Vegetarians, rejoice. A new menu is scheduled to begin cycling through Boston College's dining halls starting March 9, featuring brand new vegetarian entrees and sides. BC Dining's production managers and unit chefs recently traveled to Boston's own Costa Produce, a privately owned company that supplies fresh produce to many restaurants and school dining establishments around New England, to come up with and test out some new recipes for the spring and next fall's menu rotations.
The managers and chefs from all three BC dining halls worked in Costa's test kitchen, cooking up over 30 recipes. At the end of the day, they walked away from Costa with 12 new vegetarian recipes, including a spinach-hazelnut lasagna, whole wheat spaghetti with summer squash, chayote relleno (a kind of stuffed Mexican squash, rich in amino acids and vitamin C), and a tofu black bean enchilada.
The initiative by BC Dining Services to provide fresh and interesting twists comes just in the nick of time, as students become tired of the monotonous consumption of the same old foods. Michael Kann, associate director of food and beverage said, "You need to infuse menus with excitement. People who eat here eat 500 times a year with us. You don't eat at home that many times. So you need it to be exciting and you need it to be fun. It can't just be the same tired old things time and again."
Kann thought that Costa Produce was the best place to start because of the close relationship between Costa and BC Dining, and because of the need for a fresh vegetarian menu. Costa supplies most of the produce that we consume in the dining halls and provided the test kitchen in which the new recipes were tried out. "Our vegetarian lines are the oldest and most tired that we have. Every recipe we have on the vegetarian line really is three years old," Kann said.
And vegetarians have noticed. When asked about these new dishes and the approaches BC Dining takes to local and sustainable foods, Gabrielle Groth, A&S '10 said, "I think it's really important that they add new things to the menu, vegetarian or otherwise, to give the students more options. But I think it's especially exciting that they're adding more vegetarian options especially because some of the vegetarian options they have are not that appealing or appear very often."
Costa was also responsible for the produce students could purchase at the Farmer's Markets that took place at Corcoran Commons in the fall, and that will be back in the spring. But the Farmer's Market was the brainchild of Helen Wechsler, director of Dining Services, and Kann in an attempt to get fresh local produce, high-end breads, and pies to students. This initiative, which embraces the local and sustainable, was a novelty to some BC students but not to Wechsler and Kann, veterans of the culinary business. Wechsler said, "For anybody who is in the food business who is either a chef or has been highly involved in food for the number of years that we have, it's the natural thing to do. It tastes better, it's the right thing to do."
The Farmer's Market was also an important addition to the Dining Service's repertoire because it brought local, sustainable dining to the conscientious students. "I think the Farmer's Market was an important addition to dining service because it made their use of local products and produce more recognized because, whether they use it or not in the dining halls, students aren't aware of it," Groth said.
Wechsler said there is a need for students to think about where their food and food containers come from. "Where we come from as people in the culinary profession, it really isn't a hard decision for us. The difficulty is to get our students and customers aware of what we're doing and why it's important. I think at BC, the customers' awareness that what they choose to eat really makes a difference - as much as it makes a difference to go on a service trip. And what you eat it on and how you take it out and why you take it out and why you eat fruit that's out of season," Wechsler said.
As they did with Costa Produce and the revamping of the vegetarian menus, the BC Dining staff will soon travel to North Coast Seafood, which provides most of BC's fish, to revamp the seafood dishes on the menus. Akin to the initiatives they take with local and sustainable vegetables, the dining staff looks to provide students with the best quality food at prices fit for a student's budget. "Swordfish is really reasonably priced right now. But we've put a moratorium on selling it because the only ones you're getting are the little ones now and it's really been over-fished. What we're hoping to get from that is good fish entrees that are still reasonably priced," Kann said.
BC Dining is trying to keep things fresh and different, and it seems that by generating a new vegetarian menu, they are doing exactly that. "I think people would be surprised at how many people are vegetarian or eat vegetarian on campus, so I think it's really great how they're giving thought to the needs of those people," Groth said.
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