it could be as quick as 5 minutes or as long as 15 minutes.
It’s also great as a sauce for grilled chicken or pork; I have been known to spoon on top of cooked white rice. It’s a delicious, easy to make addition to anyone’s culinary repertoire.
In April of 2015, Me, Colleen and our kids Shane,10 at the time and Caitlin then 7, did a family vacation during the kids school April break. We first drove to Washington D.C. where we did all the usual touristy things. We visited the Lincoln monument, walked through and discussed the Viet Nam War Memorial. We got up at some ungodly hour for the opportunity to go in and up the Washington Monument. We also went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, as well as the Museum of American History. We strolled by the White House and waved to “Uncle Barry and Auntie Shelly”. It was a great few days, as usual I took many photos, none of which made it to the heralded walls of Za.
From D. C. we drove to NYC, well Hoboken, NJ, where My sister had a condo and was kind enough to let us squat for a few days. The location was great, very convenient. To get into Manhattan, from the condo it was a 3 minute walk, followed by a 15 minute ferry ride and boom there you are right downtown. As with D.C. we did all of the touristy things. Strolled through Time Square, did the Empire State Building thing, walked the Hi-Line, Had dinner at Jonathan Waxman’s (one of my favorite chefs) restaurant, Barbuto, in the Meat Packing District.
The next day the weather was perfect, not a cloud in the sky, a slight breeze and temps in the low 70’s, we took a ferry out to see the Statue of Liberty. The statue was open and we were able to climb the stairs up to the observation deck in Lady Liberty’s crown. We had a great day, as I mentioned the weather was perfect, I was with my family and I got to go on a boat ride; not much could be better.
With the perfect conditions I was able to get some great shots of the statue, including this one. I had the photo enlarged and placed on the wall when we did our most recent renovations in 2021. This photo gets a lot of comments, including, surprising to me, “what is it”?. Since I took the photo I know exactly what it is and with a quick glance I can almost understand the question. Most people do figure it out quickly though.
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.
