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An Olive Oil Sensory Experience at Red Ridge Farms

On June 12 and 13, PCA members received a special discounted invite to explore the world of olive oil tasting at the Oregon Olive Mill located at Red Ridge Farm in Dayton, OR. It happened to be the weekend that led us all to believe summer was here to stay, with beautiful blue skies that shined down on the farm’s serene estate. 

The four-hour event began with a lecture by special guest and esteemed panel leader for the University of California Olive Oil Tasting Panel, Paul Vossen. Vossen’s expertise includes olive oil production, its processing and the sensory analysis of olive oil. He kicked off the lecture by asking who was in attendance, and responses ranged from restaurateurs, gourmet food store owners, budding olive tree farmers and more. From there, he combined educational facts about olive oil farming and tasting while weaving in moments that allowed attendees to actually taste six varieties of olive oil that lay in front of us.

Much to our surprise, there was a wide range of different notes and flavors each of the oils presented. In addition, many of us learned that the olive oil we believed to be good and held a flavor that could compare to those we often enjoy at restaurants were, in reality, considered rancid. Without a doubt, Vossen’s lecture and olive oil tasting session was chocked full of helpful and enlightening information to arm us olive oil lovers for our continued exploration. Some key takeaways were:

How to taste—

• Warm and swirl oil in the palm of your hand to release the volatiles
• Smell and note its aroma
• Place 1-2 ml in your mouth for 10 seconds
• Suck in air through the lips
• Coat the inside of the mouth with the oil
• Swallow
• Close mouth and breathe through your nose
• Record your own impressions, or use an olive oil tasting sheet as your guide

What to look for when you taste—

• Freshness
• Intensity of aroma
• Not fermented or rancid
• Bitterness
• Pungency
• Attractive fruitiness
• Sweetness
• Thin or thick consistency
• Greasiness

Following the lecture and tasting, Vossen led our group downstairs and out to the back patio of the mill for some wine, light snacks and time to talk freely with our fellow members and public guests who had joined in on the day. After a brief time, Vossen guided us over to view the mill’s own olive oil press and to witness where and how Oregon olive oil is processed right there onsite.

The experience proved to be engaging and fun, coupled with perfect views of Oregon wine country that made for a nice ending to the afternoon. 

In spring with the first melt water or flood the small salmon children migrate to the sea—they are then small and shining like herring—and they move on to the ocean and home to their parents living in the high seas. And when they are fully grown, they return to swim up in fresh water and streams, and increase their numbers by procreation, as well as to serve as food for man. And what is most fantastic of all, the salmon seeks the stream and the place where it was born.

—From On Animals, Fishes, Birds, and Trees of Norway (1599), by Peder Claussøn Friis (1545– 1614), a senior rector and the first Norwegian to describe the distinct characteristics of the life of a salmon

What a fantastic, legendary fish! What a complex, wondrous life! Salmon are anadromous fish, which means they are born in freshwater, migrate and spend most of their lives in saltwater, and then return to freshwater to spawn. The life cycle of a salmon is truly extraordinary. The salmon swim hundreds of miles, returning to the river of their birth to spawn and then die, completing their life cycle.

On the evening of May 26th at Mother’s Bistro, Chef/Owner Lisa Schroder and I (Diane Morgan, author of Salmon: A Cookbook, Chronicle 2005) presented a focused presentation on this singular, iconic fish. Through slides, video, and oral commentary the glories and challenges of Pacific salmon were highlighted and discussed. The evening’s program was based on a presentation Lisa gave at the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) conference held in Portland in April. Along with a three-course dinner featuring grilled Chinook salmon as the entrée, PCA members were challenged with a blind tasting of farmed versus wild salmon. Not surprising to those who have studied salmon, it isn’t obvious which is which. This led to a further discussion of the techniques used to add color and fat to the diets of pen-raised salmon allowing the producers to mimic the flavor and texture profile of wild salmon.

With the intent of educating an audience already attuned to eating locally and sustainably, the program was enlightening as well as entertaining. The current situation with the gulf oil spill only reinforces the need to protect the delicate salmon habitat of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska and this program highlighted all the issues.

-Diane Morgan

Dennis Gilliam is what one might call an oat expert. Well actually, as the Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Bob’s Red Mill, he’s pretty knowledgeable about all of their 400 whole grain products. But at the last PCA event, Gilliam enthusiastically presented a cluster of oat-filled information, following his team’s win at the “Golden Spurtle” World Porridge Making Championships last October in Scotland.

He began with a rundown of the various forms of oats, ranging from the whole oat groat to oat flour, with steel cut oats, thick-rolled, old-fashioned, quick, instant, and Scottish oatmeal in between. We also learned that a spurtle is a carved wooden wand that the Scots use to stir their porridge.

With twenty PCA members in attendance, we put Uptown Billiards Club’s Chef Nathan Bates to the oat challenge when we asked him to create a menu featuring the various forms of Bob’s Red Mill’s oat products to be served in one of their dim-lit private dining spaces. For starters, he combined their Scottish-style oats into a melty Crab & Oat Cake with red pepper relish, and served their Scottish Oatcakes (recipe below) as an inventive canapé topped with foie gras-peanut butter and cherry compote—a decadent version that paired perfectly with a glass of Oregon oatmeal stout from the Oregon Brewers Guild.

In the salad course, Bates used oat flour and steel cut oats in a delicately crisp tuille atop an arugula, melon, and prosciutto salad. It was difficult to decide between the two entrée choices: roasted pheasant with a lamb and quick-cooking oat sausage served alongside crispy oat flour spätzle, peas, asparagus, wild mushrooms, and a deeply rich oatmeal stout demi glace, or a thick-cut pork chop encrusted with steel cut oats and stuffed with figs and pears, accompanied by Brussels sprouts and the same delicious oatmeal stout demi.

For a rather grand finale, Bates created a chocolate chip and oatmeal “cowboy” cookie ice cream sandwich filled with creamy honey toasted oat ice cream and served with a petite glass of “oat milk.”

Suffice it to say that we’ve been schooled on the various cuts, grinds, and roll-thicknesses available from Bob’s Red Mill, with creative ideas from Chef Bates to use in our own oats cookery.

SCOTTISH OATCAKES

Recipe Courtesy of Bob’s Red Mill

1 1/2 cups Bob’s Red Mill Scottish Oatmeal

1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour

3/4 teaspoon sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 cup butter or margarine, melted

1/2 cup hot water

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Place all but 2 tablespoons of the Scottish Oatmeal in a bowl with flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder; stir until combined. Add butter and stir until evenly distributed. With a fork, mix in water, just until moistened. Pat dough into a ball, and then flatten slightly. Sprinkle reserved 2 tablespoons oats on a board. Roll dough out 1/4-inch thick.

With a 2 to 3 inch round (cookie) cutter, cut dough into rounds. Re-roll and cut scraps. Place oatcakes about 1/4 inch apart on a greased baking sheet. Bake in the pre-heated oven until Scottish Oatcakes are golden, approximately 25 minutes. Let cool on a rack. Enjoy plain, serve with jam or cheese, or use them to build hors d’oeuvres.

Makes 12 Scottish Oatcakes.

Nutrition Information: Using unsalted butter, each oatcake contains 110 Calories, 45 Calories from Fat, 5g Total Fat, 2.5g Saturated Fat, 10mg Cholesterol, 60mg Sodium, 15g Total Carbohydrates, 2g Dietary Fiber, 0g Sugar, 3g Protein.

For those whose response to an all chocolate dinner was “Lead me to it,” PCA’s program on March 3^rd at the elegant Restaurant Bleu at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts was an opportunity not to be missed. However, the indulgent part of the evening’s program was deftly balanced by Dr. Miles Hassel, author of Good Food Great Medicine, who treated members to a lively presentation on the benefits of eating chocolate.

With a series of slides, starting with “Chocolate: Because we need to be serious about good health,” Dr. Hassel delivered a fascinating talk on chocolate, its history, how it works in the human body, and its many health benefits. These include positive effects on diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. My favorite was the study on happy babies. It appears that Finnish babies, whose mothers eat more chocolate, smile and laugh more often!

We didn’t need much convincing but Dr. Hassel recommended eating chocolate, especially dark chocolate, on a regular basis. The caveat, to be sure, was not to overeat, and to be mindful of the calories.

The menu prepared by David Briggs of Xocolatl de David produced a lot of smiles as well. “I love cooking savory foods with chocolate and salt,” he said. Using the cacao bean in many forms, Briggs came up with a series of courses from a terrine of chocolate with foie gras to roasted pork with “Xoxolatl” sauce. The crab bisque with a preserved Meyer lemon garnish was emulsified with a roux made with cocoa. Vinaigrette made with cocoa nibs was lovely and intriguing over a blood orange and chicory salad.

Our chocolate evening ended on a sweet note with Raleigh Cake, an extraordinary confection of chocolate, pecans, and caramel sauce.. We all agreed: this was a delicious, informative, and memorable evening for PCA.

-Mary Bartlett

As chefs sometimes do once they’ve settled into a kitchen, Pazzo’s Executive Chef John Eisenhart asked himself “what else can I learn” four years ago. So he turned his eye to Pazzo’s bar program and began thinking about developing cocktails from a chef’s perspective.

After educating himself using antique spirits books and rare cocktail tomes (and, we imagine, a bit of trial and error), Eisenhart began making some of the ingredients that go into the bar’s cocktails. Last night, a group of spirit-loving members had the pleasure of discovering what he’d learned.

We started with the classic Italian digestif known as limoncello. The chef promised it was “criminally easy” to make, and he was right. We simply placed the peels from four lemons into a mason jar that Eisenhart had filled with grain alcohol before we arrived. The hard part is waiting: we have to let those peels seep for 3 months before we can strain them off and add a simple syrup mixture to finish the liqueur. To tide us over, Eisenhart poured us a sample of his limoncello and passed around polenta cakes that he brushed with the liqueur the night before.

Our last task was making bitters using orange and grapefruit peels, juniper berries, tamarind seeds and coriander seeds. We added these ingredients to a tiny jar filled with vodka, which we’ll shake every few days for the next 12 weeks until it’s done. We did get to sample bitters though – twice in fact. When we arrived, we were greeted with a champagne cocktail “garnished” with a bitter-soaked sugar cube; just before leaving, our PCA President Lota LaMontagne served us a gin and grapefruit cocktail with a dash of bitters that we declared refreshing at first sip.

In a flash, Dustin loaded the lunches and (more important) the beer and we were off for a day of fun. The Rogue Hop Farm is on the Willamette River, south of Independence, Oregon on the former John Haas Alluvial Hop Farm. On our way to the farm, we passed many Oregon Duck fans heading south to the kick off game of the season. Passing through Independence, one of the gang saw the sign for a farmers market in downtown Independence. We all cheered when our driver stopped and gave us a little time to see what the market had. With bags of fresh produce and other items of interest, we climbed back in the van to continue on to the farm.

Arriving at the Rogue Hop Farm we learned they lease 45 acres to grow hops. They are the first brewery to have their own hop fields. Dustin parked the van and invited us into the show room.  The show room has a beautiful deck where we were served a tasty lunch. While we dined, Dustin poured welcome glasses of ice cold Rogue beer and described the part hops play in brewing beer.

After lunch we walked to the Hop Kiln. On our walk to the Hop Kiln building, we passed by the workers having lunch. Being a foodie in the true sense of the word, I couldn’t help but be lured by the aroma of toasting tortillas. I had to see what they were having for lunch. A small burner with what appeared to be a metal plate, held tortillas while they browned. Containers of homemade chicken and salsa were on the grass close by.  When the tortillas were slightly charred, chicken and salsa were added. The mouth watering appearance certainly made me envious of their meal. 

But back to the hops. From the fields, the trucks arrive at the unloading area of the hop kiln. Workers unload the hops onto hooks that carry the hops into the processing building a via a conveyor belt. Up the belt they go with hooks pulling the vines along while rotating knives cut the hops off the vine. After the hops are removed from the vine they are blown into a drying area that heats them to 145 degrees.

The hops are held at this temperature until the hops are ‘cooked.’ They are scientifically measured for ‘doneness’. The manager scoops out a handful using a large sieve that has been duct taped to a long broom handle like stick. He squeezes the hops and knows whether they have ‘cooked’ long enough. When the hops are ‘done,’ they are moved to a cooling area.

From the cooling area the hops go to the storage area, where they are held until ready to be bagged and shipped. A quick estimate of how many bottles could be made from this bale of hops suggested 45,000 depending on the beer recipe. Arising out of high tech methods of producing hops all the way down to home made scoops, shovels and hand sewn bag closing comes some the finest brew on the planet.

They say you bring your own party to the party and this rang true with everyone who attended. A convivial group, excellent tour guide and best beer was the perfect combination for a good time.

-Sheila Hanson

On a Saturday afternoon in late April, a handful of PCA members and guests gathered for the alliance’s first-ever program by bike… a coffee crawl! The adventure began at Laurelwood Brewing where Pedal Bike Tours owner and operator Todd Roll overviewed the rules of the road and got the team up and rolling. Cruising at a leisurely pace, we rode up to Cellar Door Coffee Roasters for a quick tour of the year old neighborhood coffee house. Owner and roaster Jeremy Adams took us into the cellar to show off his newest roasting toys – a wetscrubber and an electrostatic precipitator, aka a “bug zapper.” The new machinery will not only increase Cellar Door’s production four fold, but the cutting edge, low energy equipment helps reduce roasting odors.

From there, we buzzed up to Stumptown Coffee on Belmont where we learned the science of a coffee cupping. Surrounded by glass beakers and vaporizing equipment reminiscent of a mad scientist’s laboratory, we sniffed, stewed and slurped our way through six single origin coffee varietals from around the globe. The experts at Stumptown thoroughly caffeinated and educated our group. For interesting bits of Stumptown trivia, see below.

Now fully energized, we pedaled our way to the site of Portland’s soon-to-open roaster and corner coffee house, Oblique. Housed in a historic mercantile building, owners John and Heather Chandler have thoughtfully renovated the original 1891 property, adding eco-friendly elements like water cisterns and a tankless water heater. But the real show stopper was “Bart,” the 1986 German built cast iron roasting drum, already seasoned to perfection (just like cast iron pans at home, roasters look for seasoned drums).

After Oblique, we could hardly wait for our fourth and final stop, Laurelwood Brewing. Brewer Chad Kennedy took us on a behind the scenes tour of the brewery, walking us through the cold water extraction process for making their Portland Roasting Espresso Stout. This creamy, chocolaty, black gold is the ultimate Portland beverage, blending local beer with locally roasted coffee beans. The perfect ending to a perfect PCA program.

Random Coffee Facts

• Ethiopia is recognized as the original coffee producing region.
• Ethiopian coffees are often called “field blends” because they are picked from whatever coffee trees are around.
• Peaberries – beans that are one whole, not two halves – occur 10 – 15% of the time.
•  The Kenyan SL28 varietal was genetically designed by Scott Laboratories in the 1950’s and remains to this day one of the most highly regarded beans.

It was a perfect night for chowder as PCA members and guests ducked the cold and drizzle for the warmth (and wine!) of the In Good Taste store. Before long, we were treated to a hot bowl of Chef Mike Downing’s award-winning New-England-style clam chowder, fresh sourdough from a Newport bakery, and a lovely salad with an impromptu vinnaigrette. While we ate, Chef Downing demonstrated how he builds the chowder’s flavors at Quimby’s Restaurant in Newport, from the making of the roux to the addition of the clams near the end of cooking (to avoid toughening them). 

Interspersed with the cooking demo, PCA’s Pansy Bray demonstrated razor-clam digging equipment and techniques. She shared local Native American clam-digging photos and clam lore, and taught us about the legality and safety of digging in Washington and Oregon. Two lucky raffle winners took home jars of razor clams dug and canned by Pansy herself. 

Finally, we were treated to a literary chowder reading from Moby Dick, delivered with dramatic flourish by PCA President Susan Hauser. While I doubt Nantucket’s Mrs. Hosea Hussey could compete with Chef Downing’s chowder skills, the reading left us laughing and looking forward to our next bowl of hot chowder.

-Hank Sawtelle

As we entered Vino Paradiso Wine Bar & Bistro, a hip, retro-cozy space with burnt orange walls and 60's style lights, we were welcomed with a "bonus" pour of a Prosecco from Italy. Then, with notes propped up on a music stand (the only hint that our host has another career- as a musician with the band Pink Martini) our sparkling wine "tour" guide and host Timothy Nishimoto, a master sommelier, gave us a detailed background on the traditional method of making champagne. He explained why the labor intensive and long process leads to quality sparkling wines and can command high prices. Factoid: a good riddler, the person who turns the champagne bottles 1/4 turn daily during the long process, can turn 40,000 bottles - a day!

A spin of our sparkling wine compass landed on Argentina, Austria, South Africa, Tasmania region of Australia and our own Willamette Valley as Timothy lead us through a variety of tastes. The sparklers we sampled, listed below, ranged in flavor, mouth feel and prices. My scribbled notes included "yeasty/bready" and "crisply acidic with apple and fruit notes." The prices ranged from $18-20 a bottle, the exception being the rich unctuous Soter, priced at approximately $50.

The Night’s Wines

Bodega Cruzat Brut, non-vintage from Mendoza, Argentina

Sziget Gruner Veltliner Sekt (brut) non-vintage from Burgenland, Austria

Graham Beck Brut, non-vintage from Western Cape, South Africa

Jansz Brut, non-vintage from Tasmania, Australia

Soter Brut Rose 2004 from Oregon's  Yamhill-Carlton AVA

Jean-Paul Brun FRV100 Rose, demi-sec, non-vintage from Beaujolais, France

Our wine tastes were accompanied by a variety of savory offerings made by Vino Paradiso's talented chef Ian Duncan. Timothy commented that Ian has an "uncanny little science lab in his brain", and can provide wonderful foods that match beautifully with specific wines. With 40 wines available by the glass at Vino Paradiso, that’s quite a feat!

For our pairings, Chef Ian chose a “Southern-type” theme: sweet waffles with pheasant; diver scallops on blood orange slices with a roe garnish; slow roasted wild boar shoulder that had been braised with sage, onion after marinating; avocado-bacon topped bread; gorgonzola and sour cherries on crostini. The last was specifically chosen to pair with our final taste: the 100% Gamay Noir FRV100.

Cole Danehower, Northwest Palate publisher, writer and wine judge, provided some dynamic and interesting notes about the history of Oregon sparkling wines and others in the Northwest region. Oregon's first sparkling wine was made by Peter Britt in Southern Oregon in the 1880s, and in more recent times the first Oregon sparkling wine was produced in Roseburg by Richard Sommers in 1976.  Cole discussed how in the global picture, Oregon and the Northwest's contribution to the worldwide share of sparkling wines is minimal, barely a ripple, but is distinctly unique, due to our soils and climate. He also stretched our brains with trivia questions and a lucky few who responded correctly and quickly received a copy of The Vintner's Kitchen cookbook.

Our introduction to Vino Paradiso and sparkling wines from here and abroad went by too quickly and left us all with a warm glow. Thanks to Timothy Nishimoto, Vino Paradiso and Cole Danehower.

- Reported by Laura Barton