Doing the Atlantic- Chapter 2, Planning.

For the best reading experience, read the chapters in order.

This is a short chapter about our planning to get to the starting point of our trip across the Atlantic, Puerta Calero, Lanzarote, Canary Islands, Spain.

Sunday, January 2, 2022

Dennis and I booked our flights to Lanzarote. We will fly out of Boston on Monday, January 24 at 9PM, arriving in Lanzarote on Tuesday the 25th at 1:05PM with a short layover in Madrid. The plan is to meet up with John, who will arrive in Lanzarote on the 20th and do whatever needs doing to ready Avocet for departure. Avocet is on the hard awaiting John’s arrival. He has an insurance survey scheduled, he wants to test out the autopilot and the watermaker, I’m not sure if they are new, re-built or he just wants to test them after sitting on the hard for a few months. We also will use the time to provision the boat.

Saturday, January 8, 2022

Our Brother Steve and his son Victor are meeting us in Lanzarote. Steve and Victor live in Madrid and are making the trip to see us off. Because of COVID, I haven’t seen Victor in almost 3 years. Steve, I saw in October for the unfortunate occasion of our father’s funeral. Steve booked us a 3 bedroom villa in Puerto Calero, Lanzarote, a short walk from the marina where Avocet will be moored. Steve and Victor will be arriving on Wednesday the 26th and departing the following Sunday. So, we should be able to help provision AVOCET and have some quality family time.

Sunday, January 9, 2022

I am having my daughter, Caitlin, set up a Zoom meeting for tonight to go through any questions, concerns and expectations that we may have for our upcoming trip. I hope to get a grip on what we need to pack, answer questions on expected weather, ascertain what gear and safety equipment we may need as well as get John’s opinion on whether or not I should buy an In-Reach personal SOS communication device.

Monday, January 10, 2022

Dennis, John and I had a ZOOM meeting last night and reviewed the trip. It was a productive meeting, we talked about provisioning, gear, packing and other expectations. John informed us that he has tested positive for COVID. Jens did not take part in the Zoom meeting, John said he was unsure of his status, and he wanted to be sure that Dennis and I were okay with just the three of us doing the crossing. We are.

Update: John texted that Jens is a go, which is great.

2 weeks until our flights to the Canary Islands. The countdown has begun.

Wednesday, January 12, 2022

I am thinking about using the trip as an excuse to get a small laptop. I can use it to write this journal as well as storing movies and music for the trip. I first thought that I would look into a Chromebook, but my son Shane shut me down on that- “they suck, they are like a large tablet with a keyboard”. I thought, well that seems like exactly what I want. After a bit more thought, I do want something with a Windows operating system, not google OS. So the search begins.

12 days until departure.

Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Less than a week until we head out. I am now writing this on my new Lenovo 14” laptop. I’ve downloaded a couple of movies and plan on doing a few more. Music will follow.

I started a list of stuff to bring with me, it’s not too bad, about 70 items, including everything from socks, underwear, foul weather gear, Man Overboard (MOB) device, toiletries, medications, passport, towel, sunblock to proof of vaccination. It all has to fit into a medium sized duffle bag and a large-ish waterproof backpack, I think it will.

I also bought a vacuum sealer. The first couple of days in Lanzarote we are planning on making and freezing as much food as possible. A vacuum sealer will be great, we make, chill, bag, vacuum seal and freeze the food. The sealed bags will take up a lot less space than foil pans, and, unlike the foil pans they won’t leak all over the cooler as they slowly thaw; hopefully this plan works out.

Earlier this week John sent a link to us about how the Canary Islands are suffering through clouds of dust from the Sahara Desert, looks like air quality and visibility might suck a bit, here’s the link: https://www.guidetocanaryislands.com/intense-calima-historic-proportions-affects-canary-islands-moment/?utm_medium=website&utm_source=mail&utm_campaign=bottom

Yesterday I took a Personal Float Plan that Chip Gavin, a longtime sailor friend, sent me to use as a template, and I made it my own. I also sent it to Dennis to do the same. It was a great help, all that information in one easy to read and understand place. Thanks Chip, it was extremely helpful. I printed a copy and emailed Colleen a copy of mine.

6 days until departure and counting.

Thursday, January 20, 2022

John is in Lanzarote, I saw a Facebook post that he has already befriended a couple from another boat. It looks like they are going to delay their departure a couple of days so that we can sail in tandem.

I rented a car that I will pick up at the airport in Lanzarote on Tuesday afternoon and Steve will return it on Sunday morning.

4 days until departure.

Monday, January 24, 2022

The day is here. I’m meeting Dennis at the airport at around 7PM for our 9PM flight.

I’m almost packed, I still have to put my clothes together and put them into my, not so fancy, new, quite large L.L. Bean duffle bag that I bought yesterday. The medium one I was planning on using may have worked, but it would be like putting 50 lbs of stuff into a 30lb bag.

Hopefully the day goes without a hitch. I spent way too much time last night getting the needed COVID QR code from the airline. Just a couple of words on Iberia Airlines’ website, it sucks. There is no excuse for how bad it is. This is not a new revelation, I have been traveling to Spain regularly for 30 years, my brother Steve and his family live there and we have been fortunate enough to have visited him often. Their website is very difficult to manage, I was allowed to go on their site to pick my seats, and do an online check in. After spending 20 minutes filling out all of the forms, passport info etc, you are then told that you have to check in at the airport. This pisses me off, not only because of time lost, but, I paid extra to be able to choose my seats ahead of time. In addition to that, some of the online forms, though translated to English, the drop down multiple choice answers were in Spanish. Fortunately, after many years of DuoLingo, I could muddle through with my rudimentary Spanish.

Okay, back to getting my shit together.

Doing the Atlantic- Chapter 1, Am I available?

Mar29

This is the first chapter in a multi-part blog about me fulfilling one of my life’s ambitions- sailing across the Atlantic Ocean.

I wrote this journal as things unfolded, I started writing at home soon after Captain John’s initial email. I continued writing throughout the planning, while on planes, at the house we rented in Lanzarote, daily on Avocet as we sailed across the Atlantic, in Guadeloupe, and finally at back at home again. I wrote this because I wanted an unedited fresh as-it-happened memory of one of my life long ambitions- to sail an ocean. Read along, I hope you enjoy reading about my experience, parts of which are thrilling, some are boring, many are exhausting and a couple of them are even a bit scary.

Atlantic Ocean Crossing

January, 29, 2022 – February, 21, 2022

S/V AVOCET

AVOCET:

https://www.britannica.com/animal/avocet

Any of several large shorebirds belonging to the genus Recurvirostra, family Recurvirostridae. Avocets have boldly contrasting plumage, long bluish legs, and a long black bill upturned at the tip.

Wikipedia

https://g.co/kgs/mH4R3L

The four species of avocets are a genus, Recurvirostra, of waders in the same avian family as the stilts. The genus name comes from Latin recurvus, ‘curved backwards’ and rostrum, ‘bill’. The common name is thought to derive from the Italian word avosetta.

John Slingerland’s Avocet is a 1988 Oyster 41 Sailing Yacht-

https://oysteryachts.com/heritage-yachts/oyster-sj41/

According to the Oyster Yachts website there were 27 of these Stephen Jones designed yachts made from 1980 through 1987. Which is not quite accurate, the placard on Avocet claims that she was built in 1988, a year after the production dates stated on their website. The placard also states that Avocet is hull #23 (of 27), built by Landamores Yacht Builders in Norfolk, England.

Saturday, January 1, 2022

Last week I got an unexpected email from John Slingerland, owner and captain of the sailing vessel Avocet, a 1988 Oyster 41, “I may have a spot open departing Canaries 1/15 to Guadeloupe”. Which I responded- “I will run it by the boss, get a feel for how she feels about it. I will try to get back to you tomorrow”. I did talk to Colleen and kids about it, and they felt, as I did, the timing was perfect. EVOO one of our restaurants was, due to COVID, still closed, we were well staffed and there was nothing too important that I would miss at home. I didn’t have too much going on, I could make this work. I was very excited and hopeful to get the opportunity to cross the Atlantic, WHOOP, WHOOP!

Fuck yeah, I was available! Crossing the Atlantic has always been a dream of mine. I would even call it- as my wife Colleen gives me a “what the fuck are you talking about” eye roll- a “bucket list” item. I, like every other sailor, has dreamed of crossing an ocean.

A couple of days later I received another email from John- “In regard to the January 15 planned departure, one of the other planned crew had to bow out, and another is only 50/50, and in a watch and see mode. All understandable, all COVID related issues. This is a tidal wave that is lifting (or sinking) all boats in hopefully only the short term”.

I thought- Sucks for them, great for me!

With the all of the previously planned crew bowing out, John needed to shore up his crew for the longest leg of his “North Atlantic – Western Mediterranean circumnavigation”. He reached out to Jens Bergen, a longtime Avocet crew member, who had already done several of the other “circumnavigation” legs with John. He also asked me to see if my brother Dennis was available; which I did. Jens was in as long as we left after January 24. Dennis, after work and family consultations, was also available. I am elated to not only do this trip, but to have the opportunity to do it with my brother and long-time sailing partner Dennis will make this trip even more special.

Before we got to 4 committed crew members, John had floated the idea of going with 3, we were all so amped about crossing the Atlantic that we readily and ignorantly agreed, if that was the case, to go with it.

Now with the crew set, we now had just over three weeks to mentally and physically prepare for the trip.

John is in the process of bringing Avocet back to the U.S. after a stint of sailing and exploring the northern Mediterranean; Portugal, Croatia, Greece, Montenegro, Albania, Italy and Spain were some of his ports-of-call. Avocet spent a year “on the hard” in Montenegro due to COVID-19. As soon as the travel restrictions were lifted John spent the summer and fall re-fitting Avocet. And with the help of various crew, including his wife Marcia and Jens Bergen, he began the trip from Montenegro back to his home port in Boothbay, Maine. He made stops in Sicily, Sardinia, Mallorca and Gibraltar before, in October, Avocet made it to Lanzarote, where she is once again “on the hard” getting a few minor repairs and an insurance survey.

I have sailed with John before, a delivery from Blue Hill, Maine, to Beverly, Massachusetts, in 2015. The Marblehead – Halifax Ocean Race in 2017, as well as the first and probably shortest leg of his trip to the Mediterranean in 2017 from Beverly, Massachusetts to Newport, Rhode Island. I have found John to be a very knowledgeable, passionate sailor, a solid captain, an affable watch companion and an inspiration to my sailing aspirations.

In my opinion Avocet is a gem, she is well laid out- with wide teak decks, a solidly built typical ’80s racer/cruiser hull design- wide beam, small transom, shortish waterline and a low free-board. Below decks she is all class, teak everywhere, a sea-berth, handholds where they are needed, 2 heads, ample storage and a feeling of seaworthiness. All in all, Avocet was made to do exactly what John was using here for- long distance ocean passages, with some coastal cruising to quiet anchorages or to hip lively marinas.

When John sent out emails looking for crew for all of the different legs of his Mediterranean excursion, I tried to join in. Unfortunately, for my sailing life, I was way too busy with the other aspects of my non-sailing life to be able to figure out how I could get some time onboard during the first half of the trip from Maine to the Mediterranean. I did get myself on as part of the crew for the last leg of his trip from Bermuda to Maine. That trip is still scheduled for May, 2022; hopefully I will still be able to make that happen.

When I got John’s email, because of COVID 19, my current work situation is very different than it was 3 years ago when John was initially looking for crew members. I, with the help of my wife and business partner, Colleen, own and operate 3 restaurants, Which due to the pandemic we have temporarily closed one of them and drastically changed how we do business in the other 2. These actions, though they suck in many ways, have given me more free time than I have ever had as a working adult, and it’s blissful; I hope to never go back to 70 hour work weeks again. In my free(r) time I have not only spent more time with my wonderful family, which I would never give back, we have had a great couple of years. I also have upped my sailing, this past summer I sailed quite a bit on my friends’ and neighbors’- Tom and Mary Mitri’s boat, Glory, a 1988 Mason 44, which like Avocet, is a well built, ocean capable, late 1980’s boat. We sailed around Buzzards bay a few times and did a delivery up to Camden, Maine. I also Sailed on Alliance, a J-122 out of Newport, Rhode Island, doing several practice sails as well as the Stamford-Vineyard race, a 240 mile race from Stamford Connecticut to Martha’s Vineyard and back. So, John’s email came at the right time, I can take the time off. Colleen, knowing my love of sailing and my ocean crossing dreams, quickly gave me her blessings to do it. Keep in mind she and our kids will lovingly give me shit for abandoning them for a month for the rest of my life; I’m thinking it will be worth it.

Life After EVOO: Embracing New Adventures

Mar23

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.

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.

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.

Let the adventure begin…

End of Summer Blues…Fish, that is.

Sep19

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.

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.

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.

Holy Cow!

Sep8

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…

Chinese Box

Mar11

shrimp

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.

seasons bostoian

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.

silver-chrome-cloche-closing-food-dish-restaurant-isolated-white_59529-611

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.

Valentine, oh, Valentine

Jan31

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.

Here’s a little Valentine’s music for you…

What’s Cooking: Keeping it local in January

Jan28

I wrote this blog a couple of years ago. I like to re-post it every year so you can see some of the things that go into being “local” during the long New England winters.

Pete's Blog

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?

20180112_111625 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.

red fire green house A greenhouse at Red Fire farm in…

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The last of the lamb

Jan23

20200122_181849

Well it’s almost been a week since we received a lamb from farmer Tad of Featherbrook Farm in Raynham, MA.

We have sold out of the chops and the loin. We still have limited lamb leg, which we roasted (really- it’s sous vide) for the Lamb Sandwich on our lunch menu.

Our final dish is only on our dinner menu:

Fried Potato Cups filled with Braised Lamb, Roasted Roots, Crushed Olives, Pickled Cauliflower, Marcona Almonds, Goat’s Milk Feta and Mint Salsa Verde

The potato cups are baked, scooped-out and then fried to order, using organic potatoes from Atlas Farm in Deerfield, MA. The roasted roots are carrots, Macomber turnips, celery root and watermelon radishes; all from local farms. We pickled the Kimball Fruit Farm cauliflower last summer. And, the goats milk feta is from Vermont Creamery in Websterville, VT.

Enjoy it while it lasts…

We haven’t cooked duck in a long time…I think that’s next!

Lamb Sandwhich

Jan22

Continuing with the lamb we received from Feather Brook Farm- A sandwich on our lunch menu.

Slices of Roast Lamb Leg with Smoked Cloumage, Pickled Green Tomatoes, Lettuce, Red Onion and Carolina White Barbecue Sauce on Mark’s Cumin Focaccia

lamb leg in the immersion circulator

We marinated the legs in a mixture of garlic and spices and then sous vide’ the legs at 137 degrees for 3 hours. We then chilled them in an ice bath, finally put a nice sear on them before slicing them.

The cloumage is an artisanal fresh, creamy cheese from Shy Brothers Farm in Westport MA, which we smoked in our backroom smoker. The Lettuce was grown in The Food Project’s greenhouse in Roxbury, MA. We pickled the Kimball Fruit Farm’s green tomatoes last September. Mark our excellent lunch sous chef made the Focaccia.