AmorOlio at Villa Campestri

I'm in Vicchio di Mugello, a tiny Tuscan town about 30 minutes northeast of Florence. The hills are perfect for long walks, the pasta is delicious, and the olive oil is like nothing I've ever tasted.  A cold and windy winter is just around the corner, so luckily there are no American film crews and no huge tour buses clogging the roads.

Thanks to the very generous Paolo Pasquali and Nancy Harmon Jenkins, I'm tagging along as an assistant for AmorOlio, a week-long immersion in olive oil culture and Tuscan cuisine. This visit has proved quite timely, as olive oil makes headlines in both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

In the past three days, we have inspected olive groves and visited traditional mills where olive oil is pressed. Through lively tasting sessions, we have discussed the taste of great oil, the different ways it can be spoiled (heat, exposure to oxygen, and light), and how to educate consumers without condescension.  Of course, we have cooked every day to test food pairings with dramatically different oil styles. It's been a great post-graduation trip to decompress from culinary school while still staying inspired by food.

Here are a couple photographs from our time so far at Villa Campestri.

 Green olives one week before harvest

The set-up for olive oil tasting 

 A meat counter in the San Lorenzo Mercato Centrale in Florence. 

The market is a great place to learn food vocabulary, like hen (gallina), turkey (tacchino), or rabbit (coniglio.)

It's also reassuring to see that "Hot Dogs" are the same in Italian. 

 The gorgeous colors of the produce section

 Back at Villa Campestri's kitchen, Samuele puts the finishing touches on dessert: 

olive oil cake with ricotta and wild berry coulis. 

 Chef Jerry holds a beautiful example of a porcini mushroom. 

 In Florence, chocolate truffles come in a too-cute cupola box. 

 Porcini Mushroom Risotto with a glass of Vernaccia in hand

Villa Campestri Olive Oil Resort, my home for the week. 

(I'm still pinching myself!)

I've learned a lot about high quality olive oil; it can be sweet, grassy, peppery or lemony. It can be structured and complex, like wine. It can also spoil rancid or get moldy if it was poorly pressed or improperly stored. Bright green at first, olive oil will lose its color- and its healthy polyphenol properties- as it gets older or if exposed to high heat during storage. If you have a bottle of nice olive oil, use it! Olive oil is best fresh. The longer it lives in the cabinet or by the stove, the less flavor it will bring to your plate.

I'm hoping to bring home a couple cans of high quality oil from Villa Campestri, named Olio di Cosimo for Pasquali's grandson. It's peppery, bright green, reminiscent of artichoke and a freshly-cut lawn. Once I get back to New York (Mon Oct 24th), I'm planning to make salad, some butternut squash soup, maybe even a pizza to find the best pairing with this delicious oil. Give me a buzz if you want to join!

With love, from Vicchio

Coming Full Circle: My Experience Raising Chickens

During the summer of 2010, I accidentally killed a chicken in my care at the CIA Student Garden. I carelessly left the roof of the chicken coop propped open with a pole, and when the wind started to blow, the roof came crashing down. I felt terrible, despondent even. Yet, it taught me that accidents happen, that farms are indeed places where animals meet their end. It's how the animals live and die while on that farm that really matters.

In any supermarket meat department, we find a wide variety of descriptors for the kind of life an animal has enjoyed: grass fed, free range, cage free, hormone free, pasture raised, even happy. While these terms can be confusing and often fodder for jokes about hipsters at Whole Foods in Portland, they represent an important step in the improvement of animal welfare on farms. Sure, these products are more expensive. But it's just like New York City real estate: if you want space, it costs money. It costs money to own the land to pasture, it costs money to tend it. That price pays people to help raise the animals, and to slaughter in a humane way.

I'm not starting a food revolution here. I'm mostly rehashing Michael Pollan points and figures from the film Food Inc. But thinking about this issue- how animals are raised for food- led me to the Deer Park garden to tend to the chickens in the first place, and eventually led to our construction of a new chicken coop and to a larger flock of heritage breed Buckeye hens.

Below I've compiled a collection of photos spanning nearly two years in Saint Helena- from the first time I collected eggs, to the slaughter and eventual consumption of our hens. Warning- there are some photos that could be unsettling if you're not used to seeing how animals go from farm to supermarket packaging. It may make you a little squeamish, but ultimately I hope to acknowledge the fact that an animal has died for my nourishment, and thus honor that animal. If I'm going to eat meat, I don't want to sweep that under the rug.

 March 2010: My first time collecting eggs

Douglas Hayes' hoop coop model we followed

The roosting racks across the rear of the hoop coop

The frame built by Chef Patrick Clark and Slow Food Napa Valley Chapter

Our frame in early spring 2011. 

(Look how bare the vines are in the background.)

The hoop coop starts to take shape with cattle panel looped over the door frame

Jack works on securing the chicken wire

Looking west through the coop, past our work shed and the pond

How to transport chickens in the backseat of your car

Happy girls with lots of room

Jack and the ladies 

Much more sensibly dressed than the first time I collected eggs...

The full enclosure, with padlock to prevent theft

A salad for our MyPlate dinner using soft cooked farm eggs

Learning how to cut their necks efficiently 

I learned to first bleed the chicken out...

...once the head is removed, the chicken is dunked in a scalder, 

a hot water bath that loosens the feathers

After about a minute in the scalder, the chicken is placed in a plucker, 

a spinning bin with soft, rubber fingers that remove the feathers. 

Learning how to finish the process

After ice chilling and air drying in the refrigerator. 

Check out how narrow their breasts are- not your average supermarket bird.

A chicken broken down into eight pieces, with the remaining frame

A whole hen Chef Bill Briwa roasted in his ACAP class at Greystone

Bringing it all full circle, thankful for the experience.

Thanks to all the friends who guided and supported us along the way- Douglas, Jorge, Brett and Alejandro; Dianne Martinez and Dr. Chris Loss of the CIA; and Adam Burke and Jack Gingrich, who took care of the girls at their home in Deer Park. And to the next class of students at Greystone: I hope a flock of hens returns to Deer Park next spring!

What Makes a Great Restaurant Dessert?

In Baking and Pastry class, our chef instructor Stephen Durfee asked us to consider what makes a great restaurant dessert. He should know a thing or two about it- he was the Pastry Chef at The French Laundry for years before coming to CIA-Greystone.

Thrilled at the chance to get esoteric and wax philosophical (can you tell I'm my father's daughter), I wrote the following essay.

What Makes A Great Restaurant Dessert?

Why do we order dessert even when we’re already full? What is it that makes a dessert desirable? For starters, dessert tastes good, or at least it should. Durian ice cream, peanut crumble and fish sauce caramel could be a dessert, but it’s unlikely, because it won’t taste good to most diners. Chocolate, strawberry ice cream, chantilly: these ingredients appear and reappear in our dessert language because they taste so darn good. Yet, when we start to ponder what really makes a dessert  memorable, we yearn for more than just sweetness.

Let us consider the physical particulars of a dessert. It should be interesting to the mouth. A great dessert has smooth elements, crunchy, crispy, crackly elements. Some ingredients are hot and vivid, while others are chilled and stoic. I remember with pleasure a simple dessert at Kokkari in San Francisco: Baklava ice cream. Well-made vanilla ice cream, not too much fat masking the taste on my tongue; with crispy, caramelized edges of baklava folded in. Neither the baklava nor the vanilla was a taste revelation, but the two textures together were a home run. That dish represents one definition of a great restaurant dessert: simple, well-executed, delicious, and texturally interesting.

A great restaurant dessert should also be visually pleasing. Depending on the type of restaurant, a dessert’s appearance can vary widely; however, it should be sexy. It does something for you. It sizzles, it smokes, it makes your mouth feel things it’s never felt. A slice of mile high apple pie, though lovely at Aunt Bess’ house, does not qualify as a great restaurant dessert because it’s not sexy. It’s squat, it’s cloying, it’s not elegant.

In contrast, a great restaurant dessert is seductive. A great restaurant dessert is a striking lady across the bar who makes you want to order one more drink to go talk to her. It doesn’t lay it all out there on the table, much like an intriguing person isn’t the man who speaks the loudest or the gal in the shortest dress. Rather, a great restaurant dessert tempts with a few words on the menu, free of technical jargon and superfluous prepositions. Then, it surprises with compositions not previously imagined, just in the way a provocative conversation flows in unforeseen directions. Consider a dessert from Alinea that promises “chocolate ganache,” but fascinates with the addition of gelatin that makes it moldable. Have you had chocolate ganache before? Sure! But not chocolate ganache like this.

I never ate at El Bulli, but I’m enthralled by their avant-dessert Natura, which featured fruit treated in multiple ways: pickled, candied, freeze-dried, fresh. It’s as if the El Bulli kitchen was in love with the multiple personalities of fruit, unable to pick just one to highlight. The dish is a culinary version of Picasso’s Cubist portraits: a simultaneous depiction of one object from multiple vantage points. Sexy, intriguing, even confusing, a great restaurant dessert is a challenge.

In conclusion, a great restaurant dessert captivates with taste, visual appeal, textural interest and often cultural reference. Call it a beautiful lady, a technical wonder, a Cubist painting, or just call it delicious. We may be full, but we’ll order it anyway.

More from the Greystone Garden

A little over a year ago, I wrote about our student garden. At the time, I was just falling in love with gardening and growing our own food. Fast forward one year: our two acre plot on the Napa River is bursting with produce, thanks to the hard work of a core group of students who love cooking and working under the California sun.

Easter Egg Radishes

Summer Squash Zucchini with blossoms

Jack weighs a boatload of Padron peppers in our school purchasing department

Yours truly, with a snakeskin shedding from our garden snakes, Frank and Gina.

Today's ridiculous late-summer haul, with over 150 pounds of tomatoes, 30 pounds of pears, 20 pounds of figs and zucchini, apples and basil to boot.

Our garden manager Dianne, with Lucas and pup Bruce.

Left: Harvesting San Marzano tomatoes as the sun comes up over Saint Helena.


Last year's blog post about my love for the garden included more words, more reflection, more poetic waxing. Those emotions run deep for me, and I still love the garden even as it takes up more and more of my time.

This year, rather than writing so much, I'm actually spending every afternoon there. The best thing is- our kitchens at school are using all the produce. And we're shortening the food supply chain, one tub of heirloom tomatoes at a time.

Special thanks to Dianne Martinez, Jack Gingrich, Adam Burke, Caitlin Henriksen, and all the Greystone students who work to keep the student garden growing.

Eat Here Now- The Alembic

One place I'm stoked on these days: the Alembic in the Haight in San Francisco. I've been several times since the beginning of the summer, and I'm convinced it's one of the best places in the city. It's tiny, so it may take a while to get a table. That's fine by me because their cocktail list is extensive and intriguing: Gold leaf? Check. Peanut-infused whiskey? Check check. That's probably why GQ magazine named them to their Best Cocktail Bar list last year. But the food really steals the show. The bar snacks go way beyond wings; think duck hearts and togarashi popcorn. Nasturtiums from the backyard garden pepper up the Nectarine and Burrata salad. Or try the beef tongue sliders to break the boring bite-size burger mold.

Right: Bone Marrow with Caper Gremolata and Garlic Confit. Brash. Decadent. Delicious.

Below: My friend Jon Boncek shooting Chef Ted Fleury's beautiful Hiramasa Crudo

Essentials:
The Alembic
1725 Haight Street
San Francisco
(415)-666-0822
M-Thur 5pm-1am
F-S 12noon- 1 am