| 
 |
| 
|
Oliveto has a tradition of putting on special dinners. Besides being great fun and a break from the usual, the dinners have become increasingly important to us over the years for providing the opportunity to deeply examine a province of cooking and for reinvigorating us all.
Some of our dinners (Truffles, The Whole Hog, and Tomatoes) are so popular that we wouldn't think of discontinuing them. Then, too, we'll get interested in something new that simply must be explored. You'll find some first-time dinners in this calendar.
| For previous Special Dinners and Events, please visit
SPECIAL MENUS |
We also have smaller, spontaneous events during the year for which there will be only e-mails and mention on our NEWS AND EVENTS page. To be notified please sign up for our e-mail lists HERE.
|
 TOMATO DINNERS
Wednesday through Saturday
August 26 through 29, 2009
VIEW 2008 MENU
About a week before Tomato Dinners, when most of the tomatoes we will have to choose from are available for tasting, Chef Paul Canales and the cooks sit down with scores of varieties, mostly heirloom but some-like Early Girls-hybrids, and sort out which are the best, what their characteristics are, and how they might be prepared to best advantage. Amazingly, there is considerable variation even within varieties.
Every year, the variables of soil, weather, planting times, irrigation, and various farming practices yield surprising outcomes in flavor and texture. A farmer who produces a magnificent Pink Brandywine one year may offer a less flavorful one the next; but her Mortgage Lifters the same year might be nonpareil. Based on that tasting, each August we purchase around 3,000 pounds of the best tomatoes from local farmers for this joyful event.
>> See last year's Tomato Dinners Menu
|
 TRUFFLE DINNERS
November 2009
VIEW 2008 MENU
To bring home the point that you don't know what kind of white truffle season you're going to have until you're on your way to the Milan airport, we thought we'd relate the story of last year's season.
Weeks before our trip to Italy, we phoned our contacts and got the gloomy news that there'd been only a brief flooding that summer and hot, dry days in the fall. And as truffle season began, importers here pronounced white truffles of poor quality and hugely expensive. (Truffles were, in fact, scarce and pricey, but the quality was pretty good. It was the expense that had importers unwilling to take a risk.)
Once in Italy, we began our pursuit, as usual, at the Alba Truffle Market in Piedmont to check out our fallback*. We made sure that if we couldn't obtain good truffles from our friends in Tuscany and Umbria, we'd still have something to bring back. Later, with three days left before our flight home, our principal sources had little for us; early the next morning we'd have to drive back to Alba.
But first, there was one more tartufao to meet. Just as we arrived, a huge, impenetrably black cloud passed overhead and unleashed an enormous torrent. Through that downpour came a grinning Mirco, who had in his satchel the biggest truffle we'd ever been offered, along with other beauties just out of the ground, impossibly fragrant. In Umbria, it was the same story: white truffles were steadily coming in from the countryside, a few hours from the earth. We cancelled Alba.
In 2007, Oliveto's truffles were the most consistently fresh, large, and fragrant we'd ever had-not the cheapest, but the best.
*The shelf-life of white truffles is brief. We serve them less than ten days out of the ground, sometimes as few as four. We remove the soil at the last minute, just before our return trip. The truffles are kept refrigerated and semi-moist; we repack them regularly.
|
 WHOLE HOG DINNERS
February , 2010
Little did we know that when we established our relationship with cattle rancher Mac Magruder in Mendocino County we'd also be widening the scope of our Whole Hog dinners. But a few years back, Magruder enticed some feral pigs into captivity and began breeding them, both as 100 percent feral and cross-bred with domestic pigs. The feral pigs are definitely a different animal, and their free-range diet of acorns, pasture, chestnuts, hazelnuts, and grubs and other insects, along with some whey, adds to the different character of the meat.
Our kitchen began using the boar in many of our pork dishes and salumi, one of which is our first shoulder prosciutto. Fifteen months old, that prosciutto will be ready for this year's dinners.
And, as always, we will obtain the majority of our beautiful pigs from Paul Willis' family farm in Iowa, where Willis heads the Niman Ranch hog farmers' cooperative. Along with any number of new dishes and cured pork we've been devising during the year, our 2009 menu will include the traditional items-choucroute garni, Oliveto ham, spit-roasted pork shoulder, all our various salumi, pasta with meatballs, dishes with offal (kidneys, liver, tripe, brains, heart), blood pudding-everything that so fully celebrates that wonderful animal, the pig.
>> See earlier Whole Hog Dinners Menu
|
|
Tomato Dinners