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‘Savor the Central Coast’ is a Food and Wine Festival organized by Sunset Magazine. The goal of this festival is to showcase the great foods we produce here on the Central Coast of California. Part of the festival goal is to acquaint people with the growers who actually produce our foods.
When I read of the farm tours available, one I just had to visit was Thomas Hill Organics. This is a particularly interesting farm concept because the proprietors have not only their ten acre organically certified farm, they also have a market bistro and wine tasting room in Paso Robles where they serve their own produce very creatively prepared. Locals can also purchase vegetables from them in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) marketing concept.
Part of the ingenuity of this is that they cut out the middleman reducing costs while speeding the process from farm to the table. Also CSA customers who may be unfamiliar with some of the foods can visit the bistro and have a nice meal expertly prepared of the same veggies. This will give them some ideas of what to do with these foods.
I love to eat good healthy and wholesome foods. But I don’t really care for foods just because they are supposed to be good for me. Taste is what I want the most, and Thomas Hill Organics was constantly knocking me off my feet with the fresh and delicious tastes of their fruits. Part of the secret of the great taste is the varieties…. many of the old varieties of fruits were tasty, but did not have the perfect shapes, colors and skin features that appeal to the modern consumer. Thomas Hill also uses organic techniques that may have an impact on taste. As we toured the farm and I tasted one delicious fruit after another, I worried I would ‘gush’ overmuch in this blog posting. I could do nothing but roam from one exquisite delicacy to another, pulling them from the living trees and eating them before any changes had taken place in the harvested fruits.
Of their fruit trees, they have several varieties of each, and some have over a dozen varieties. So they have a long ripening season with their fruits.. they also have a great variety of tastes and textures available seasonably.
They also raise vegetables, and herbs. These are included in the menu at the bistro and in the CSA packages they assemble.
The tour bus was organized by the local Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance(one of the many groups working with sunset Magazine to make this an extraordinary event). The bus picked us up at the Paso Robles Inn, and took us to the farm outside of town. After the farm tour the bus brought us back to town, where we dined at the bistro itself.
The food prepared was extraordinary. Again I realized that there was nothing less than enthusiastic I could say… everything was stunning in appearance, and especially in taste. I wanted to eat and eat and eat, it was all so good. The salad was so tasty with fennel and field greens, the delightful tastes of herbs mingled with the scents and texture of vinegar and oil. The thin-crust pizza was cooked in the wood-fired brick oven in the patio we dined in. This pizza was unlike any other I’d ever had.. it had dandelion greens, figs, caramelized onions, and basil and bottarga cheese served with a Grenache Blanc wine that I found quite excellent. And then came the grilled apple and avocado sandwich… which had Humbolt Fog Cheese, sunflower sprouts, smoked apple butter (OMG, this is heavenly eating) and then filed greens sprinkled over the top. This was all so very, very tasty.
As I say, I hate to overly gush about anything…. but now and then things are just so darn good, that credit must be given, even if it seems a bit too effusive…. but my hats are off to the owners/operators of this efficient well-managed little organic farm, and the stunning use of fresh foods in creative, imaginative and eminently tasty and healthy foods at the bistro. Good goin’ Joe and Deb… you folks have grabbed ahold of a dream for many, and your efforts have resulted in tasty-dining and healthy-eating worthy of the name.
Carolyn Niethammer is a really nice lady and a phenominal author of books that center on travel in the US Southwest, Native-American culture and cooking and women’s issues.
Carolyn recently wrote us to say hello, see what’s new and mention her new book…
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Hi John,
Not a question, just a hello. I’m getting ready to turn in another cookbook on edible wild plants and of course wanted to include you so I went to your website to see what was new. You’re selling plants now!
Truly, nothing compares to your nopal grande for taste in my book. I don’t know whether tortoises care that much, but people do!
This book is for the UA Press,
Not scheduled for publication until fall 2011.
The Prickly Pear cookbook still selling well — fortunately there is nothing quite like it (that I’ve seen) so the future for that book still seems bright.
Best to you and Victoria.
Warmly,
Carolyn Niethammer
Gracias Madre Restaurant
In San Francisco Features our cactus on their menu
We came upon a menu from the fine restaurant in San Francisco called Gracias Madre.
It was a real pleasure, surprise and honor to see our name on the menu as their cactus source!
This illustrates the responsibility one has in business as a human to help others.
Thank you Gracias Madre….
we’ll work hard to make sure you continue to get high-quality cactus from us.
 Gracias Madre restaurant menu
 BBQ BBQ…. cheese-stuffed bacon-wrapped peppers… squashes and cactus brushed with olive oil and our special blend of peppers…. and turkey burgers.
Summertime is good time.
But always remember that the following winter will ask you what you did during the easy-time of summer.
We enjoy getting comments on our cactus. It’s also fun seeing that other folks like eating our cactus. And when we get someone mentioning our cactus on their blog… that’s a great thing!
 cactus being cooked
Windmill Nursery
 
Windmill Farms….
On the intersection of Hwy 101 and the Los Berros/Oceano turnoff in Nipomo is a little family biz.
Over the years they have gently expanded their operations to include a petting zoo and fresh vegetables they grow on an acre or so behind the main shop where they sell produce. I really like the series of little houses they’ve built for the petting zoo. It is so ‘Ghost Town’ looking… so ‘Western’…. so very unique.
The foods inside are really good and fresh, and their brother is a pro-fisherman.. so sometimes they have fresh fish for sale. I like to stop by for Albacore when it’s in season in the Fall.
Once in a while they’ll have a BBQ open… I took the photo below of their main BBQ fellow Billy Ruiz, the owner of the BBQ operation who they contract to come by and cook meat. Like a lot of the pro BBQ people in the area, he has a trailer with all of his necessary tools and implements. He just backs it in, opens it up, and fires up the wood and he’s ready to start.
The name of his BBQ business is Cowboy Flavor, and I tell ya, he knows his way around a steak! In fact, he’s so good that President Reagan had him go to his ranch to BBQ for the President and his guests at the ranch on a regular basis.
This place has nice atmosphere….
Nice architecture….
Takes good advantage of the views….
Beautiful location….
An article with a Cactus recipe was brought to our attention….
It sounds delicious, and is written by one of Australia’s most well-known and respected chefs, Steven Manfredi.
I wrote him and asked if I may include it on our blog, he graciously permitted us to reprint it…
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Prickly Pear Souffles by Steve Manfredi
It may be difficult for some to think of Captain Arthur Phillip as Australia’s first ecological vandal but he brought in one of the most invasive plants ever to come into this country. He collected some cochineal-infested prickly pear in Brazil and sailed the cacti to these shores with the First Fleet.
The cochineal insects feed on prickly pear and, when processed, these insects produce the crimson-coloured dye carmine. Amongst other things, this colour was used for the red coats of British soldiers at the time.
In 1886 the first (Commonwealth) Prickly-pear Destruction Act was passed though the cactus was already a problem 20 years earlier. It wasn’t until 1996 that the (NSW) Prickly Pear Act 1987 was repealed and management for the “noxious weed” transferred to local governments.
While it’s still a problem in certain areas of Australia, people from parts of the Mediterranean and the Americas adore its fruit. It looks like a small barrel about 6-8 centimetres long but care should be taken in handling the fruit because the fine hairs will lodge in the skin.
Peeling is easy. Handle the fruit with a gloved hand. Cut off each of the ends using a sharp knife. Make a slit skin-deep down the length of the fruit and peel the skin away from the pulp. Prickly pear fruit can range from red to deep yellow and is sweet and juicy.
FROZEN PRICKLY PEAR SOUFFLES (photo)
This dish is based on a recipe from Neapolitan chef Alfonso Iaccarino and can be made with prickly pear of any colour.
10 prickly pears, peeled
2 eggs, yolks and whites separated
250ml fresh cream, whipped
3 tbsp caster sugar
4 tbsp sugar syrup
Make the sugar syrup first by boiling 100ml water with 100g caster sugar. Once it boils, cool. Whatever is left can be refrigerated indefinitely. Place 8 prickly pears in a food processor and puree. Place in a sieve, over a bowl and separate juice from seeds, discarding the latter. Place yolks in a bowl with 2 tablespoons of sugar. Whisk continuously over a simmering pot of water for about 5 minutes until fluffy and thick like zabaglione or custard. Put aside to cool. Beat egg whites to soft peaks. Add remaining tablespoon of sugar and keep whisking until stiff peaks form. Gently fold half the prickly pear juice with the whisked egg whites, whipped cream and cooled yolk/sugar mixture until evenly incorporated. Ladle into 6 moulds and place in the freezer for at least 4 hours. Mix the sugar syrup with the remaining prickly pear juice. To serve, unmould the soufflés by dipping the bases quickly in hot water. Spoon a little sauce on and serve with wedges of the remaining prickly pear. Serves 6.
PRICKLY PEAR WITH MASCARPONE CREAM AND ROAST PISTACHIO
8 prickly pears, peeled
200g caster sugar
3 egg whites
300g fresh mascarpone
80g pistachios, roasted and roughly chopped
¼ (quarter) tsp ground cinnamon
Puree the peeled prickly pears in a food processor. Sieve over a bowl and separate juice from seeds, discarding the latter. Place the puree in a saucepan with 50g of caster sugar and bring to the boil, stirring. Once boiling, turn down to a bubbling simmer until the liquid has reduced by half. Let it cool and refrigerate. Meanwhile beat the egg whites in a bowl, slowly adding the rest of the caster sugar until firm peaks form. To this add the mascarpone and fold in until the resulting mixture is light and fluffy. To serve, ladle some prickly pear puree into bowls, add a large dollop of mascarpone cream and scatter some chopped, roasted pistachios on top. Finish by dusting with ground cinnamon. Serves 8.
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I encountered two items I’ve not heard of before… one is the ‘Caster Sugar’ which is the same as what we call ‘Powdered Sugar’ in the US. The other item is ‘mascarpone’ which comes from his region of Italy (Lombardy) and is probably best known as the essential ingredient, along with coffee and savoiardi biscuits, in the popular dessert tiramisu. It should be fairly easy to buy from Italian providores or even supermarkets. See here:
Wow, this is one of the best food combinations I’ve ever made….
A most unusual omelet
I started by grating an onion and browning it well in a skillet with vegetable oil
I let it get really deep and brown, just starting to caramelize
Then I added a couple of potatoes I had grated while the onions browned….
Then I let it all cook for a while, stirring on occasion while I continued to grate the foods we had picked recently from the garden…
You can see the browned onions on the bottom of the pan… I’d never grated onions before… I didn’t know I’d end up mainly with onion juice and paste. But it did brown nicely.
We had picked some persimmons, sweet Hungarian peppers and cactus a couple of days beforehand. I grated all these things and added them to the mix that was stewing gently…. I like dishes where you can add pretty-much whatever you’ve got coming out of the garden. Adding a wide variety of different foods to your meals is a good way to get a wide range of vitamins and minerals… every food has its own little special packages of goodness to give you that is a bit different from what the other veggies have.
I just kept turning it for a bit… the idea is to let it all cook slowly together.. into a big stew in essence…..
I had second thoughts about adding the persimmons… but it was too late, they were already in there…
Continue reading A most unusual omelette
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