Tomato Jam
This version is how McClain makes it for breakfast sandwiches. For the winter caprese, she’ll take out the orange juice and add fennel seed, coriander, and balsamic vinegar. Other times, she’s used le...
COOKSHELF
Lindsay McClain - Executive Chef, Pocono Organics
THREE YEARS AGO, Pocono Organics opened this 380-acre regenerative farm and its market and café, where they grow all kinds of produce along with hemp. For chef Lindsay McClain, who joined Pocono Organics in June 2020 after working with the Safran Turney Hospitality group in Philly for many years, it was a bit of a homecoming.
When she was in culinary school at IUP in Punxsutawney, McClain had worked at the Pocono Raceway during the day and at a nearby hotel restaurant during the night. But even during her teen years, she and other members of her family had worked at the raceway. It was while working at the hotel restaurant during culinary school that she met Ashley Walsh, whose family owns both the raceway and Pocono Organics (they’re across the street from each other). As roommates, McClain would cook for Walsh—who at the time had an undiagnosed digestive medical condition—and that longtime connection was solidified. The experience demonstrates the healing power of food, and the power of friendship, too.
These days, McClain is overseeing the kitchen at Pocono Organics (and the raceway, too), which serves farm-fresh organic foods for breakfast and lunch all year round—along with CBD-infused products from the hemp they grow. Everything is scratch made, all the way down to the puff pastry for the baked goods. Inspiration comes from the seed lists from the farm, and whatever happens with the crops each season.
One thing she can always count on? Tomatoes, and lots of them. And that’s how she came upon this recipe for smoky, spicy skillet tomato jam, from Food in Jars blogger, cookbook author, and frequent Edible Philly contributor Marisa McClellan.
“When I worked in Philly one of the chefs I worked with taught me how to can, and so I would go home and do that,” says McClain. “And her tomato jam is one of the first recipes I made.”
With this recipe already an established part of her repertoire, it’s inevitable that she would use it at the farm, where she’d be guaranteed access to a high-quality tomato crop, and often a surplus. (She credits her time on “Chopped!” and the mystery basket contestants used, for helping her a lot at the farm.) It also helped that she didn’t want to make ketchup to use in the café.
“I hate ketchup, it’s often too sweet or too vinegary or both, and I wanted to have something on our breakfast sandwiches all year round. I did the spicy tomato jam and people went nuts about it,” she says. The Pocono Organics team then started canning it, and couldn’t keep it on the market shelves. “It’s such a good way to use up tomatoes, especially the heirloom ones that crack really quickly and aren’t sold in the market,” explains McLain.
The tomato jam gets a workout at the café. It’s used on burgers in the winter, on grilled cheese sandwiches, and alongside baked feta. And then there’s farm-fresh fancy toast. “We have a sourdough program and our pastry chef does the tomato jam with the buffalo mozzarella and it just brings that bit of summer and lightness all year round,” she says.
Pocono Organics
1015 Long Pond Road, Long Pond
poconoorganics.com
Organic Market: 8am–3pm;
Café: 8am–2pm, Thursday–Monday
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