This year, because the rainy season went so long, we’ve pushed the dates for the 2010 Tomato Dinners [reserve] back to September 15 – 19 and are watching and waiting.   Recently, we’ve seen the first few cherry tomatoes and Sun Golds, and just this week some delicious “ugly” Early Girls.

In the meantime, we had fun revisiting Tomato Watch 2009 so we collected the posts here and thought we’d share:

Highlights include:
Joe Schirmer of Dirty Girl Produce on Dry-Farming in post #2, and then on July 3rd with further dry-farming information. Also, Joe’s own video reports in post #5 and #10 are of special note.

Riverdog Farm explain their growing cycle and how and when tomatoes are picked in posts #18 and #20.

Brookside Farm’s Welling and Ann Tom show us lovely pictures and thoughtful reports on their season in Brendwood, culminating in the October 1st Dead Ripe video.

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.

Official confirmation from Trini at Riverdog Farm: tomato season has started! Also, some recommended older varieties of apricots & peaches from Didar, and Chef Canales tells us how he likes to prepare Jimmy Nardello’s peppers. Who’s Jimmy Nardello?!

The Oliveto Wheat Project unofficially started in June 2007 when a group of local farmers, millers, bakers, and distributors got together for a series of meetings to discuss the possibility of a local grain (wheat and heritage corn) economy here, in Northern California. At that point, Oliveto was more of a facilitator than a participant in these meetings, providing an opportunity and a space for interested parties to connect. It became quickly apparent that there was indeed interest, and several valuable relationships and ideas arose from those initial conversations. And for Oliveto, it was the beginning of a deeper interest.

A key moment came during a discussion with Herb Vogt, a researcher with the UC Davis Department of Plant Science. I knew from travels throughout Italy that Italian wheat made very good pasta and I was telling Herb of my intention to bring back some prized Italian soft wheat varieties in hopes of growing them out here in California. Herb said, “Why do that? They won’t be the same when they grow here.”

[We did grow out some Italian wheat in 2009 and just as Herb said, when tested by the California Wheat Commission the results were very different from the results of the same varieties grown in Italy.] Herb brought to that meeting maybe thirty different bags of wheat samples. He held them out, “So…what do you want?”

I didn’t know. I’m not a baker or a cook. I knew that Italian wheat grown in Italy made very good pasta, but I didn’t know any of the attributes of that flour other than, IT MAKES GOOD PASTA. But what does THAT mean? What qualities does a flour need to make good pasta and how are those qualities represented in the diagnostics the California Wheat Commission was showing us? The cooks and bakers I asked also had difficulty answering the question. It became apparent that there was no common language (when talking about grain) shared by farmers, seedsmen, millers, cooks, and bakers. So, it was Herb Vogt’s question that marked the official start of the Oliveto Wheat Project, because it required us to develop some common terms as a means to getting at what it was we were looking for.

Of course there are many terms established already, but they are mostly in the domain of the industrial grain business. Over the last fifty years, grain in America has primarily become an industrial product in seed development, in farming, milling, storage, cleaning, and use. Artisan bakers and cooks may want to experiment with new or heritage flours but there is no language to convey what they are looking for to the people that produce it. While it is true than an experienced baker can have very good results from almost any flour—there are some flours that offer more flavor and nutrients, and can be more earth friendly and many of the bakers we spoke with were eager to learn about them.

To fully imagine an artisan grain economy in northern California with the common goal of delicious, healthful food every part of the chain from seed variety selection, farming practices, cleaning, storage, milling, cooking to baking would have to be approached as if for the first time. For me, the first step in this process of creating a new model was to create a definition of terms, so that everyone involved could start off on the same page.

So, here are the wheat terms we’ve come up with; in the next few months we’ll be adding milling and baking terms as well.

In collaboration with master baker Craig Ponsford, Chef Canales has been relearning every step of the pizza making process with this very different flour. Craig founded Artisan Bakery in Sonoma, was the first American winner of the French and Specialty Breads category of France’s 1996 Coupe du Monde de la Boulabngerie, and now, having been completely won over by this “new” flour is working for Joe Vanderliet.

This has been an extremely fun & informative process for everyone involved & we’re eager to share what we’ve learned so far. Results of our kitchen trials may change your opinion of whole grain wheat. COME TELL US WHAT YOU THINK OF OUR TRIAL WHOLE-MILLED WHEAT PIZZAS IN THE CAFE THROUGH THE MONTH OF JULY.

“Never Enough” written by Ben Provan. Performed by Ben with very new wife Grace Magruder-Provan, along with Kate and Mac Magruder, at their ranch on the banks of the Russian River headwaters in Potter Valley, CA.

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?

Six weeks earlier:

Twelve weeks earlier, the story of the 2010 Produttori vintage begins:

We think these timelines (more to come) may be an interesting way to think about wines the way winemakers think about them.  We’ll continue to post videos as Aldo sends them, so check back at the Oliveto Wine Journal for updates.

Over the years, Aldo has given me access to his life and friends and allowed me to get closer to his community, which I’ve taken as fundamental lessons in enjoying traditional wines.  As background, here is a thirteen-minute introduction to Aldo’s Barbaresco community:

And for the hard-core:  this is a long, somewhat dry, but to a few, extraordinary interview with Aldo’s father about the history of fine wine in Barbaresco:

At Oliveto, we’re just now offering the 2005 Single vineyard Barbaresco, along with Produttori’s Nebbiolo, and a substantial selection of their aged vintages can be found on our Wine In Time menu.