Cooking with Olive Oil

December 1st, 2010

A couple months ago I attended an extra virgin olive oil sensory short course. What that means in normal human-speak is that I learned how to properly taste extra virgin olive oil. Yes, there is a proper way to taste olive oil. Basically, you put the oil in a fancy blue glass, you swirl the glass in your palm to warm and volatilize the oil’s aroma. Then you sniff and sip the oil, slurping air through the oil to aerate it and release its full flavor. What this process does is give your taste buds the optimal ability to sense and appreciate the olive oil’s unique characteristics. It’s a lot like tasting wine.

But all this fancy tasting tells you only what the oil tastes like uncooked. Most culinary schools teach that subjecting extra virgin olive oil to high heat irrevocably changes its character. Thus if you plan to fry something you should use oils more resistant to heat, which means using one of those processed “neutral” oils like canola or soybean oil.

Of course, when one of the cooking teachers at the olive oil sensory short course mentioned as much, the olive oil producers and marketers present gasped in horror. Of course you can fry with extra virgin olive oil, one blurted out. The smoke point is 400 degrees! I nodded in agreement, although in truth, I didn’t really know what a smoke point was.

A smoke point is the temperature at which an oil starts to smoke. In other words when it starts to burn. And it is the point when the oil’s flavor goes irretrievably bad. Olive oil has a lower smoke point than canola. That’s why a lot of fast food restaurants use canola oil to deep fry onior rings and french fries. Canola’s smoke point is 470 degrees. Extra virgin olive oil, on the other hand, starts to smoke around 375-400 degrees. Since deep frying requires temperatures between 350-375 degrees, you can see why olive oil might not be an ideal choice. Deep frying requires temperatures too close to olive oil’s smoke point.

But that doesn’t mean olive oil isn’t a good oil to grill with or pan fry with. The key is to keep the cooking temperature below the smoke point. That way you’ll still enjoy olive oil’s taste and natural health benefits without having to resort to a tasteless processed oil like canola.

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Shaking Olive Trees

November 28th, 2010

I just poured myself some of this year’s freshly milled olive oil. The new oil is green and pungent and I am so happy that we were able to squeeze in harvest between the heavy rain and the sub-freezing temperatures. Of course, as is often true of farming, we didn’t escape entirely unscathed. Because of the rain, the olives were wet and some wet leaves snuck in with the harvested olives. The leaves slowed down milling, which I’m sure frustrated our wonderful miller, Mike Madison. He said it took him roughly twice as long to mill this year. Sorry, Mike!

 

On a more positive note, however, we successfully applied mechanical harvesting techniques to our own operation. We harvested this year, for the first time, with a tree shaker. As many of you know, Gold Oak Ranch grows mainly walnuts and almonds. Like virtually all nut growers, we use tree shakers to harvest. But we’ve never used a tree shaker to harvest olives. Conventional wisdom, at least in California, says that tree shakers “bark” olive trees. In plain-speak, that means that tree shakers damage the bark, which can injure or kill the tree.

And so it was with some trepidation that we decided to submit our prize-winning oil producing trees to the shaker. But the news was good! Yes, we did bark a couple of trees, but we managed to harvest in half the time with fewer men. And a relatively high percentage of olives fell off the tree. In other words, the shaker successfully liberated the olives from the branches. Happily, the olives showed almost no damage from the fall to earth.

A word about the barked trees. The barking occurred when we shook branches. Not all of our trees had trunks suitable for shaking. Some trees had short trunks that bifurcated into large branches relatively close to the ground. We were forced to shake the branches, and that’s when the damage occurred. The key to successfully harvesting olives with a tree shaker is to train the tree so that it has an appropriate trunk. When we planted our leccino trees we weren’t thinking about shaking them, but I can tell you, with the baby trees out in the orchard, we’re definitely thinking about training their trunks early on!

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The Olive Harvesting Challenge

November 12th, 2010

I mentioned in my last post that California olive oil is a burgeoning industry. California farmers produce high quality oil that far surpasses most of the olive oil you’ll find at your grocery store. Why, then, aren’t you seeing more California olive oil on the shelf? Part of the reason is production. We’re just not producing that much oil–yet. Part of the problem is also price. California olive oil is expensive. We don’t yet have the economies of scale that our European competitors do (we also don’t have price subsidies but I’ll save that story for later).

What we do have is ingenuity. California olive growers have turned to wine grape harvesters to harvest their olives. We know the technology. After all, California winemakers have built an industry based on both quantity and quality. California olive growers are trying to do the same. To compete with the Europeans, we’ve got to develop production methods that make us competitive, hence the use of these massive over-the-row harvesters.

Over the Row Olive Harvester from AGH

Now there’s a downside to this ingenuity. The over-the-row harvesters can only harvest three olive varieties: arbequina, arbosana, and koroneiki. These trees are small enough to allow modified wine grape harvesters to pass over them. For those interested in varieties grown from bigger trees, the only option now is to hand harvest, which means a very expensive oil. That’s why, if you find California olive oil in the store, it is often arbequina. It’s cheap and easy enough to harvest that you can find a relatively inexpensive bottle at your local Trader Joe’s (hint: Trader Joe’s has an excellent $6 bottle of California arbequina oil. It’s a steal. Buy it!). But if you’re looking for fun and variety, all those arbequina oils might get boring after awhile.

Which is why Cooperative Extension’s mechanical harvest field day last week was so interesting. American engineers are trying to come up with a way to mechanically harvest the bigger trees, so that the bottle of Leccino olive oil you’ve been dreaming of doesn’t cost $20. Unfortunately, most of these harvesters were prototypes, so not available for sale yet. But I had to appreciate the innovativeness.

New Olive Harvester Prototype

I especially loved this one. Designed by a University of California professor, it features large brushing fingers loaded onto a Department of Defense bomb loader. Basically the fingers agitate the olives out of the tree onto the tarp below. To me it reminded me of something from Dr. Seuss. Maybe the Lorax? Whatever the case, the design showed promise, and I am hopeful, as our unique olive varieties come into production over the next few years that you’ll be able to find a high-quality Leccino oil which won’t make you blanch when you look at the price tag.

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The Exciting New World Of California Olive Oil

November 8th, 2010

Olives Ripening

November is always a special time for me. The air turns colder. Our California skies start to turn gray. And best of all, the olives darken from light green to dark purple, which means harvest time is at last here!

If you’ve been following our blog, you know that we grow Leccino variety olives for olive oil. Leccino is a fantastic Tuscan variety, which normally produces a fruity olive oil. But in the creek-side land of Capay Valley, our Leccino deviates from the traditional path. Our Leccino olives blossom into a big, bold extra-virgin olive oil. Definitely not for the faint of heart, but if you love flavor, you’ll love our super robust, gold medal-winning olive oil.

You may wonder why it’s hard to find Leccino oil in the stores. The answer is at once simple and complex. California’s olive oil industry is in its infancy. As a consequence, as a nation, we import more than 99% of our olive oil from overseas. That’s hard to believe when you consider that we have ample land suitable for olives and some of the best farmers in the world. It’s just that the Europeans have been growing olives for thousands of years. And for most Americans, olive oil is still a somewhat mysterious product. We know extra virgin is supposed to be good for you, but we don’t know much beyond that.

I liken it to the days when wine was still new to most Americans. People could distinguish between a red and a white, but mention a cabernet sauvignon or chardonnay or heaven forbid, a pinot grigio, and the American consumer’s eyes would glaze over.  People just didn’t know that there were so many flavors and such quality differences available. The same is true for olive oil.

I’m bullish on California olive oil. I think it’s a high quality product (much better than 99% of that imported stuff on the shelf) that will crash into the food world’s consciousness, just as California wine did forty years ago. The market will change from the choice between extra light olive oil and extra virgin olive oil to a wide selection of varietal extra virgin olive oils. You want a special, delicate olive oil for tender salad greens, homemade mayonnaise, or a yummy semolina cake? Try a Sevillano! Or are you more in the mood for something bolder, a robust oil that you can drizzle on a grilled, bone-in steak or swirl into garlic mashed potatoes? Try our super-robust Leccino or McEvoy’s Estate-Bottled Tuscan-blend. Whatever you do, there’s a flavor and taste for you that will  bring out the very best in your cooking.

Stay tuned for more about California olive oil. There are so many interesting and exciting things to learn. And best of all, if you are like me, you’ll develop a passion for olive oil that is both fun and mouth-watering!

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Transitions at Gold Oak Ranch Blog

July 22nd, 2010

Gold Oak Ranch's Newest Blogger

It is with some regret but also great happiness that I am officially handing over Gold Oak Ranch’s blog to my father, David Scheuring. It’s been a lot of fun writing about food, farming, and health news, but my work as a physician,  our family life, and of course our continued olive tree plantings demand so much time that I haven’t been writing as much as I’d like.  My Dad has graciously agreed to step in and fill the breach!

He’ll write about farming news and about his long and varied experience as a farmer in Illinois and California. I can’t wait!

In the meantime, I’ll try to “guest blog” here and there, especially about all-important olive oil.  Thanks, everyone, for reading!

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Gold Oak Ranch Olive Oil Wins Gold

June 19th, 2010

Just got the results in today.Our 2009 Gold Oak Ranch Extra Virgin Olive Oil won a gold medal at the 2010 Los Angeles International Extra Virgin Olive Oil Competition! As you know from previous posts, we grow Leccino variety olives, which make a strong, fruity oil, and indeed our oil won a gold in the robust olive oil category. Gold Oak Ranch EVOO is definitely not for those who like bland oil.  But if you’re like me and love a pungent, flavorful oil, I think you’ll like this year’s oil as much as the judges did.

To find out more about the competition or check out other award winners, take a look at L.A. International Extra Virgin Olive Oil Competition. Or if you’d rather see the award winning olive oils in person, you can see all the colorful bottles displayed at the Los Angeles County Fair September 4-October 3, 2010.

For now however, I think I’ll crack open a bottle of wine, get some good bread, and enjoy dipping  it in our gold medal oil!

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Four Things You Should Know About California Olive Oil

April 28th, 2010

I love to host olive oil tastings for people not familiar with California olive oil. It’s wonderful to watch people’s expressions as they taste different styles of oils and realize that olive oil can vary as much as different varieties of wine or coffee. Many of these first-timers also appreciate how bad the olive oil they’ve previously been using tastes.

Are you new to California olive oil? Then here’s four facts about California olive oil you ought to know:

1) Not all olive oil is extra-virgin olive oil–even if it’s labeled ‘extra virgin.’ Unfortunately, this is a consequence of lax labeling laws in the United States. Basically, with the exception of olive oil sold in California, Connecticut, New York, and Oregon, any olive oil can be sold as ’extra virgin’ in the U.S., even if it’s not. This fraud is especially true of imported olive oils. Buyer beware!

2) Extra virgin olive oil is high quality oil. True extra virgin olive oil is cold-pressed. That means it is processed without chemicals or heat. It must also meet acidity requirements and undergo taste-testing by a certified tasting panel to rule-out taste defects.

3) True extra virgin olive oil is expensive to produce and buy. Is it any wonder that it’s big business for olive oil producers to sell inferior oils with fraudulent labeling?

4) California olive oil is an emerging industry. I like to compare it to the California wine industry forty years ago. I predict in the next ten years more and more consumers will be buying our high quality olive oil as production and marketing increases. The numbers bear this out. Over 12,000 acres of super high-density olives (the main commercial production method) have been planted since 1999. That’s a lot of olives!

Of course, there’s so much more to understanding olive oil, and I’ll tackle those topics in a later post. But for now, try some California olive oil. I think you’ll be impressed!

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Valley Empires: Hugh Glenn and Henry Miller

April 25th, 2010

Now Available

If you ask about California history, most people are familiar with the Gold Rush,  but there’s much more to the history of America’s most populated state than just miners and gold. California is the biggest producer of agriculture products in the nation, and the state’s history is marked by entrepeneurs who built agricultural empires that seem almost unimaginable today.  

Two of those entrepeneurs, Hugh Glenn and Henry Miller, are the subject of Ann Foley Scheuring’s Valley Empires, a new book that examines two half-forgotten figures in California history who had a profound effect on the development of California’s enormous agricultural industries. Henry Miller, founder of the land and cattle empire Miller & Lux, owned more than a million acres and was the largest landowner in the U.S. at the time of his death in 1916. Hugh Glenn’s dominance of the wheat industry led to the nickname “The Wheat King” and culminated in an unsuccessful run for state governor before his untimely murder in 1883. Although the two men came from radically different backgrounds (Miller was an impoverished German immigrant, Hugh Glenn a physician from Missouri), both seized on opportunity to create empires within their lifetimes.

For those interested in California history, Valley Empires offers a glimpse into a little explored, though very important, chapter in the history of our state.

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The Mystery of the Yellow Bark–News From the Farm

April 18th, 2010

Healthy Walnut Bark

Everyone loves a good mystery, except if you’re a farmer and the mystery is why your newly planted walnut trees are turning a strange color… The following account describes my father’s attempt to unravel a farming mystery:

Today Luis brought to my attention a disturbing development.  The bark of some of the new walnut trees that we recently planted is beginning to yellow.  Not a good sign.  

Yellowing Walnut Bark

The 1225 trees displaying this condition were planted several weeks ago under less than ideal soil moisture conditions, i.e. too wet.  A similar number of trees from the same nursery planted in January have sprouted and are growing satisfactorily.  Could the yellowing result from the soil conditions at the time of planting?(Why didn’t we plant all the trees in January when soil conditions were favorable?  Why did we resume planting in March before the soil had dried out sufficiently?  More about that in a later post.) 

When planting too wet, it is difficult to firm the soil around the roots without compacting the soil.  Eager to avoid compaction it is easy to leave air pockets around the roots, limiting good soil-root contact.  

But in the past we have planted satisfactorily under similar conditions.  Also, since the trees were planted we have had two substantial rains which have nicely settled the soil around the roots. 

Could the trees be displaying freeze damage suffered at the nursery before being dug? Remember those record temperatures we experienced in December?  

That seems like a reasonable possibility, but why didn’t the January-planted trees display similar symptoms?  Also suspect is the fact that the yellowing is occurring on the east side of the tree, suggesting that the damage occurred in our field since the tree orientation would not correspond to that in the nursery. 

But why the east side?   Stressed or damaged bark is very sensitive to sunburn even at low temperatures.  But sunburn usually occurs on the south and west side.  

Have sent pictures and wood samples to the nursery in overnight delivery.  Let’s see what they say.

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Grafting Experimental Walnuts

April 10th, 2010

I mentioned in the last post that we’re planting baby walnut trees with the hope of grafting soon. For the uninitiated, most commercial walnut trees in California are grafted trees; the rootstock is a different variety than the walnut producing tree grafted to it. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that walnut varieties with the best tasting, best producing walnuts don’t necessarily have the most disease-resistant roots. Grafting is a way to get the best of both worlds.

How do you pick which variety to graft? Institutions like UC Davis have been doing field experiments “crossing” different walnut varieties to come up with new better-producing varieties, like the Fordes which we are now planting. The following is my Dad’s account of his work in the evolving world of commercial walnut production. Thanks, Dad, for guest blogging!

For the past 10 years or so we have hosted field trials for new walnut varieties bred by UC Davis.   Even though most of these new crosses will eventually be abandoned for one reason or another, I find it to be an interesting enterprise, satisfying my need for new challenges.

Two years ago we set out our most ambitious field trial to date, 12 experimental varieties on 4 acres.  Some were older crosses that have proved promising enough as individual trees to merit planting in a larger block (30 to 60 trees) and some new crosses not yet field tested (3 to 4 trees).

As is common with the slow process of evaluating tree varieties, now after two years we have already decided to abandon a couple of varieties and replace them with seven new promising crosses .

The trees are still small enough to be readily grafted over to a new variety.  To do this the trunk is severed at 4 or 5 feet and scions of the new variety are inserted under the bark in a process quite logically called bark grafting.  The process itself is referred to in the trade as topworking trees.

Topworking Experimental Walnut Varieties

This is obviously a traumatic event for the young tree so the lower limbs (nurse limbs) are left, not to be removed for a couple of years until the growth above the graft is sufficient to nourish the tree and its roots.

Our foreman Jose Luis has developed a great deal of skill in grafting walnuts.  Nonetheless topworking is a slow process and Jose Luis spent most of the morning on this project.

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