Last night I had rare opportunity to make something that I have never made before and Randy has never eaten before.  Blood sausage. We are always trying new preparations, flavor combinations etc.  But it is not often that we have the opportunity to use something that we have never used before. Especially because we limit ourselves to as many local ingredients as possible. We don’t use many esoteric or exotic ingredients. When Paula the pig arrived with a dripping bag full of  blood (I assume that  it is Paula’s blood). I knew that I would soon be attempting to make blood sausage.

Researching  a recipe that I wanted to try was a chore. Most of the recipes that I encountered had fillers such as oatmeal, breadcrumbs or flour in them. Many had dry fruit such as raisins and currants in them.  While others contained toasted nuts and still others contained both dry fruit and nuts.  The only consistent ingredient (excluding blood) was onions.  The recipe I chose to guide me through making my first batch was from one of my favorite food bloggers Hank Shaw.  His blog  Hunter, Gardener, Angler, Cook has often been a source for us.  His recipe does not contain any fillers it; it ‘s just pig meat, pig fat and pig blood with a lot of spices. I took my liberties with the spices; adding sugar, ancho chili powder, garlic, doubling the pepper and  increasing the salt by 25%.

I have had blood sausage several times including in Spain, Ireland, France and some fancy-ass American restaurants. Some of them were vile tasting like chalky liver (blah), some pretty good and one or two very good.  I remember one very good one in particular. It was while traveling in Ireland staying at a bed and breakfast in Connemara. It was one of those moments, where you realise “hey I really do like that” (whatever “that” may be).  They served a blood sausage patty that full flavored and rich, quite enjoyable.

In all the years I have been purchasing whole animals I have never received the animal’s blood. I am glad that Paula graced us with hers.  The resulting sausage we made came out excellent.  At the end of the shift last night Randy, Russel (one of the lead cooks), Kristen (manager) and I cooked up a couple of the sausages.  It was unanimous they are delicious. We will be serving them with white bean puree, wilted kale and pickled ramps.

The photos are in succession starting with the blood being strained, then the sausage mix(blood, meat, fat and spices), next the sausage mix is filled into casings, followed by tied into links, then being poached and finally seared, on a plate moments before we ate them.

Randy is our affable sous chef, not another farm animal.  I say sous chef, though Randy is so much more than that. I am not big on titles, in some restaurants he may be called the executive sous chef, but that just sounds pretentious.  In others he may be referred to as the chef de cuisine, to me that infers that he is writing the menu.  That is something I do with Randy’s help.  He is in charge of the kitchens daily operations, including writing the schedule (something I loath), most of the food ordering (he shares that responsibility with Michelle, another sous chef), He maintains the kitchen, cleans the walk-in coolers etc. He is often here until the wee hours of the morning working on some task or other, making sure that everything is all set.

Randy started working at EVOO in 1998, within a few months of our opening. He was attending The Cambridge School of Culinary Arts and lived a few blocks away from the original EVOO location. He stopped in one day asking about a job, what I offered him was barely minimum wage to work on the cold line. He accepted it, worked his ass off, trained on and worked all stations and somewhere around 2005 he became the sous chef. Taking on additional responsibilities while I worked on opening Za and then moving EVOO and opening another Za.

Randy is my righthand man, a pleasure to work with and a damn good cook.

Paula, a 260 pound fat pig, has joined us today. She comes to us by way of Pete & Jen’s Backyard Birds in Concord, MA. As I mentioned in a previous blog that mangalitsas are renowned for their fat. Look at the pictures and note the 3-4 inch thick back fat and the 100 plus pound bin of silky white fat.

In other breeds such as berkshire or tamworth the back fat is not even half as thick or close to as smooth. The fat that we get from the two mangalitsas we received this year will provide us with enough fat for a years worth of sausage making and more lardo than we can even try to use. I do not want mangalitsas every time we get a pig (every 6 weeks or so), there would be way too much fat to try to use. For a 260 pound pig there is really not that much meat, you end up with 40% fat, 25% meat, 25% bones and 10% skin. Every bit will be used, it will just take us a while. Other breeds the meat ratio is much higher and quicker if not easier to utilize.

Lunch at EVOO is awesome! It’s top quality local ingredients prepared creatively at a reasonable price. One of the many things that sets us apart from other restaurants is that damn near everything is made here in the restaurant. Many restaurants would claim the same thing, don’t believe them. An example of what we do is if we are running a ham sandwich- We bought the whole pig cured the hams for up to two weeks. Smoked them in our smoker for 12 hours. Made the bread. Made the mustard. Got pickling cucumbers from a local farm during the height of the season, pickled them to serve through out the year. If you ordered fries with your sandwich we cut the fries (depending on the season if we used local potatoes), soaked them overnight, blanched them ahead of time, fried them to order, tossed them with salt, pepper and depending on the time of the year with either locally grown savory of thyme. With all that would be our own tangy ketchup. If that is not a labor of love (and a freaking awesome sandwich) I don’t know what is.

Our lunch sous chef Mark and his staff do a great job at consistently preparing these great ingredients in a timely manner. We have put a lot of effort into making sure our customers are able have lunch without stressing about time.

Hali Morrison our longtime cook and blogger has left (a while ago, I am just slow to pick up where she left off). She started the blog while attending Endicott College as a writing major. I plan on keeping it going and helping you stay informed with the happenings of EVOO.

Recently we received half of a cow from Barry Gross of Round the Bend farm in South Dartmouth, MA. Becky, our name for the cow not Barry’s, has been kind enough to offer us with many delicious items. Including braised cow filled fried baked potato, beef empanadas, oxtail springrolls, pickled tongue, kielbasa (pictured) and of course steaks.On Friday we will be receiving a mangalitsa pig from Pete & Jen’s Backyard Birds in Concord MA. Mangalitsas are known for their beautiful fat. This will be our third one, so I can attest to that. The fat is amazing, thick, silky smooth and sweet. We will use the pig (to be named later) for many things; chops, lomo, chorizo, braised belly, pig’s skin risotto, rillettes and lardo are just a few of the items we plan on producing.

If you haven’t figured it out yet it is Peter the chef and co-owner now writing the blog. I will most likely write many short posts, when a new dish or ingredient is available. I will try to keep you posted on upcoming events etc. If you have comments please don’t hesitate to post them.

This week is the saddest week I can remember at EVOO since I started working there a year and a half ago. Donnie, our lunchtime sous-chef, is leaving.

Donnie was one of the first people I met at EVOO, and I was absolutely terrified of him. He is incredibly meticulous in everything he does, and tried to make everyone around him pay attention to details. As this was my first kitchen job, this meant that Donnie was constantly showing me how to do things differently and better, which intimidated me. At the end of the night, a stovetop was not considered clean if he could find one tiny bit of black somewhere it didn’t belong. Although these were all things that scared me at first, I’m now happy that he showed me everything he did, as it has made me far better at my job. Looking back at the beginning I actually find it funny that of all people I was afraid of Donnie- although he points out things he sees being done wrong, it’s never “you’re doing that wrong” and always “why don’t you try it this way instead. It’s better if you do it this way, do you understand why?”. If something isn’t understood at first he makes sure that he does all he can to make you fully comprehend the reasons for doing things a certain way.

After 5 years of working at EVOO, and despite much kicking and screaming from those of us he’s leaving behind, Donnie is moving home to Pittsburgh with his family. As sad as we all are to see him go, he has made the fantastic decision that he wants to be a teacher- a decision that no one can really argue with. Of all the people I’ve ever worked with, Donnie is the best instructor I’ve ever crossed paths with (come to think of it, he’s probably a better instructor that the majority of teachers and professors I’ve had as well). When I asked him why he wants to teach instead of cook, Donnie shrugged his shoulders, said “because I want to save the world”, and laughed. It makes it harder to be upset about him being gone from our lives knowing that he’s going to be making a difference in kids’ lives, and that he’ll be able to concentrate more on his family.

EVOO will certainly not be the same without him, but we all wish him the best in the future. I suppose it will be like the dawning of a new era, and it will be interesting to see the way things unfold.

As many of you know, this week is officially “restaurant week”, which started last weekend. Aside from slightly shortening the menu and reducing price, we don’t change much for the occasion. Portion sizes are still the same and we are still serving the same fantastic quality food. The shortening of the menu is a necessary step for us to take to be better prepared for the rush of the weeks- The less complicated things are the easier it is for us to make sure we are completely ready for service, and the fewer dishes there are to worry about the easier it is for us to put out food in a timely fashion.

Last Tuesday night was the first night I worked during dinner service of restaurant week, and it went extremely well. The front of house staff was extremely well coordinated with the kitchen, and all of the reservations were evenly spread out so that although there were a lot of plates for us to make we were able to do them well and fast. Yesterday I worked during lunch, and was a bit caught off guard by the difference made by restaurant week. Once the orders started coming in they came in quickly and steadily for the entire afternoon, and because we were ready for it it all went smoothly.

I’ve been working all week, and there has not been a single point where we haven’t been caught up and things have been out of hand. On Sunday night I was working “Garde-Manger”, the cold station with salads and desserts. Toward the end of prep time I was starting to get worried about running out of apple crisps, and knowing that I didn’t have enough time to make filling and topping and get them in the oven, I told Pete. I’m pretty sure the last thing anyone wants to do during restaurant week is tell the head chef that we don’t have enough of something, and I was terrified that he would be mad at me for not getting them done (even though I’ve never seen him angry). As soon as I told him he just calmly asked a few of the cooks from Za to cut up apples, asked Anthony, one of the prep cooks, to finish up the filling, and got one of the dishwashers to quickly clean the giant mixer I needed to make the topping. Within 5 minutes I went from feeling panic and dread to feeling immense relief. It was a perfect demonstration of how if something is really desperately needed and a few people work together and power through it, it can get done well. It would have taken one person over an hour to get it all done, but we got through it in about 15 minutes, and had more than enough desserts for service. It was also another instance of me being grateful that I have such an awesome boss. He wasn’t even upset at me for a second for not having it done, just saw that I had none of the things I needed to make it, and saw how much else had been done, and found a way for us to finish it in time.

The team we have right now on the line is amazing- everyone has been stepping up through prep and service, getting an incredible amount of things done extremely well in a very short amount of time. It shows that for all of us it’s not just a job, and we’re not just working for a paycheck- we actually care about what we’re doing and who we’re doing it for. Everyone is tired, but I’ve noticed that morale is actually higher at the end of the night than at the beginning. There’s no better feeling than finishing service and realizing that we’ve done almost 200 covers flawlessly, or at least without panic and chaos.

As exhausting as it is, I think I’ll miss restaurant week when it’s over. It definitely gives you a rush of adrenaline and an insane feeling of accomplishment that’s usually reserved for Saturday nights. But alas, it’s nearing it’s end, so come and enjoy it while you can!

Charcuterie is one of the things we do at EVOO that I think is the most interesting and unique. The easiest way I can think of to describe exactly what it is is to relate it to deli-style specialty meats. This includes prosciutto, Tasso, guanciale, but also things like pates and rilletes. We make it all ourselves, which takes a lot of time and dedication but produces a superior end product.

On our list of charcuterie products, Tasso was the one that I was least familiar with (by which I mean I had absolutely no idea what it is), so I looked it up. If you were unsure of the meaning of a word, you would look it up in the dictionary. When you’re unsure of what a food item is, there is the Food Lover’s Companion. It knows everything and anything there is to know about all types of food, and that’s where I went for a definition of Tasso. The definition starts “Much to the disappointment of many, this Cajun specialty is generally hard to find outside Louisiana”. Well, much to the excitement of many, our head chef (Peter) loves Tasso enough to make it himself and make it available to all Tasso-lovers who come to EVOO. The definition continues to say that “Tasso is a lean chunk of cured pork (usually shoulder) or beef that’s been richly seasoned with ingredients such as red pepper, garlic… and any of several other herbs or spices…”. It is a unique and delicious offering which we are proud to serve.

When I first started at EVOO I was most excited to try the guanciale. I knew I loved prosciutto, and I knew that the cheek is supposed to be one of the most delicious parts of an animal and thus was thrilled at the idea of cured cheek in the style of prosciutto. My expectations were met and exceeded, and the guanciale is phenomenal.
When I buy prosciutto at the grocery store it’s hard for me not to just eat the entire package in one sitting. The prosciutto we make at EVOO is beyond comparison, and it makes the grocery store variety seem almost undesirable to me. One of my favorite things about all of the charcuterie is the plating of it- it seems like it would be simple enough, it’s just sliced meat on a plate. Maybe it’s the quality of it that makes it look so good, but I think that the charcuterie plates are some of the most beautiful plates we put out.

This is a photo of our prosciutto that we were serving in the spring, with a salad of zucchini, fresh basil, cherry tomatoes, and red onion. A perfect summer snack, I really can’t think of anything I’d rather eat. Except maybe the guanciale, of course. The color is amazing, and it doesn’t need any additional ingredients or “pizazz” to make it look a jaw-dropping level of delicious.

Also on our bar menu is a pig belly puree. Once again, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I first tasted it. My family on my mother’s side is French-Canadian, and one of my favorite foods growing up was my meme’s meat pie. When I had my first bite of the pig belly puree I was catapulted into memories of my great grandmother stirring her giant pot of stewing pork for meat pies, and the familiar taste was as warm and welcoming as her kitchen. We serve it warm on pieces of grilled bread, and even if you didn’t grow up with a French-Canadian great grandmother’s meat pies, I’m certain that the taste will warm your soul as it does mine.

Aside from charcuterie, we also have a great selection of cheeses on our bar menu. My two favorites are the Bijou and the Humble Pie. Bijou is French for “Jewel”, and rightly so this cheese comes in small wheels about the size of a glass bottle cap. The cheese is a goat’s cheese from Vermont, and despite my lactose-intolerance I find them hard to resist.
The Humble Pie is also made in Vermont, and is a blend of sheep’s and cow’s milk. It is similar to Brie in taste and texture, and it is the personal favorite of our sous-chef Michelle (she’ll have it for dinner every now and then, it’s just that good).

Needless to say, no one will ever go hungry sitting at the Bar at EVOO. In addition to the special bar menu, the regular menu is also available to customers at the bar. We got a new pig in last week (Pete named him Leon) and will hopefully have a wealth of new additions the the charcuterie menu (and the regular menu) as a result. I will continue to update as this happens, so stay hungry!

It seems as though all my recent posts are centered around holidays, and the most recent one to pass by was Valentine’s day. We served a special menu created just for the event, and the restaurant was fully booked. Most of the day before was spent preparing, and Randy was working until almost 4 in the morning (only to return to work at 10). Although it was insanely busy, the evening was a lot of fun. The shortened menu made it easier for us to make sure tables weren’t left waiting for too long for their food, and all in all it went smoothly.

More recently EVOO was finally covered in a thin blanket of snow- apparently New England weather dictates that once we all start expecting Spring, we can finally have the snow we’d been missing all winter. Although unwelcome by some, I think that snow can be the perfect excuse to sit inside of a cozy restaurant and enjoy a leisurely meal with good company. A bit of leftover decadence from Valentine’s Day, we are still serving a delicious lobster-parsnip bisque garnished with leeks, hedgehog mushrooms, tarragon butter, and of course, chunks of succulent lobster meat.

Working the corner station on the line, I have been responsible for preparing the fried clam dish, which has been incredibly exciting for me, as they are plated on a base of potato salad, which is one of my favorite things in the entire universe. The flour mix they are fried in is different than we usually use- we add a mixture of spices (most prominently Old Bay) that liven the flavor of the clam, and which are balanced out by the cooling effect of the potato salad.

As far as other new starters, we’re also bringing back the empanada- this time the filling, designed by both Sous-Chefs Randy and Michelle is a mixture of rabbit meat and prunes, and it is served with a mustard cream and a salad of celery root, pea greens, and toasted almonds.

We also have a new mussel dish courtesy of our head chef Pete. The mussels are steamed with potatoes and onions in a green curry sauce that (to me anyway) smells a little bit like Tom Kha Gai, my favorite Thai soup.

All week I have been dreaming about having enough time to make enchiladas at home, and then on Saturday I came into work to find that the chicken dish had been changed, and is now served with an enchilada of caramelized onions and goat cheese. It is also served with discs of twice-fried sweet potato and a salad of pickled jalapenos, cilantro, and toasted pumpkin seeds. The dish is pulled together by a delicious red chili gravy that also adds a beautiful color to the plate.

The new vegetarian dish coming off of my station is a sweet potato tamale, which is served on a bed of cumin-scented toasted rice and black bean. The tamale is stuffed (overflowed) with a ragout of roasted peppers, onions, olives, raisins, and pine nuts, and topped with a salad of fresh cilantro, feta, pickled jalapenos, fennel, and red onion.

Lamb is back on the menu in 2 places- as a chop/loin combination, and as a meat sauce.The first dish is a grilled lamb chop with a roasted loin, served with a potato croquette, roasted carrots, and a salad of baby spinach and pickled cauliflower. The dish is topped with a minty chimichurri and a natural Jus.
The other lamb dish is a polenta “lasagna” with lamb Bolognese (another of my favorite sauces), stracciatella cheese, and a salad of fennel, orange, arugula, and a hazelnut crunch.

The new beef dish is a piece of grilled sirloin with braised beef and a potato gratin- I feel like I’m saying this a lot, but the potato gratin is one of my favorite things on the menu. Maybe I just really like the menu at the moment, but I can think of few things as great as a pile of layered cheese and potatoes baked to perfection and oozing flavor. The dish is then topped with an arugula salad with pickled oyster mushrooms, and is finished with a smoky hollandaise sauce.

Fish dishes have changed as well- We are now serving a seared Arctic char fillet with celery root puree, curried root vegetables (carrots, parsnips, turnips, rutabaga… you get the idea) and a creamy apple salad. We also have a seared striped bass fillet served with a smoked pig stew with large white beans (lima beans) and mustard laced salad of wild carrots and greens.

That’s about as far as I’ll go into menu updates for now (the menu on the website will keep you up to date on daily changes.

We’re all gearing up for Restaurant Week at the end of the month, which will be an entire week of busy insanity, and we’re all looking forward to it. Warmer weather should be coming soon, but given the weather in the past few weeks, I wouldn’t count on it. Either way, the menu will change to reflect the weather and the changing produce, and i’m sure that greatness will come out of it.

I’m back! The holiday season was very busy for us, but now that things are settling down I’m hoping to find more time to keep the blog updated.

On Thanksgiving Pete closed the restaurant to the public and continued his annual tradition of serving a feast to friends and family of EVOO who have no family in the area or nowhere else to celebrate the holiday. Although I wasn’t present for the festivities, I love the idea of the celebration and think that it exemplifies the overall feeling of Thanksgiving.

We were also closed on Christmas and Christmas Eve, although on New Years we were certainly open, and very very busy. I spent New Years Eve with my best friends, and for a while I felt a little bit pathetic saying that (I was at work…) but then I realized that it’s pretty awesome that all of the cooks get along so well- I don’t think many people can say that about their work environment.

In the midst of all of the holiday chaos, we finally got ourselves a new sous-chef. Michelle was one of our line cooks, and had been putting in extra hours (and quite a bit of extra effort) for a while when Pete was out from surgery. She was recently officially given the title of sous-chef, and I couldn’t think of anyone better suited for the position. Her appointment has taken some pressure off of Randy, our other sous-chef, and we’re all hoping that he can get more sleep in the future. Despite his knee surgery, Pete is back nearly full time, and runs the line most nights of the week.

All in all, the line is functioning extremely well- everyone is back, working hard, getting along extremely well, and doing the best work we’re capable of. A few nights ago Michelle timed Pete when he was breaking down an entire lamb- he did the entire thing in under 10 minutes!

Menu changes can be found on our website, and I will (hopefully) update again soon.