Posts Tagged: California Agriculture journal
Last call for olio nuovo
I’m slow on the artisan EVOO wave. In December, after proofreading the new issue of California Agriculture - Growing Bigger, Better: Artisan Olive Oil Comes of Age, I purchased a bottle for my partner and the next day heard a TV comedian joke about people buying $60 bottles of olive oil for holidays gifts. (Then I felt cheap — I hadn’t spent that much!)
But the tall thin black bottle of December’s New Oil from Katz and Company, near Napa, was so fabulous I decided to start learning the extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) lexicon. Did I know for sure whether it was grassy, buttery, peppery or pungent? It certainly was green. Albert Katz this week told me why: “That’s the chlorophyll in the oil; it’s at its height in olio nuovo,” he said.
When the earliest still-green olives are crushed in November, a strong odor of fresh green fills the mill, he explained. The crush smells like fresh artichoke, even parsley, but most predominantly like grass. Katz has been in the business so long that when he catches a whiff of mown grass he looks around to see whether someone is crushing olives nearby.
Darn it, though, Katz sells their olio nuovo only in December, so it’s over. The limited production and short window of sales for olio nuovo, celebrating the first crush, is a tradition in all the major olive-growing regions of the world, including northern Italy, where the name originates. The oil is always unfiltered, cloudy, and as bold as it’s ever going to be. Katz calls it “the pungency of youth.”
This week sees the very end of the season. McEvoy Ranch has bottles of their olio nuovo for sale at their San Francisco Ferry Building store and online through this weekend (February 6). The McEvoy olio nuovo is green, robust, and peppery — peppery means it has a little burn in the throat, which is a desirable quality. (Bitter is a different matter; it’s tasted on the tongue.) Like all olio nuovo, the McEvoy new oil has sediment in the bottom of the bottle, and it has an unctuous quality, a little pleasantly thick and earthy in the mouth.
With the end of the olio nuovo season comes the release of the oils that have been stored for two months; they are already changing — more mellow, more golden — and the sediment will stay in the storage tanks. As they age through spring and summer, they’ll taste more buttery.
Climate affects the taste of oil. “Terroir” is what the environmental factors are called, explain Paul Vossen and Alexandra Kicenik Devarenne in the California Agriculture article on sensory qualities of olive oils. Katz tastes some roundness and softness in his oil this year, from the cool summer and late harvest.
Different varieties of olive trees produce markedly different aroma compounds. Tuscan varieties, grown by both Katz and McEvoy Ranch, have robust aroma profiles (full-bodied, pungent, complex). A few stores down from McEvoy at the San Francisco Ferry Building, Stonehouse sells its milder EVOO, pressed from Spanish olive oil varieties Mission, Manzanillo, Sevillano, Ascolano and Arbequina. The Stonehouse oil isn’t spicy; it doesn’t burn the throat.
Last week, Katz released its main oils for 2011: Chef’s Pick Organic Extra Virgin and Rock Hill Ranch Extra Virgin. Rock Hill doesn’t taste like the olio nuovo, because a significant proportion of the olives in it are Taggiasca, and they weren’t harvested until after the olio nuovo was made. Chef’s Pick, though, has the same profile, Katz says. Now I know a little of the language, I think I’m going to investigate further and buy a bottle before it sells out. If I wait until summer, I’m told the green will be gone and the grassiness turned more herbal.
For more information on tasting olive oils, check out the UC Davis Olive Center; in August, they have introductory and advanced seminars on sensory evaluation of olive oil.
Paul Vossen is a UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor and expert on olive oil processing tasting; watch his video on tasting here.
Alexandra Kicenik Devarenne showed Sacramento Bee reporter Gina Kim in this video how to taste oil and recognize fustiness.
The California Olive Oil Council website lists farm tours and tasting rooms.
The Olive Oil Times has an archive of articles on tasting, including one on recognizing rancidity.
Siguiendo el rastro de las reses
Investigadores de la UC pueden rastrear reses, desde su nacimiento hasta la muerte, mediante la asignación de un simple número de identificación de 15 dígitos. Esto les permite obtener valiosa información para las investigaciones del ganado sobre fertilidad, genética y salud. Además les ayuda a seleccionar ganado para cría con las características de la carne deseadas como sabor y terneza.
En el mercado actual de la carne, una sola vaca puede cambiar de propietario muchas veces durante su vida al ser trasladada de su rancho de nacimiento, a los corrales de engorda, al rastro y finalmente al supermercado o carnicería. Durante este proceso se pierde información muy necesaria y, junto con esto, la capacidad de rastrear de qué vaca proviene originalmente algún filete.
Durante varios años los investigadores de UC Davis han estado usando etiquetas redondas electrónicas en las orejas de cada becerro que nace en la manada de investigación en el Centro Sierra Foothill de Investigación y Extensión de la UC, en las estribaciones del noreste de Sacramento.
Las etiquetas de orejas contienen un número de identificación de radiofrecuencia específico para cada vaca, el cual es escaneado con una varilla electrónica; este es un sistema similar al que se usa para rastrear los paquetes que son transportados de un día para otro o los libros en las bibliotecas. Los vaqueros usan un dispositivo portátil en donde ponen toda la información cuando el ganado bovino es procesado; esta es luego transmitida, vía una antena de acceso a distancia, a los bancos de datos en la computadora principal.
El sistema integrado de recolección de datos se está usando para emprender estudios sofisticados sobre genética del ganado, con el propósito de mejorar su reproducción”. El genotipo de cierto ganado vacuno y lechero se adapta mejor a sistemas de producción que dependen de pastos y heno”, escribieron en la edición de abril-junio del 2010 de la revista científica California Agriculture, los investigadores de Extensión Cooperativa de la UC Alison Van Eenennaam y sus colegas. “Esto puede incluso hacer posible la selección de animales para que puedan crecer a un tamaño determinado con menos alimento ó que sean menos susceptibles a ciertas enfermedades”.
“Estas tecnologías también brindan un gran potencial para hacer posible una producción de productos animales más nutritivos y seguros. También pueden ayudar a que los consumidores seleccionen carne de animales, con una huella ecológica reducida – es decir criados de tal manera que se tiene muy en cuenta su impacto en el medioambiente – y, a la vez, mejorar el bienestar de los animales dada la disminución en enfermedades”.
Preparado por Janet Byron
Adaptado al español por Norma De la Vega
Dan Myers
Where's the beef?
By assigning a simple, 15-digit identification number to cows, UC researchers can track each one from conception to carcass, garnering valuable data for studies on cattle fertility, genetics, and health, and helping to select breeding animals with desirable beef characteristics such as flavor and tenderness.
In today’s beef market, an individual cow may change ownership many times during its lifetime as it travels from the ranch of its birth, to stocker and feedlot, to slaughterhouse, and finally supermarket or steakhouse. In the process, valuable data is lost along with the ability to “trace back” particular steaks to the original cow.
For several years, UC Davis researchers have been attaching a round, electronic ear tag to each newborn calf in the research herd at the UC Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center, in the California foothills northeast of Sacramento.
The ear tags contain each cow’s unique radio-frequency-identification number, which is scanned with an electronic wand; the system is similar to that used to keep track of packages being shipped overnight or library books. Cowhands use a handheld device to enter information when the cattle are processed, which is transmitted via remote-access antennae to centrally located computer databases.
The integrated data-collection system is being used to undertake sophisticated studies on cattle genetics, with the ultimate goal of improving cattle breeding. “The genotype of some beef and dairy cattle may be better suited to grass-based productions systems,” UC Davis Cooperative Extension Specialist Alison Van Eenennaam and colleagues write in the April-June 2010 issue of California Agriculture journal. “It may also be possible to select animals that are able to grow to given size using less feed, or that are more resistant to certain diseases.“These technologies also have great potential to enable the production of safer, more nutritious animal products. They may also allow for the selection of animals with a decreased environmental footprint and improved animal welfare due to lower levels of disease.”
Herd manager Dan Myers enters cattle
information into hand-held device.