This weekend we’re breaking into a beautifully aged hunk of Mac Magruder’s green-grass-fed beef. Chef Canales will braise this with Chianti, Vin Santo, and wild fennel pollen.  It will be on the menu through Sunday.

Chianti is also the topic at  the Oliveto Wine Journal, where Chris Ryerson discusses an Eric Asimov’s article about a rather depressing Chianti taste test.   Chris has some recommendations of a few often over-looked, smaller-production Chiantis that you’ll want to make a point of tracking down.

A month ago, we took delivery of some vitellone (young beef) from Mac Magruder.  We only get these animals about 3-4 times a year and they usually go fast.  Primarily raised on mother’s milk & grass-fed on Mac’s ‘ice cream’ pasture, we hang the meat in our meat locker for up to six weeks to help develop the characteristic, more concentrated aged-meat flavors.  These thinly sliced loin cutlets will be served with Porcini mushrooms and vin santo, and appear on the menu starting tonight through the weekend.

We’ve been getting the first local freshly dug potatoes from the Capay Valley for the past few weeks.  The above beauties are German Butterballs from Full Belly Farm.

The only way you can tell if a potato is freshly dug is by its peeling, delicate skin.  Because their skins haven’t had time to harden, they need to be refrigerated if kept more than a few days.  They are creamier, less starchy, and sweeter, although the flavor is less concentrated.

For mature, cured potatoes, Full Belly will cut the leaves of the plant & keep the potatoes in the ground until the skins harden, allowing the potatoes to be stored without refrigeration.

New potatoes will continue to be harvested from different parts of the bay area over the next few weeks and then go into storage.  So right now (the next crop won’t be until the fall) is the time to get them when they are in fact “new” & also delicious.

Chef Canales will have freshly-dug potatoes on menu this weekend served with scallions, crème fraîche, and caviar…

because even though you don’t have to do much to make these potatoes taste great, if you can, why not?

The fine print: The Monterey Bay Aquarium Sea Food Watch has deemed the local swordfish populations to be much healthier in recent years and put it back on the Best Choice list.  The swordfish we serve is local and always caught using a hook-and-line method in conjunction with an O-hook, drastically reducing by-catch.

It should also be noted, that due to elevated mercury levels in swordfish a consumption advisory has been issued for women and those with mercury sensitivity.

The Trentino Red Flint variety of corn was found in Trento, in northern Italy, by food historian William Rubel*, having been developed and handed down for generations after corn was introduced from the Americas hundreds of years ago.  Grown for us locally by the Rominger Brothers from seed supplied by Rubel and Glenn Roberts of Anson Mills this corn was also milled locally by Joseph Vanderliet, with the germ left intact.  This is how polenta tasted a hundred years ago: satisfying, rustic, and wonderful.

We’ll kick things off this Friday, May 14th in participation with the Rockridge District Association’s first Wine & Jazz Stroll.  From 4pm – 9pm we will be serving from our “polenta cart” out on College Avenue, as well as in the Cafe, for those of you just walking by.

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*When our friend William Rubel brought this polenta to us in 2006, we named it Trentino, from the region of its origin.  Since then, William named it after the family near Trento that kept it in modest production.  And now it has a new name.  From William’s March, 2009 Whole Earth News article:

Cornmeal made from ‘Floriani Red Flint’ has a rich, warm and complex taste. And it makes a polenta of unusual distinction. ‘Floriani’ polenta is rich in flavor in part because it is traditionally made from whole cornmeal — polenta integrale — rather than the degermed corn typically found in commercial polenta, grits and cornmeal.

I’ve named this corn ‘Floriani Red Flint’ after my Italian friends who grow it and are generously sharing their seeds.  This corn was taken to Italy from North America hundreds of years ago, where it was changed through centuries of selection by Alpine farmers who ate it themselves (rather than using corn mainly as animal feed, which has been the case with most corn in the United States in the last 150 years). Now it comes back to us, identified by botanists as Zea rostrato spin rosso della Valsugana.  It was the staple polenta corn of people living in the Valsugana Valley near the city of Trento, but is now only grown by enthusiasts, such as my friend’s father, Silvano Floriani.

We’re keeping an open mind on our polenta’s origins however.  Two weeks ago famed Italian baker Carlo Vigetti, Presidentt of the Italian Professional Bakers Association, and founder of Il Fornaio was in for dinner.  He claimed our polenta was actually from a valley near Lake Como.  He said he’d take me there—it was behind George Clooney’s house.

Our first soft shell crabs from the Chesapeake Bay came in two days ago.  We never know how long the season will last, but we do know we’ll have them on the menu this weekend.

Also…
Martin Bournhonesque, our source for impeccable arugula among other leafy greens, recently sent us a movie he made last September.  It features his prized, antique, Planet Junior push seeder; a device that was developed in the 19th century and perfected in the 1930s.  He thinks his model is 50-80 years old, and he also believes, “the older they are, the better they work.”

Martin’s farm is in Salinas (# 13 on our Farmers map) and he’s pretty sure it was spinach he was planting last September with his trusty Planet Junior.  So…

This weekend: sautéed soft shell crab with Martin’s spinach in brown butter and capers. While they last.

And just off the wire: minutes ago, our mushroom hunter Anthony showed up with a boat-load of morels foraged from the Burney area, above the Pit River.  They’ll be on the menu this weekend as well.  And everyone knows nothing says “I love you, Mom” quite like morels. And soft shell crabs.  And spinach.

]]> http://www.oliveto.com/ourcommunity/farmers/martin-bournhonesque/this-just-in-soft-shell-crabs-martins-spinach-morels/feed 2 http://www.oliveto.com/ourcommunity/farmers/catalan-farms/this-just-in-goats-milk-ricotta http://www.oliveto.com/ourcommunity/farmers/catalan-farms/this-just-in-goats-milk-ricotta#comments Mon, 03 May 2010 22:20:09 +0000 Catherine Meng http://www.oliveto.com/ourcommunity/?p=5609

Things are definitely feeling like spring around here. Meaning deliveries from our suppliers keep arriving with more & more new stuff. Meaning the kitchen in like a sparking motherboard of ideas. Meaning the menu is like that magic trick where...

Ever wonder what the difference is between those long skinny artichokes and the shorter, broader ones?  Bill Fujumoto cuts a few open and shows us how the differences translate on the plate.  The trick to determining the size of the heart is squeezing the backside. While that may sound like a perverted proverb, when selecting artichokes these are wise words to shop by.

Then we jump-cut to the kitchen and get a quick run-down from Chef Paul Canales of what he’ll be doing with these “real spring artichokes”: first a Roman-style salad, then braised whole, and from the trimmed leaves, a soup.

Anyone who ever rooted around in the back storage coolers of Monterey Market under the stewardship of Bill Fujimoto knows what a truly magical place it was.  The relationships Bill fostered made going to Monterey Market quite like a treasure hunt, because he often only bought a small amount of cases of produce from some specialty farmers, and if you didn’t know they were there, you’d miss them.  To catch Bill himself in the back room always led to a wonderful conversation, and invariably led to leaving with some amazing box of fruit or vegetables.  So when he left Monterey Market, one of my first thoughts was (selfishly), now where am I going to get those awesome cherimoyas?

Like many of the cool fruits he bought for the market, the Toro Creek cherimoyas were there because of a personal relationship fostered by Bill.   The weird tropical fruit so resembling a cross between an avocado and an artichoke, with its mild vanilla-melony flavor, came from a friend’s llama ranch, and were of such superior quality because Bill was in contact with his friends every year as cherimoya season approached, reminding them not to pick before the fruit ripened properly.    I knew no one else could get ahold of these fancifully named “El Bumpo” cherimoyas.

So when we heard Bill was to work as a consultant to Cooks Produce Co, from whom we buy fruits and vegetables regularly, I was overjoyed… and when spring came, I made that phone call: “so Bill, about those El Bumpos…..”

Tonight we’ll be serving cherimoya sorbetto.  Thanks, Bill!

It’s that time of year again.