Edible Monterey Bay: Spring 2012 | No. 3

GRIST FOR THE MILL

“What brings us to the kitchen is hunger, hunger for food, hunger to feed others,” writes Edward Espe Brown in his classic, The Complete Tassajara Cookbook. “What brings us to the kitchen is love, conviviality, connection—we’re finding a place at the table of life.”

Some people see food as nothing more than fuel. But for many of us, it is much more than that. It is a life-enriching thing to “offer our effort," as Brown puts it, to create delicious food.

In this issue of Edible Monterey Bay—as we did with our first two—we bring you the stories of many people who passionately offer their efforts in pursuit of bringing our local area truly great food.

You’ll read about a lawyer named Cynthia Sandberg who left her practice to devote herself to growing tomatoes in the Santa Cruz Mountains and now supplies superb, biodynamic produce of all kinds to David Kinch’s two-Michelin-star restaurant, Manresa.

We’ll introduce you to San Benito County grassfed beef ranchers who are reclaiming animal husbandry done in a more intentionally healthful and humane way.

You’ll learn about the inspiring dedication to excellence of Chef Cal Stamenov and Winemaker Dean De Korth at Bernardus in Carmel Valley.

You’ll also read about cooking classes all over the Bay, where local masters provide opportunities to learn from them in their own kitchens.

We’ll provide tales of a sustainable sushi venture, our Bay’s often-forgotten squid, the coffee savants at Verve Coffee Roasters, and a glimpse of the artichoke’s colorful local history.

You’ll find an announcement for the first installment of Edible Monterey Bay’s new Popup Supper Club series, at the much-awaited new restaurant opened by Chef Brendan Jones— one of the creative hands behind the Cachagua General Store—and front-of-the-house partner Matthew Zolan. Reserve your seat soon by going to our website!

Finally, you’ll even learn about the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center itself and the quiet influence it’s had on our current passion for all vegetables fresh, sustainable, seasonal and delicious.

As Brown says, “Cooking is not just working on food, but working on yourself and working on other people.”

We hope this issue inspires you to connect with great flavors, conscious choices and, perhaps best of all, with the many people in our local neighborhoods who share our love and appreciation for the effort. We personally admire and enjoy great effort. But delicious, transporting food need not be expensive or fancy—just fresh, wholesome and prepared with passion and love.

Enjoy!

edible monterey bay

PUBLISHER AND EDITOR

Sarah Wood Sarah@ediblemonter ybay.com 831.238.1217

CO-PUBLISHER AND ASSOCIATE EDITOR Rob Fisher

COPY EDITOR Doug Adrianson

DESIGNER Melissa Petersen

WEB DESIGNER Mary Ogle AD DESIGNER Jean Roth

CONTRIBUTORS

Jordan Champagne • Jamie Collins

Cameron Cox • John Cox • Susan Ditz

Bambi Edlund • Kodiak Greenwood

Mike Hale • Ted Holladay • Geneva Liimatta Elizabeth Limbach • Deborah Luhrman

Jorge Novoa • Keana Parker • Pete Rerig

Darrell Robinson • Patrick Tregenza

Carole Topalian • Amber Turpin Christina Waters • Lisa Crawford Watson

ADVERTISING SALES

Shelby Lambert • 831.238.7101

Shelby@ediblemontereybay.com Kate Robbins • 831.588.4577 Kate@ediblemontereybay.com

INTERNS

Kalia Feldman-Klein • Katie Reeves

CONTACT US:

Edible Monterey Bay 24C Virginia Way, Carmel Valley, CA 93924 www.ediblemontereybay.com 831.238.1217 info@ediblemontereybay.com

Edible Monterey Bay is published quarterly. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used without written permission of the publisher. Subscriptions are $28 per year at www.ediblemontereybay.com. Every effort is made to avoid errors, misspellings and omissions. If, however, an error comes to your attention, please accept our apologies and notify us. Thank you.

Sarah Wood and Rob Fisher Publishers

Zoe Fisher

Edible Notables Fish-friendly Sushi

By Pete Rerig

As sun streams in the huge arched windows of Geisha Sushi, Chef David Graham beams.

“Just look at how beautiful this Arctic char is,” says Graham, showing off the plump, silky, 14-inch cuts.

“It’s sustainably farm raised in ideal conditions—no pollutants—and every bit as delicious as its cousin, the salmon.”

Moving down the row of fresh-as-can-be seafood, he holds up a slab of Tombo Ahi, a species of Pacific Albacore that isn’t suffering the same fate as its overly fished and endangered relative, the bluefin tuna. “It has a buttery taste, very mild and tender,” Graham says.

As delighted as Graham is to display the daily offerings at his Capitola restaurant, he’s even more proud of its mission: to serve only healthy, sustainable, eco-conscious fish.

Gone are the farm-raised freshwater eels for unagi. Instead, he serves up o-nagi, which is catfish prepared in the same sweet, marinated barbecue style. Also absent is all manner of farmed salmon, imported shrimp, octopus and sea urchin.

Opened last summer, Geisha Sushi is one of only a half-dozen or so sushi bars in the country that eschews any seafood not earthfriendly, and it is the first in the area.

“At first, we were nervous about bucking the status quo,” says Graham, who opened Geisha with owners Annop Hongwathanachai and Anchalee Thanachai. “It was a scary proposition.”

But as cutting-edge as Geisha’s operating premise is, it’s been met not with wariness but with overwhelming success.

“Given a choice, people more often than not do the right thing,” says the philosophical Graham. “Our customers have shown their willingness to experiment, to step out of their comfort zone and try new things, and that’s been a key to building our reputation.”

While a very small number of people have walked out of the restaurant upon discovering that their favorites aren’t on the menu, the vast majority, Graham says, have embraced the restaurant’s approach and allowed him to guide them to new and interesting choices.

Graham takes his cues from the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program, the ultimate resource for enjoying the gifts of the sea responsibly. “There are so many factors to consider when choosing seafood, and the Aquarium’s Seafood Watch boils it down so nicely.”

Among the questions the Aquarium asks before giving its seal of sustainability are: Is the bycatch reeled in during fishing hurting the ecosystem? Are farmed fish being raised in terrible conditions, in overcrowded pens with a diet of high-protein food? Is the water on these farms being pumped full of antibiotics? Are pollutants being allowed to enter open waters? The list goes on and on.

But Graham isn’t catering to the fish alone.

“When you buy and prepare sustainable seafood, you’re not only helping struggling fish populations and the ocean, you’re also getting a superior product—fresher, healthier and just plain better.”

And when a certain roll or recipe calls for produce, customers can also be assured of first-rate quality: organic fruits and veggies culled from local markets and farms. Geisha’s menu in fact has an extensive list of vegetarian entries, and most of those dishes are vegan.

Should you make a foray to Geisha, be sure and try the lean walu (also known as butterfish, an apt moniker for its utterly delicious taste); the suzuki, a nice, mild species of Japanese sea bass; and the Thailander roll, a delectable combination of o-nagi, prawn tempura, peanut butter and a hint of spice. Then finish off your feast with a bowl of coconut ice cream crafted with a recipe that’s been passed down through three generations of one of the owners’ families.

If you love what you order, you’ll make Graham a contented man.

“There’s a whole universe of choices in sushi using sustainable, ecologically sound seafood,” says Graham. “And when a customer at the restaurant exclaims ‘that’s sushi and it’s sustainable?’ we smile because we made someone happy and did a little more to help the environment. And that’s pretty exciting and very gratifying.”

Geisha Sushi • 200 Monterey Ave., Capitola • 831.464.3328

Seafood Watch: www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/seafoodwatch.aspx

fish: Chef David Graham is one of just a half dozen or so sustainable sushi chefs in the nation.

Photo by Ted Holladay

Rare

Edible Notables A General Store for Everyone

By Amber Turpin

“We really just want to be a homesteader’s convenience store,” says Mountain Feed and Farm Supply owner Jorah Roussopoulos. But instead of a six-pack of Budweiser and some Lay’s potato chips, this colorful “convenience store” offers books and kits on how to brew your own beer and seed potatoes for growing your own crop.

In fact, if a do-it-yourselfer’s convenience store sounds a bit like an oxymoron, the truth is that Mountain Feed is so much more than that: a veritable sustainable-living country store, ready to outfit anyone from any walk of life who wants to live a little more in harmony with the planet—and find stellar customer service while they’re at it.

Roussopoulos and his wife, Andi Rubalcaba, first opened the store at the “bend in Ben Lomond” in September 2004 as a destination for mountain folk to get chicken feed and fuel from a solarpowered biodiesel filling station. But the ambition of the former high school sweethearts, who worked nights to gradually build up their inventory—he as a bartender and she as a beautician—has always been palpable when you walk in the door.

Today, Mountain Feed employs more than a dozen full-time staffers and each of several departments offers a specialist who is truly expert at helping customers find what they’re looking for and can offer tips and advice on any given project.

The business has also fanned out into five different buildings and about an acre across the street that houses “homesteading infrastructure,” also known as “the big stuff”—soil, compost, water tanks and the like.

In the main buildings, merchandise is arranged progressively, from the basics to the obscure.

“Planting seeds to canning jams, our goal is to be able to take people full cycle from production to preservation,” Roussopoulos says.

That means you can walk in and easily find the standards that most feed stores provide: pet products, livestock feed, seed propagation supplies, soil amendments and anything for the home garden.

But wandering in deeper, you’ll discover what makes Mountain Feed so unique.

The Homesteading Housewares department, for example, is packed full to the gills with everything “dedicated to the gardener’s kitchen,” Roussopoulos says. The space is organized by theme, from soda making to bread baking to fermenting to pickling to canning to dehydrating to curing. All of the bakeware is American made, and even professional chefs and commercial food producers shop there due to the hard-to-find selection in stock.

Local food artisans are also well represented. “If it’s edible in here, it’s local,” Roussopoulos says.

Next door, in the space housing most of the seed and garden products, you can find an array of beekeeping supplies, chicken care items and wild bird feeding supplies. And around back in the “Edible Nursery,” there is always a wide array of seasonally appropriate items, currently consisting of bare fruit trees, spring veggie starts and even hops, horseradish, currant and gooseberry trees, not to mention the vibrant collection of ceramic glazed pots and locally made, artistic repurposed tables, sink stations and cooler cubbies for sale.

Sadly, Mountain Feed’s source for local recycled biodiesel dried up, so the filling station is gone.

But all in all, the store has been a beloved boon to its immediate community and a draw for new customers from far corners of the foodshed who are anything but a convenient distance away.

So what’s ahead?

Mountain Feed is “stocked by popular demand,” says Roussopoulos. “People tell us what they want, and we listen.”

Photo by Ted Holladay

Homesteading: Jorah Roussopoulos and Andi Rubalcaba with their children, Ember and Reese.

Edible Notables Squid Season

By Mike Hale

Once Monterey stopped canning sardines in the 1960s, it quickly earned another moniker: “Calamari Capital of the World.” Yet, today, as part of a fast-food nation that prefers fish sticks to squid tubes, we seem to have lost our connection with the 10-armed cephalopod the rest of the world craves.

Bright lights will again illuminate our bay at night when the season opens in April, bringing local boats out in force to lure market squid from the depths, much as they did when the fishery began in the 1860s. Squid is still the second largest (counted in tons) fishery in California, but the majority of the commercial catch is exported, primarily to Asia.

Even some of those boxes of squid stamped “Monterey Bay Calamari” contain a dirty little secret: The squid was caught here, of course, but shipped to China for cleaning, processing and freezing, before being loaded on a container ship for the long trip back home.

Despite that large carbon footprint—along with a few concerns about bycatch and habitat damage—market squid is considered a “Good Alternative” by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program, which rates the sustainability of fish by where and how it is caught.

Buying directly from a local source is the most sustainable purchasing decision, and leads to a fresher, better-tasting squid.

Over-processing is the worst thing one can do to fresh squid, according to Kevin Phillips, managing partner at Abalonetti Bar & Grill on Fisherman’s Wharf, known for 60 years as the place for calamari.

Phillips buys only fresh local squid and hires a full-time employee to clean 1,000 pounds of it a week in a room behind the restaurant.

“It’s the freshest squid available anywhere, and the flavor [of squid shipped to China and back] doesn’t compare,” says Phillips, who adds imported squid is rinsed too thoroughly and is often bleached, so the delicate seafood loses its natural brininess. “It’s sad to see much of our local squid shipped away.”

Only four Monterey Bay processing plants remain as part of the region’s 150-year-old market squid fishery—first run, ironically, by Chinese fishermen.

Sal Tringali, a third-generation squid processor at Salinas-based Monterey Fish Co., finds it distressing to see most locals shun the inexpensive and healthful seafood.

“People today don’t know what they’re missing,” says Tringali, wistful for the days when the town celebrated squid, particularly at the now-defunct Monterey Squid Festival.

From its commercial store on Municipal Wharf No. 2, Monterey Fish Co. sells whole market squid for about $1 a pound, the same price seen in the 1970s, Tringali says.

Cooking squid requires proper timing. Phillips adheres to the adage of cooking it very quickly (no more than 2 minutes) at high heat or else for an hour or more in a slow braise. “Anything in between, and it’s tough,” he says.

At the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival, Gourmet Alley pyro-chefs cook squid Sicilian style, with flames leaping from giant pans.

Event organizers have released a less-incendiary recipe that calls for 3 pounds of squid, cleaned and cut into rings (tentacles reserved).

In a large skillet, heat 1/3 cup of olive oil at high heat. Add calamari and 1 tablespoon crushed garlic and sauté for 2 minutes. Lower heat, add 1/4 cup white sherry and squeeze the juice of half a lemon into the pan, dropping in the rind. Sprinkle some basil, oregano and red pepper flakes into the pan, and stir in your favorite marinara. Bring up to desired temperature and serve.

“The Italian community eats squid all the time,” says Tringali. “We call it poor man’s abalone. It’s very important to us, and we all grew up eating it. It’s comfort food.”

Moonlighting: Squid are caught at night; the fishing boats in photo above were at work off of the Pacific Grove shoreline. Drawing of market squid by Bambi Edlund.

Photo by Darrell Robinson

by Keana Parker

Edible Notables You Can Try This at Home

By Lisa Crawford Watson

Patricia Poritzky is sitting by the curb in her hybrid, planning tonight’s menu and waiting to pick up the kids in her carpool, one of the many ways she shares and conserves resources throughout her day. Another is the 2,000-square-foot professional kitchen she timeshares. By day, another business cooks there; at night, Poritzky transforms it into a cooking school.

“Let’s Cook Santa Cruz,” which opened with sold-out classes in January, is where she and guest chefs teach the community how to cook SOLE food—sustainable, organic, local and ethical grub.

“SOLE food is part of a movement to help change the way people eat and access their food,” Poritzsky says, adding that if her students “learn one thing about being more environmentally friendly and buy one thing that wasn’t trucked across the States, I’m grateful.”

Poritzky is just one of a number of area cooks and chefs who have begun to offer their expertise to local residents who are increasingly eager to hone their chops for cooking our region’s fresh, healthy local food—be it from their delivery of fresh fish from Local Catch Monterey Bay, their CSA box or finds from their neighborhood market.

Some of the very newest of these classes will come from Dory Ford’s Point Pinos Grill in Pacific Grove, which will soon offer cooking classes for kids; Santa Cruz’s Front Street Kitchen, a community commercial kitchen that will run a variety of culinary classes; and Hollister’s Pasture Chick Ranch, which will teach cheesemaking.

At the Hyatt Carmel Highlands’ Pacific’s Edge restaurant, Executive Chef Matt Bolton is launching in March a “Meet the Farmer” lunch series to offer expertise in sourcing local ingredients and preparing them at home.

“More and more,” says Bolton, “people want to know where their food is coming from, whether it’s organic, heirloom or foraged; how green it is; and what kind of footprint they’re leaving on the earth. I find this a really good way to bring people closer to local food sources, the same fresh products I use in our restaurant.”

Highly trained chefs at other hotel restaurants are also sharing their secrets: at Aubergine in Carmel, Chef de Cuisine Justin Cogley and Executive Pastry Chef Ron Mendoza offer a “Sweet and Savory” series in their renowned kitchen, and Carmel Valley Ranch has set up a special “Adventure Kitchen” for courses with Executive Chef Tim Wood.

The Ranch offers two types of classes: a three-level series for students who want to refine their basic techniques with a pro, and activity-related classes that, for example, allow students to tour the Ranch’s organic garden and then learn how to cook its progeny.

Some local offerings have themes, such as Rio Grill’s “Flavor Education Series,” Cantinetta Luca’s “Secrets of Pizza and Pasta” and Montrio Bistro’s “Artisan Series,” which features local food artisans.

“My flavor series,” says Rio’s chef, Cy Yontz, “expresses what Rio Grill is and how I cook, with bold, earthy flavors. It also is a way to get the community together, to meet friends and have a great time at Rio Grill.”

Monterey’s Stone Creek Kitchen, opened last year, makes things especially easy by offering an on-site classroom kitchen and selling cooking equipment and pantry items that can be used to make their recipes.

“Our goal, when you come to our kitchen, is to inspire you to try new things and to have more fun in your kitchen,” says Co-proprietor Linda Hanger.

Other relatively new classrooms include Santa Cruz’s el Salchichero, offering butchery and charcuterie classes, Happy Girl Kitchen Co.’s Pacific Grove Organic Café, delivering preserving workshops, and Love Apple Farms’ beautiful new indoor and outdoor classrooms, home to a number of classes. (See related story, p. 40.)

If you’re willing to travel, there is also the magical Tassajara Zen Mountain Center (see p. 28) and if you get really serious, more formal training awaits you at schools like Bauman College and Monterey Peninsula College.

For a guide to all of these classes, go to www.ediblemontereybay.com, and find “Culinary Course Catalog” under the “Local Food Guides” tab.

Back to school: Patricia Poritzky at Let’s Cook Santa Cruz.

Photo

Edible Notables

Storrs Winery’s Eco-Eden

By Christina Waters

While the “zero energy” status won’t have any particular tax benefits, “it does have a certain amount of marketing value,” Pamela says. It’s also personally satisfying for the couple, whose vineyard and home have been solar-powered from the beginning.

The Storrs’ romance began in winemaking classes at UC Davis, and two decades later, they have raised three children, countless animals, organic gardens and 20 vintages of award-winning handmade wines. Always focused on the Santa Cruz Mountain appellation, they purchased 50 acres in Pleasant Valley 10 years ago, where an heirloom apple orchard awaited restoration and hillsides were prime for grape planting.

On the verge of organic certification, the vineyard boasts 10 acres of pinot noir and chardonnay, growing on land invigorated by stateof-the-art sustainable techniques. These hands-on winemakers have worked tirelessly to plant native wildflowers, create owl nests and raptor perches, and most recently, to introduce a quartet of miniature “baby doll” sheep to graze between the vines.

“They’re a heritage breed,” Pamela explains. “They’re much smaller than the typical breed—the little sheep fit between the rows,” she says, laughing. “Think of them as the organic version of weed control.” She reckons the small breed will work very well in the winter because they won’t compact the moist soil. “In the summer they’ll have to graze elsewhere on the property,” she says, “because they actually will try to eat the tender new grape leaves.”

The vibrant ecology of the vineyard owes a lot to Wild Farm Alliance, which promotes agricultural practices that help restore and protect wild nature, and the integration of farms into their wild settings.

Walking the winery trails tucked away behind Corralitos, it’s easy to feel that you’ve stumbled upon an environmental demo farm. Hidden Springs Ranch, home to Storrs Winery, sits in a panoramic hollow, generously populated with deer, hawks, owls, bats and beneficial insects. From the start, Pamela Bianchini-Storrs and Steve Storrs wanted to encourage the helpful animals, as well as native plants and pollinators such as bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. Applying principles of sustainable and organic growing to their vineyard practice was a reflection of their winemaking philosophy—to step back and let natural processes do what they do best.

This innovative alliance between agriculture and nature is already an estate vineyard, and by summer’s end, the Storrs, who have long offered a downtown Santa Cruz tasting room, will open their vineyard for the first time for tastings in a newly constructed “zero energy,” solar-powered winery and offer walking tours through the surrounding acres.

The aim is for the new building to produce as much energy as it uses, so insulation is key to the design. For the walls, “straw bales weren’t efficient enough, and so we’re using honeycombed foam, filled with expanding foam made from soybeans,” says Pamela. “The roof will be extraordinary, too, made of highly insulative concrete panels.”

“Thanks to a grant, they’ve provided us with native plants, and local high school students came to help with planting.” The idea behind that was to create cover plantings to enhance the habitat and provide food for wildlife. All of this micro-management of their incredibly diverse and fertile acreage “keeps life interesting,” Pamela admits. “It’s so much more engaging than just doing one thing every day. Besides, the vineyard never waits.”

Racks of solar panels face the sun at the top of one far slope of the vineyards, and native fescues have been planted to retain groundwater and valuable topsoil. “We are determined to keep all of the water on our property.” Pamela chuckles. “Our first wet winter, we watched a lot of the vineyard topsoil float downhill.”

And now that the winery building foundation has been poured and the structure itself will soon be up, the winemakers have plans to send visitors on self-guided walking tours, aided by well-placed informational signs.

The Storrs’ move to lure visitors out to their vineyard runs counter to a recent trend that has been opening legions of in-town tasting rooms from Santa Cruz’s Swift Street Courtyard to Carmel Valley Village.

“A lot of city people just don’t get out into the country very much,” Pamela says. We’re interested in educating people about all of these natural cycles.”

The future of winemaking, she believes, is a fully hands-on, natural and highly sustainable enterprise. “Of course I’m interested in planting some fun new grape varietals, too.”

Photo by Ted Holladay

Co-proprietors and winemakers Pamela Bianchini-Storrs and Steve Storrs.

LOCAL FOODS IN SEASON MARCH, APRIL AND MAY

Fruit: Apricots** • Blackberries** • Cherries** • Grapefruit • Nectarines** • Oranges • Peaches** • Raspberries** • Strawberries*

Vegetables: Artichokes • Arugula

Asparagus • Beets • Bok Choy • Broccoli

Brussels Sprouts*** • Cabbage • Carrots Cauliflower • Celery* • Chard Collards • Garlic • Kale • Leeks

Lettuce • Mushrooms • Onions • Peas*

Potatoes • Radishes • Spinach • Summer Squash** * comes into season in April ** comes into season in May *** goes out of season in April

Source: Serendipity Farms

Fish: Abalone (farmed) California Halibut (hook-and-line, bottom trawl) • Dungeness Crab • Lingcod Market Squid • Pacific Sanddabs

Sablefish/Black Cod (hook-and-line, jig) Rock Cod/Snapper/Rockfish (hook-andline, jig) • Sole (Dover and Petrale)

Spot Prawns • White Seabass (hook-andline)

Source: Local Catch Monterey

Note: Only seafood considered sustainable by Seafood Watch is included here.

What’s in Season

Gabriella Café’s Chicory

Salad with

Dungeness

Crab

Paul Cocking and his chefs plan a Ferry Plaza-style market in Santa Cruz

By Amber Turpin Photography by Ted Holladay

Gabriella Café has been a fixture of the local, seasonal foods movement since the restaurant opened nearly 20 years ago, just a couple of blocks down Cedar Street from the Downtown Santa Cruz Farmers’ Market.

In the beginning, owner Paul Cocking, a former high school English teacher who’d used the proceeds of a stint as a Santa Monica Jaguar salesman to open Gabriella, and Jim Denevan, the restaurant’s first chef, began buying most of its produce right from the market. Today, 95% of the restaurant’s produce comes from the city’s farmers’ markets and deliveries from local organic growers like Live Earth Farm and Dirty Girl Produce.

Denevan remained with the restaurant for 10 years before taking the farm-totable movement on the road with his acclaimed Santa Cruz–based Outstanding in the Field, the roving restaurant that celebrates local farmers and food artisans by setting the table literally in the field, around the world.

Cocking, meanwhile, is preparing his own next act: a permanent, indoor local food artisan market in downtown Santa Cruz.

“We are talking to a building owner right now to start a kind of Santa Cruz version of the Ferry Plaza,” Cocking says, referring to San Francisco’s Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market.

Cocking’s plan is to include a baker and a few farms as well as some of his former cooks, such as Rebecca King and her Garden Variety Cheese (a sheep’s milk dairy) and charcuterie specialist Brad Briske, who will provide the anchor business, a café and attached salumeria and crudo bar. Briske, who is back serving as sous-chef at Gabriella after a turn working for Main Street Garden, also plans to host a supper club at the café a few nights each week.

Meantime, Cocking says, Gabriella “is more seasonal and market-driven than it ever has been”—and has been attracting more praise and business as well.

For the recipe opposite, Adrian Cruz, who has been with Gabriella for much of the past 15 years and recently returned as its head chef, highlights just a few simple ingredients to bring out the fresh flavors of our local bounty.

“The chicory greens are a cross between radicchio and bitter greens, and are pretty tough,” says Cruz. “They like hard weather.” Because of the durability of this cold weather lettuce, it doesn’t get damaged in the wet climate of late winter and early spring.

Amber Turpin has immersed herself in all things food since she was a child. Her latest endeavors are homesteading at her property in the Santa Cruz Mountains and launching Filling Station, a café and bakeshop on Santa Cruz’s West Side.

Gabriella Café • 910 Cedar St. • 831.457.1677 • www.gabriellacafe.com

CHICORY SALAD WITH DUNGENESS CRAB

Dressing:

1–2 cups olive oil

1/3 cup Dijon mustard

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

1 1/2 tablespoons honey

1 tablespoon diced shallot Pinch salt Pepper to taste

Blend all ingredients together in a food processor until it emulsifies.

Salad: 2 heads of chicory lettuce, clean

1 cup Dungeness crab

1/2 bunch radishes, sliced 1/2 red onion, sliced

Toss lettuce, crab, radish and onion together in a large bowl. Add dressing. Serve chilled.

Recipes: Additional recipes from Gabriella Café can be found at www.ediblemontereybay.com under the “Recipes” tab. The recipes are Slow-Braised Short Ribs with Wild Chanterelle Mushroom Bread Pudding, Mizuna Salad with Pickled Chickpeas and Castle Vetrano Olives and Roasted Live Earth Beets with Walnut Purée, Arugula, Candied Citrus and Herb Chevre.

Monterey Bay Farmers’ Markets

Find ultra-fresh, local produce and support your local farmers!

MONTEREY COUNTY

CARMEL

Barnyard Shopping Village

3690 The Barnyard • 831-728-5060

Tuesdays, 9am–1pm • Open May–September www.montereybayfarmers.org

CASTROVILLE

Castroville Farmers’ Market 11261 Crane St., North County Recreation Center 831.633.3084 • Thursdays, 4–dusk Open May–October • www.ncrpd.org

GREENFIELD

The Sundays Market 98 S. El Camino Real at Huerta Ave. • 831.674.5591 Sundays, 9am–3pm • Open May–August

KING CITY

King City Farmers’ Market 905 Broadway St., South Valley Auto Plaza parking lot 831.385.3814 • Wednesdays, 4–7 pm Open May–October • www.kingcitychamber.com

MARINA

Marina Certified Farmers’ Market 215 Reservation Rd., Marina Village Shopping Center 831.384.6961 • Sundays, 10am–2pm www.everyonesharvest.org

MONTEREY

Del Monte Shopping Center

1410 Del Monte Center, Whole Foods parking lot 831.728.5060

Sundays, 8am–12pm Open June–October www.montereybayfarmers.org

Monterey Fairgrounds Certified Farmers’ Market

2004 Fairgrounds Rd. 831.235.1856

Fridays, 3–8pm Open April–December

Monterey Peninsula College

980 Fremont St. 831.728.5060

Fridays, 10am–2pm Open year-round, rain or shine www.montereybayfarmers.org

Old Monterey Market Place

321 Alvarado St. at Pearl Street 831.655.2607

Tuesdays, 4–7pm (winter), 4–8pm (summer) Open year-round, rain or shine www.oldmonterey.org

PACIFIC GROVE

Pacific Grove Farmers’ Market

Central and Grand Avenues, in front of Jewell Park 831.384.6961 • Mondays, 4–7pm Open year-round • www.everyonesharvest.org

SALINAS

Alisal Community Farmers’ Market

632 E. Alisal St., Gabby Plaza • 831.384.6961 Tuesdays, 9am–5pm • Open spring–November www.everyonesharvest.org

Alvarez High School Farmers’ Market

1900 Independent Ave. at Boronda Road 831.905.1407 • Sundays, 8am–2pm Open April–November champfarmermarkets@comcast.net

Natividad Hospitals Farmers’ Market

1441 Constitution Blvd. • 831.402.4705 Wednesdays, 11:30am–5:30pm Open March–November

SPRING FARMERS MARKETS BY DAY

Monday: Pacific Grove

Tuesday: Carmel, Felton, Monterey, Salinas, Santa Cruz

Wednesday: Hollister, King City, Pacifica, Salinas, Santa Cruz,

Thursday: Castroville, Pescadero, Sand City, Soledad

Friday: Monterey, Santa Cruz, Watsonville

Saturday: Aptos, Half Moon Bay, Salinas, Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley

Sunday: Aptos, Gilroy, Greenfield, Marina, Monterey, Salinas, Santa Cruz, Watsonville

Salinas Old Town Marketplace

301 Main St., behind Rabobank

Saturday, 8am–2pm • Open year-round www.oldtownsalinas.com/market.asp

SAND CITY(New!)

The Independent Farmers Market

600 Ortiz Ave. • 831.394.6000

1st Thursday of every month, 4–9pm Open year-round, beginning April 5th www.sandcityca.com

SOLEDAD

Soledad Farmers’ Market

Front and Encinal Sts. • 831.737.8033 Thursdays, 4–8pm • Open May–December oldtownsoledad@yahoo.com

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY

APTOS

Aptos Farmers Market

6500 Soquel Drive, Cabrillo College • 831.728.5060 Saturdays, 8 am–12 pm • Open year-round, rain or shine • www.montereybayfarmers.org

Seascape Village Farmers’ Market

Seascape Village • 831.685.3134 Sundays, 11am–2pm • Open May–October

FELTON

Felton Farmers Market

120 Russell Ave. at Hwy. 9, St. John’s Catholic Church 831.454.0566 • Tuesdays, 2:30–6:30pm

Open May–October, rain or shine www.santacruzfarmersmarket.org

SANTA CRUZ

Downtown Santa Cruz Market

Lincoln and Cedar Sts. • 831.454.0566 Wednesdays, 1:30–6:30pm

Open year-round, rain or shine www.santacruzfarmersmarket.org

Live Oak/Eastside Market

21511 E. Cliff Drive, East Cliff Shopping Center 831.454.0566 • Sundays, 9am–1pm

Open year-round, rain or shine www.santacruzfarmersmarket.org

Santa Cruz Saturday Market

137 Dakota Ave., San Lorenzo Park 831.515.4108 • Saturdays, 10am–6pm Open April–November www.thesantacruzsaturdaymarket.org

UCSC Farm & Garden’s Market Cart

1156 High St. at Bay Street • 831.459.3240 Tuesdays and Fridays, 12–6pm • Open June–October www.casfs.ucsc.edu

Westside Santa Cruz Market

2801 Mission St. at Western Drive • 831.454.0566 Saturdays, 9am–1pm • Open year-round, rain or shine www.santacruzfarmersmarket.org

SCOTTS VALLEY

Scotts Valley Farmers’ Market

360 Kings Village Rd., Scotts Valley Community Center • 831.454.0566 Saturdays, 9am–1pm • Open year-round, rain or shine www.santacruzfarmersmarket.org

WATSONVILLE

Watsonville Certified Farmers’ Market Peck and Main Sts. • 831.234.9511 Fridays, 3–7pm ª Open year-round, rain or shine

Watsonville Fairgrounds Certified Farmers’ Market

2601 E. Lake Ave. • 831.235.1856 Sundays, 8am–4pm • Open year-round

SAN BENITO COUNTY

HOLLISTER

Hollister Farmers’ Market Fifth and San Benito Sts. • 831.636.8406 Wednesdays, 3–7pm • Open May–September www.downtownhollister.org

NEARBY COMMUNITIES

GILROY

Downtown Gilroy Farmer’s Market

Seventh St. between Eigleberry St. and Monterey Rd. 408.710.7147 • Sundays, 10am–2pm www.gilroyspiceoflife.com/home.html

HALF MOON BAY

Coastside Farmer’s Markets—Shoreline Station

225 Cabrillo Highway S. • 650.726.4895 Saturdays, 9am–1pm • Open May–December farmersmarket@coastside.net www.coastsidefarmersmarket.org

PACIFICA

Coastside Farmer’s Markets—Rockaway Beach

200 Rockaway Beach Ave. • 650.726.4895 Wednesdays, 2:30–6:30pm • Open May–December farmersmarket@coastside.net www.coastsidefarmersmarket.org

PESCADERO

Pescadero Farmers’ Market 620 North St., Pescadero Elementary School Thursdays, 5–8pm • outreach@mypuente.org

The Preservationist Fermented: Sauerkraut and Pickles

By Jordan Champagne

Making sauerkraut, kimchee and pickles is a great way to play with spring’s tender vegetables. It is also a good way to brush up on your preserving skills while the mountains summer fruits are mere ideas in the world—just blossoms and seeds—and have yet to come raining down upon us.

Spring is the time of year when vegetables are king. The beets, carrots and other root crops have had a chance to nestle into winter’s cold, damp earth and slowly grow into juicy, tender roots.

Fermenting vegetables and other food is the only way to actually increase nutritional value while preserving it. It is also a way to really eat locally because we foster the live cultures and promote cooperation with visible and invisible life that surrounds us. This is the real local biodiversity.

Fermentation is the safest way to preserve food because muchfeared botulism cannot create its dangerous byproduct in the aerobic environment of fermented foods.

Fermented foods are delicious, nutritious, safe and easy—a great introduction to preserving foods. My absolute fermentation hero, Sandor Katz, just wrote a new book on fermented foods titled The Art of Fermentation. It’s due out in May, just in time for when you really get into it.

In the meantime, the farmers are ramping up for the spring plantings, which will bleed into the busy summer harvest. These recipes will help you ramp up your skills.

Jordan Champagne is the co-owner and founder of Happy Girl Kitchen Co. She has a passion for preserving the local, organic harvest and loves sharing the secrets she has unearthed. She teaches preservation workshops at the company’s café in Pacific Grove.

Recipes: Please see p. 22 and 23.

Happy Girl Kitchen Co. • 173 Central Ave., Pacific Grove 831.373.4475 • www.happygirlkitchen.com

Photo courtesy Happy Girl Kitchen Co.

Classic Sauerkraut

Courtesy of Jordan Champagne, Happy Girl Kitchen Co.

Makes 1 gallon

Sauerkraut is easy to make. We just need to create the right conditions, and the microorganisms do the rest. You will be rewarded with crunchy, tangy golden kraut to enliven your spring.

5 pounds cabbage 3 tablespoons sea salt 1 tablespoon juniper berries (optional) Optional: carrots, Brussels sprouts, turnips, beets, burdock root, apples, raisins

Suggested spices: caraway seeds, celery seeds, garlic

Chop cabbage into a large bowl, coarsely or fine, however you like. Sprinkle on the sea salt now and then. Mix the cabbage and salt (and juniper berries, if desired) together to distribute the salt evenly. The salt pulls water out of the cabbage and creates a brine in which the cabbage (and other vegetables) can ferment without rotting or softening. Note on salt: Use only non-iodized salt, such as sea salt and unchlorinated water, as these chemicals inhibit the growth of microorganisms. Pack into a vessel. Tightly push and pack the cabbage down using your hands or a kitchen tool, forcing as much air out as comfortable and encouraging the cabbage to release its juices. Note on fermenting vessel: Many folks use earthenware crocks for making kraut as the wide mouth gives easy access for tamping and cleaning. Other suggested vessels are wide-mouthed glass jars, stainless steel pots or food-grade plastic buckets (which are all much lighter than crocks).

Cover kraut with a plate or other lid that covers the surface snuggly. Place a weight on the cover to help force out the air and keep the kraut submerged under the brine. A glass jar filled with water or a plastic bag filled with salt brine all work well. Secure a breathable cloth over the container to keep out debris.

Press down on the cabbage over the next few hours to force out water. It may take 24 hours for the brine to rise above the level of the chopped cabbage. Add a salt water solution (1 tablespoon sea salt completely dissolved in 1 cup water) as needed to cover the cabbage if, after a day, it remains high and dry.

Let fermentation happen. Put the vessel in a cool spot. Check on your kraut every day or two to skim off any surface scum, which is just an aerobic phenomenon where the developing kraut has come into contact with air—don’t worry about it. The kraut below the surface is unaffected and fine. Rinse off your cover and weight to discourage the surface mold.

Start tasting the kraut. It will be fully fermented in 2 to 4 weeks at 70° to 75° F or 5 to 6 weeks at 60° F. The air bubbles you see rising to the surface, a result of our busy microbe buddies, will become slower and eventually cease after the kraut is fully fermented.

Eat the kraut. You can begin eating the young kraut any time to enjoy the evolving flavor as it matures over several weeks. Remember to replace the clean weight on top, adding brine to keep it covered.

Store and start some more before it’s gone. Pack the kraut tightly in jars and store covered in the fridge for several weeks (or longer). Eventually, it softens, and the flavor turns less bright. Rinse the crock, repack it with fresh salted cabbage and add some old kraut to get your new batch started with active cultures!

Mixed Garden Bouquet

Courtesy of Jordan Champagne, Happy Girl Kitchen Co.

There are many names for a mixed pickle, from Pickle Lilly to chow chow. This recipe is for a fresh mixed pickle, which is easy and safe and a great introduction to pickling. You can experiment with any combination of fresh vegetables and spices you desire or highlight whatever may be abundant at the moment. I always toss in a few beet slices to add great color to whatever I am pickling and some chili to spice it up. Keep in mind that you will be cooking all of the vegetables together in one jar, so pay attention to how thickly you slice them.

Cauliflower (separated into small florets) Beets (quartered and sliced 1/4-inch thick)

Carrots (quartered and speared)

Romanesco (separated and sliced)

Cabbage (grated 1/4-inch thick) Onions (in 1/4-inch rounds)

Thyme Pickling Spice Blend (or spices of your choice)

Vinegar Brew

12 cups water 8 cups apple cider vinegar 1/4 cup sea salt

Go to the farmers’ market or your own garden and pick the freshest vegetables possible. Chop and prepare vegetables into desired shapes and sizes to fit into your jar of choice. Start with a clean jar and add spices that you desire. Pour the hot vinegar brew over your vegetables and fill to the rim of the jar. You can experiment and make each jar unique using different spices and vegetables. Screw lid on tightly and put in your refrigerator. Let it sit for 2 weeks. It will keep in the refrigerator.

Clockwise from top left, photo of Madison by Laurie Smith; photos of Kent and chopping carrots by Kodiak Greenwood; photo of So merville courtesy of Scribner

Roadside Diaries

The Cooks of Tassajara

The influential kitchen at the heart of the Ventana Wilderness

By Deborah Luhrman

Hidden away in our own Monterey Bay area is a place that has had tremendous influence on the way America cooks and eats today. The Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in the heart of the rugged Ventana Wilderness is not a cooking school, but the cooks who have worked in the Tassajara kitchen over the past 45 years have helped spark our current love affair with fresh, healthful and locally grown vegetables. And through their many cookbooks, people like Edward Espe Brown, Deborah Madison and Annie Somerville have taught us that vegetarian cuisine is not only healthy; it can also be complex, beautiful and delicious.

Like so many students before him, Dale Kent arrived at Tassajara attracted by Brown’s iconic Tassajara Bread Book, which was first published in 1970. Equipped only with a degree in philosophy and some work experience baking cookies, Kent was assigned to clean rooms for his first summer but eventually found his way into the legendary kitchen that he had read about in the bread book. There, he began learning how to work magic with vegetables.

For two seasons, from 2002 to 2004, Kent served as head cook, or Tenzo, which is an important post at the Zen Buddhist center because along with preparing three meals a day for up to 80 guests and 70 students, the Tenzo is also a teacher who guides the spiritual growth of some 20 kitchen staff.

“We have a little service every morning, offering incense and chants to remind ourselves that this is a much bigger process than just filling empty stomachs,” he says. “It is actually offering energy for the flourishing of people.”

At Tassajara, which is part of the San Francisco Zen Center, cooking is not just working on food but also working on yourself. So it was with some trepidation that I agreed to attend Dale’s summer workshop called “Finding Yourself in the Tassajara Kitchen.” Getting there was hard enough. Driving that last 12 miles down a rutted, winding, dirt road at the end of Carmel Valley and into the Los Padres National Forest took more than an hour. Since I’m more of a gardener than a meditator, I was nervous about what was in store for me at the Japanese-style Zen center and hot springs at the end of the road.

In the kitchen

Anyone who was around in the 1970s probably remembers when The Tassajara Bread Book first came out. In my little kitchen up in the Santa Cruz Mountains, I stood at a flour-drenched wooden table and kneaded loaf after loaf. It was fun. My friends appreciated hot bread from the oven, and it was liberating for me to discover I could make something so basic as bread, and not feel dependent on Staff of Life bakery or the supermarket.

Dale’s workshop was just as fun and empowering. Along with Tassajara’s current head cook, Graham Ross, we sat calmly in the meditation hall in the morning, discussing the experience of cooking and the Zen manuscript Instructions for the Cook, written by Eihei Dogen back in the 13th century but still oddly relevant today. Then in the afternoon, we prepared food for the staff and other guests staying at the center.

If you do not pay attention in the kitchen and “cook with mindfulness,” then the results will be meaningless, we were told—meaningless to the soup of your own soul and damaging to the community you are feeding. So trying to be mindful, we entered the fabled kitchen and began chopping carrots and slicing cucumbers under its rough-hewn beams. Graham showed us how to sharpen knives and chop properly. Dale taught the class how to make delicious vegetable sushi filled with carrots, scallions and avocado.

Talking is normally prohibited in the Tassajara kitchen—to help with the mindfulness—but the rules were bent for us novices. Even so, we tried to stay as quiet as possible and just focus on our work. Surprising thoughts bubbled up in my mind. How did my sushi rolls look compared to those made by others in the class? How could they be satisfied with their less-than-perfect products? What’s the point of making mine look good if they are going on the same plate with others that are falling apart? Hmmm…am I a competitive perfectionist? Maybe that’s what they meant by finding yourself in the Tassajara kitchen.

The food at Tassajara is traditionally vegetarian because Tassajara is a monastery, but vegetarianism is not a requirement of Buddhism and there is nothing Spartan about the cuisine.

It is about 80% organic, with most of the produce grown at James Creek Farm in the Cachagua Hills, so the ingredients are top notch. The food at every meal was delicious. One morning we had

Vegetable mavens: Clockwise from lower left: Annie Somerville, Deborah Madison and Dale Kent.

Tassajara

Whole Wheat Ginger Bread with Orange Syrup. For lunch we slurped Broccoli Soup with Mint Crème Fraiche and the famous homemade Tassajara breads. The dinner we prepared included Sushi, Sweet Ginger Tofu, Cucumber Salad, Sautéed Daikon and Chocolate-Dipped Strawberries.

“It’s tricky to get meat eaters to feel satisfied at the end of a vegetarian meal, and I think we do a really good job of that,” Kent says. “We walk a fine line between preparing kind of fancy food, nicely presented, and offering rustic, home-style cooking.”

Vegetarian food isn’t always easy to make pretty, so garnishes are especially important at Tassajara. There’s a flower garden that supplies nasturtiums, lavender, calendula, bachelor buttons, grape leaves and roses. “Lots of our food is brown, but put a few flowers on it and it sparkles and people are excited to eat it,” he says. “Just putting one rose petal on a bowl of yogurt, for example, is a nice touch and makes that yogurt seem even more special.”

Kent’s own Tassajara Dinners and Desserts, lusciously photographed by Patrick Tregenza, is the latest in the series of influential cookbooks to come out of Tassajara. It reflects his love of Asian flavors and current tastes for lighter vegetarian meals. The book includes lots of amusing parables from the kitchen and makes Kent the latest in a long lineage of cooks who’ve contributed to the Tassajara mystique.

Food for thought

Edward Espe Brown, Tassajara’s first head cook and author of the bread book as well as The Complete Tassajara Cookbook and many other volumes, is now 66. As an ordained Zen priest, he still lectures and leads meditations in Marin County. I tracked him down one sunny morning in his writing studio at the back of a weathered wood house on Tomales Bay. As seagulls squawked overhead and ducks paddled by, we talked about his early days at the center and some of his cooking secrets.

“Some things end up speaking to you, and bread certainly spoke to me,” he says. “Wheat is earthy, it’s sweet, it’s hearty and substantial, but on the other hand you can do things with it that are fairly delicate and light.” He attributes the tremendous success of The Tassajara Bread Book to drawings that actually demonstrated, for the first time in print, how to knead dough. He also credits the book’s attraction to a primal need people have to do something “real.”

“There’s a deep longing to produce something with your hands, so you have something to show for it and share with other people. It makes you feel you have some way of taking care of your own life,” he says.

Tassajara’s Japanese founder, Suzuki Roshi, once told Brown and other students, “I don’t understand you Americans. When you put so much milk and sugar on your cereal, how can you taste the true spirit of the grain?” It was a turning point in Brown’s cooking style. Instead of making things according to recipes or the way the dishes were supposed to taste, he started experimenting with ways to bring out the best in each ingredient.

In Zen, this is a life lesson as well: “Why don’t you taste the true spirit of yourself?” Brown explains. “Why don’t you know yourself instead of trying to make yourself over the way you’re supposed to be?”

Photo by Deborah Luhrman

Edward Espe Brown, Tassajara’s first head cook.

By carefully tasting each ingredient, Brown started to develop the Tassajara style of cooking. “It turned out I liked a sharp knife,” he says. “I liked cutting up the ingredients, and I found out over the years that small pieces work best. Cut surfaces release more immediate flavor and it is especially true with vegetables.”

Brown also likes to use fresh herbs, peppers and lots of lemon. “At one point I put lemon in every dish,” he says with a laugh. “Lemon gives a floral, fresh, tart flavor and that tartness is important to me in cuisine; it’s so good.” Peppers warm the palate. “The food seems to fill up the mouth more,” he says.

Brown, who was the subject of the award-winning 2007 documentary How to Cook Your Life, says one of the key lessons he learned as a cook at Tassajara was that “you are only as good as your last meal,” so cooks should just put their hearts into their work and try to ignore complaints.

“Certainly if you are cooking for a group of people, somebody will not like it. So if your self-esteem is based on your performance, your self-esteem is always going to be shaky,” he says. “But if you know that you’ve put a wholehearted, sincere effort into something, then you can let go of the other part.”

A wholehearted connection with the true spirit of ingredients is easier nowadays, he believes, because of farmers’ markets and the farm-to-table movement. “If food is local, it’s more likely that you may know the producers, you may have visited the farm and it’s more likely that it speaks to you. Then you have much more connection with the food, the people and the earth.”

“I’m more interested in what speaks to your heart, rather than if it’s local or it’s organic…but what’s local and organic tends to speak to me more,” he says as we munched on a tasty apple from the tree in his front yard, cut into very thin slices.

From simple to superb Brown and Deborah Madison, who followed him as head cook at Tassajara in the 1970s, took vegetarian cuisine another giant leap forward with the opening of Greens restaurant in San Francisco.

A graduate of UC Santa Cruz, Madison spent a year working at Chez Panisse in Berkeley—a noisy kitchen where the radio was always turned up loud—before opening Greens as part of the San Francisco Zen Center. At Chez Panisse she was exposed to the cooking style of Alice Waters, and the cuisine at Greens reflected that influence.

“When Greens started, the food was pretty sophisticated,” Madison recalls. “It didn’t have meat but it had enough complexity that people didn’t miss it.”

“Lots of our customers were not vegetarians. They were food people coming to a beautiful restaurant with a beautiful view. The food happened to be vegetarian, but it wasn’t the drab, heavy food of the ’60s. It was light and bright and attractive and delicious,” she says.

Madison and Brown collaborated on The Greens Cookbook and since then, she has gone on to author 10 more books about food, including the celebrated Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone—which she envisioned as a kind of vegetarian Joy of Cooking. Because of that book and her role as founding chef at Greens, Madison is sometimes considered the goddess of vegetarians, a role she bristles at.

“You know what, I really don’t care about vegetarianism, and it’s not my purpose to advance it,” she said in a recent telephone interview from her home in New Mexico. “When I wrote the book, I had other more important concerns, like what do we do about organics? What do we do about how meat is raised? Eating local food and seasonal food and looking at heirloom vegetables, things that people weren’t talking about so much back then.”

Madison thinks eating meat is fine as long as people do it in the best possible way—for their own health, for the environment and for the welfare of the animals. She sums up her beliefs like a Zen master at Tassajara: “My philosophy is to be aware and know the consequences of the choices we make, paying attention to what you are eating, to how much, to where the food comes from and how it connects to the rest of your life.”

“If you are eating food that is harmful to other people to produce, grown with a lot of pesticides that poison rivers and groundwater, and is therefore hard on wildlife…well, then you need to know that,” she adds.

Ever the teacher, Madison is hard at work on a 12th book called Vegetable Literacy, due out in 2013. The book will profile individual vegetables and plant families and should help cooks improvise and create new dishes. Judging by excerpts from the book that appeared in many Edible Communities magazines around the U.S. last year, it will also make fascinating reading.

Green-ing our tastes

Annie Somerville served in Tassajara’s kitchen in the late 1970s, and like Kent, Brown and Madison, became head cook during her time there. Later, she worked with Madison at Greens, and since taking over as Green’s executive chef nearly 30 years ago, Somerville has gained a national reputation for her imaginative approach to vegetarian cooking.

A sparkly woman with a pixie haircut, Somerville loves to see how excited chefs and home cooks are about using vegetables nowadays.

“Tassajara has really influenced the way people cook, and I think we’ve had a sizeable influence, too. Particularly in the early days, what we were doing was so unusual because it was hard to find a restaurant that prepared really delicious vegetarian food,” she says. “Now almost all restaurants have good vegetarian dishes.”

Over the years, Somerville has adapted the menu to suit evolving tastes and to take advantage of the increasing variety of fresh ingredients available to chefs.

“Early on we used dairy products more heavily than we do now, lots of cream, and we sautéed with butter and used a heavier hand with cheese,” she recalls. “Then we went through a low-fat period, but now we’ve reached a happy medium. We find the right places to use really good cheeses, a touch of cream here or there, a nice butter sauce—a brown butter pasta or Meyer lemon cream, that sort of thing.”

Somerville thinks it’s important that a vegetarian meal feature distinct and diverse dishes, including vegetable appetizers and both standout entrees and side dishes. Otherwise, the items on a vegetarian menu can all sound the same.

2012 Cooking Retreats at Tassajara

May 31–June 3

“Breakaway Cooking with Tea”

Eric Gower and Ikushin Dana Velden

June 22–24

“Dragon Greens: A Cooking and Gardening Summer Solstice Celebration”

Annie Somerville and Wendy Johnson

June 29–July 1

“Finding Yourself in the Tassajara Kitchen”

Dale Kent and Unzan Graham Ross

The goal is “really nice dishes that stand on their own but just happen to be made with all vegetables,” she explains. “People come to Greens and have a great salad or a great vegetable ragout, a tagine or a delicious pizza or pasta. All of these things can be made with vegetable ingredients, and they are delicious.”

She delights in going to the Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market twice a week and watching the seasons change through the produce that’s available. “It’s probably the main thing that keeps me engaged and excited about food,” she says. “Some people might really get tired of this after 30 years, but I love those direct connections with farmers and experiencing first-hand the moments of the seasons.”

Somerville, along with gardener Wendy Johnson, will return to Tassajara in June to teach a workshop on vegetarian cooking from harvest to plate called “Dragon Greens: A Cooking and Gardening Summer Solstice Celebration.”

Since the San Francisco Zen Center still owns Greens, it will probably always remain a vegetarian restaurant. Along with the former cooks of Tassajara and cooks to come, it will continue to set the pace for American vegetarian cuisine and shape our continuing passion for vegetables.

Deborah Luhrman was once the Santa Cruz County bureau chief for Channel 46 news. She has been traveling the world and spending too much time on airplanes for the past 25 years. So she returned to Santa Cruz to grow a garden and write about local issues.

Recipes: For Somervilles’s recipes for Asparagus and Beets with Meyer Lemon Vinaigrette and Fava Bean Purée with Garlic Toasts and Shaved Pecorino and Kent’s recipes for Sweet Ginger Tofu and Glazed Daikon, go to www.ediblemontereybay.com and click on the “Recipes” tab.

Photo by Kodiak Greenwood

Grahm Ross, Tassajara’s current head cook, at work in the fabled kitchen.

Liquid Assets Barista Battles

Verve Coffee Roasters takes on the competition

By Elizabeth Limbach Photography by Ted Holladay

Unlike many modern cafés, which boast litanies of complicated, flavored concoctions, the drink menu at Verve Coffee Roasters is strikingly simple. After all, co-owner Colby Barr doesn’t travel 12 weeks out of the year to remote villages around the globe to source “the best coffee on earth” just to have it disguised by syrups and frills.

“We’re buying coffee from ultra-specific farms and people who have specific flavor notes and varietals, and letting those bloom on their own,” explains Chris Baca, Verve’s director of education. “We don’t need to dress up our coffees.”

This is characteristic of a “third wave” coffee shop, although the Verve folks dislike the term, which was coined to describe the generation of specialty coffee that followed the “second wave,” or the Starbucks/latte/mocha generation. If anything, Verve may be closer to “fourth wave”—part of a yet-to-be-defined movement, forging the path that the rest of the industry may someday follow. “Whatever you want to call it, we just want to see ourselves on the frontlines,” says Barr.

Barr and co-owner Ryan O’Donovan opened the first Verve, on 41st Avenue in Santa Cruz in November 2007 with the help of head roaster Sean White and barista Jared Truby. In mid-2009, when Baca came on board, the company had about a dozen employees and wholesale accounts in the single digits. The 590-square-foot roastery was adjacent to the café “so you could see the roaster if you were a customer in the café but also so that the roaster could see if we got buried on [the] bar because there was such a small crew, and come in and help,” recalls Barr.

Interest in Verve’s top-notch coffees and famously skilled baristas (who, for example, undergo three days of training and a fourhour test before getting hired) has boomed in the years since—enough so to land it wholesale accounts across the country, from New York and Los Angeles to Pittsburgh and Austin—and catalyze major retail expansions. The Verve team is now 45 employees strong and is spread across three locations, including two that opened in fall 2011: one in Santa Cruz’s Seabright neighborhood, where the company operates a 7,000-square-foot roastery, and one on Pacific Avenue in Downtown Santa Cruz.

Verve’s latest triumph is being chosen by the Specialty Coffee Association of America as host of the 2012 Southwest Regional U.S. Barista Competition, which will take place in Santa Cruz on March 9, 10 and 11. The competition will be one of six regional events that feed into a national showdown later in the year. (What’s a barista competition? See related story, “How Do I Compete?” on p. 34.)

Baca organized the event along with Verve Director of Retail Sara Peterson. Both baristas are former regional champs and have placed second and fourth, respectively, at the U.S. level.

Verve had its eye on hosting the competition for several years, but California-based chain, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, hosted it the last two years and provided a Hollywood television studio as the venue.

Fourth wave: Clockwise from upper left, Verve co-owners Ryan O’Donovan and Colby Barr; Verve’s new Seabright location; freshroasted coffee beans.

In bringing the competition back to a small company and a small town, Verve hopes to re-envision what has historically been an exclusive, somewhat esoteric event.

“We’re trying to shake all of that loose and bring everyone to Santa Cruz to have a good time,” says Barr.

Verve will host social activities for visiting baristas throughout the weekend and has added an educational component as well, partnering with the Barista Guild of America to offer classes and Level One testing for barista certification.

As for non-coffee professionals, the event is free to attend and promises to be fun and, of course, caffeinating.

“It’s entertaining, and kind of goofy,” says Barr. “It’s kind of like Best in Show, but for coffee.”

Attendees can partake in tastings, including—for the first time ever—the drinks competitors make for the judges.

“In the past, it’s been a joke in a way that people come to see, but they just watch four lucky judges taste the coffees,” says Barr.

But as part of Verve’s overall vision of making world-class coffee more inclusive, competing baristas will be required to stay for half an hour after the competition to make cappuccinos, coffee and specialty drinks for members of the audience.

“Our goal in our whole company, and thereby in this event, is to always be trying to do the best we can at world level but making it as accessible to people as possible,” says Barr. “Because, otherwise, what’s the point?”

Elizabeth Limbach is an award-winning journalist based in Santa Cruz. When not working, she can often be found enjoying the area’s beautiful outdoors, seeking out new delicious eateries and indulging in her latest obsession—vegan baking.

The competition will be held Friday, March 9 through Sunday, March 11 on the fourth floor of the Rittenhouse Building, located at Pacific Avenue and Church Street in Downtown Santa Cruz. Visit www.usbaristachampionship.org to learn more about the competition, or follow it on Twitter at @swrbc2012. For more about Verve, including location and contact details, visit www.vervecoffeeroasters.com. (See related story, p. 24.)

Looking for fresh-roasted coffee closer to home? Go to the “Local Food Guides” tab on the EMB website and scroll down to find “Micro-Roasters Near You,” a complete guide to artisan roasters in the tri-county area.

Team Verve: Lizzy Sampson and Jared Truby. (Read more about how they prepared for the barista competition on p. 34.)

Regional competitions like the 2012 Southwest Regional U.S. Barista Competition are open to any barista “who dares to compete,” says Chris Baca, Verve’s director of education, but “if you don’t do your homework, you’ll feel ridiculous and get destroyed.”

To avoid this, Baca, whose own rule-bending 2010 regional performance made coffee competition history, is serving as mentor and trainer to the two Verve baristas competing in March: Lizzy Sampson, 21, and Jared Truby, 29.

The baristas began their training in December, first studying competition rules and then working with senior Verve staff to select ingredients and perfect their drink recipes. The training will culminate with rehearsals of their precise routines in the weeks before the event.

“By the time you’re at the competition, what you’re doing on stage should be second nature to you,” says Baca.

Monterey

The competition itself is akin, in part, to a live cooking show, complete with an audience and seven judges.

“It’s nerve-wracking the first time,” says Peterson, who has been with Verve since 2009. “There are lights shining on you, they’re streaming it online, you’re wearing a Britney Spears-[style] microphone, there’s an audience—it’s really surreal.”

Competitors are provided with an espresso machine and table but must bring everything else themselves, from the coffee and ingredients to table settings and coffee grinders.

“They wheel you out to this blank canvas, and you have everything stacked up on your cart, and you have 15 minutes to unload, prep, dial in your coffee, taste and clean your area before the judges get there,” explains Baca.

Once the judges arrive, the barista has 15 minutes (after which they’re disqualified) to make three courses: a single espresso,

a cappuccino and a “freestyle,” or specialty, drink. As they work, the baristas must explain to the judges and audience what they are making and why.

Three technical judges watch closely as the drinks are made and score in categories like efficiency, cleanliness and technical skill, while four sensory judges are served the beverages and grade on flavor, balance, consistency, color, presentation and more.

Competitors choose the soundtrack that plays during their performance—both to help set the mood and also to cue the different stages of the routines they will have memorized.

“It’s like playing a piano—you want to learn it technically first, so well, that you can forget about all of the technical stuff and play it by feel,” says co-owner Barr.

Monterey Bay marketplace • Monterey Bay marketplace

Edible History

Artichoke Aristocracy

One family’s tale of a Monterey Bay icon

By Lisa Crawford Watson

That anyone first found it edible is a testament to curiosity, persistence, risk. By all appearances, the artichoke is an anachronism, a prehistoric plant whose thorny plates of armor protect its vulnerable heart until it dries from the inside out and releases a spiky purple blossom. To anyone who hasn’t tried it—or ever imagined eating a thistle—it can be confounding.

And yet, when dragged through mayonnaise, yogurt or warm, drawn butter, each sharp, fibrous leaf becomes a delicacy; once they are pulled through the teeth, leaving behind only that which is soft, succulent, tender, tasty and melting in the mouth, even the uninitiated and the skeptical come to understand why the artichoke is considered an aristocrat of the vegetable kingdom.

Although not native to this area or even the United States, the artichoke’s longevity in this region’s rich, sandy loam and cool, coastal climate; its popularity on local menus, both trendy and traditional; and its abundance here make the artichoke one of the iconic plants of the Monterey Peninsula. They thrive throughout our local foodshed, which produces as much as 80% of the artichokes grown in the U.S.

No one knows just when artichokes, which come into season in March, arrived on this continent. Some accounts place their introduction in the 19th century, by French immigrants in Louisiana and Spanish settlers in California. Others say they were brought to Colonial Williamsburg in 1720 to indulge aristocratic immigrants from Europe.

Artichokes had already reached Castroville on the northern peninsula by the time Battista Odello brought his bride, Josefina,

from Northern Italy to Carmel in 1924 with the promise of prosperity through artichoke farming at the mouth of the Carmel Valley.

Odello leased, ultimately, 340 acres from the Thomas Oliver family, whose coastal river-bottom lands were bisected by Highway 1 just south of Carmel. There he and 17 partners planted artichoke slips cut from Castroville crops, and six months later brought in their first harvest by hand. Eventually his two sons, Emilio and Bruno, entered the operation, taking the helm in 1945. Ten years hence, they purchased the property.

By 1964, Bruno’s son John, armed with a degree in agribusiness from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, had joined the family business that had shaped his growing-up years.

“My family was the first to farm artichokes in Carmel Valley,” says the third-generation artichoke farmer, whose father is now 97. “John Emile later came in to farm where the Crossroads and Barnyard shopping centers are. Joe Sbarra planted artichokes where Rancho Cañada Golf Club is now. And the Pezzini family, still prominent in artichokes, partnered with my grandfather.”

Theirs was a community sustained by artichokes. It was their lifestyle and their livelihood, their “daily bread” and even the currency with which they bartered for everything else they needed.

“We rarely went to the store,” says John Odello from his kitchen table in Carmel, a room like every other in the home he shares with wife, Marie: artfully adorned but not overrun by objets d’artichoke. “When my grandfather established our artichoke fields, he was land rich and cash poor, so he implemented the European custom of bartering. Down at the wharf, we traded a sack of artichokes for a bucket of fish or abalone. Up the Valley, we traded artichokes for apricots

Photos courtesy of John and Marie Odello

and pears. My grandmother canned what we couldn’t eat. We planted a vegetable garden by the cookhouse and raised pigs by the barn. We even made our own soap.”

When harvesting his more than 300 acres of artichokes, John never wore gloves. They got in the way of his technique, he says— the flick of his wrist that helped him cut hundreds of chokes per hour while avoiding the thistle’s spiny defenses.

“When we farmed artichokes,” he says, “we grew globe artichokes by breaking a stalk off an older plant and letting it take root in the ground. It took six months. Nowadays, that process is too costly, so farmers grow artichokes from a seed, which has a yield in 90 days. But the artichoke lover can tell a globe from a seed artichoke. The globe is tight, whereas the seed is open. The globe is hard, like an apple, and the seed artichoke is soft. If it doesn’t squeak when squeezed, don’t buy it. This means the artichoke is dehydrated and will get tough when boiled. But when an artichoke is just right, it is still the best.”

You know you have waited too long to harvest an artichoke, he says, when the leaves have popped open. By then, the heart has begun to harden, and the stem has become woody and brittle. In late harvest, it takes twice as long to saw through the dry stalk. And a cook cannot boil or bake or roast or fry the choke back to succulence.

Yet if harvested when the leaves are still clenched in a tight fist, the artichoke will be soft at the center. The stem will yield to one slice of the X-Acto knife, and the heart will remain tender.

“When the artichoke is mature but not over-ripe,” says John, “you don’t need to hide it; you can just boil it in a little lemon juice and vinegar, and it’s great. Of course, it was such a staple for us that

we came up with all kinds of ways to serve it—in soups, salads, frittatas, gnocchi, grilled, breaded and fried—and we never grew tired of it. But that was then, when the fields were active. Today, we buy our artichokes and consider them a treat.”

The Odello artichoke fields were in full production in 1995 when the El Niño storms hit the Peninsula, flooding the fields and destroying their yield. The family restored the fields and returned to farming, only to witness the wrath of El Niño return two years later. This time, they “called it quits.”

“Today, the fields west of Highway 1 to the ocean belong to the State of California,” says John, “and the acreage east of the highway belongs to Clint Eastwood. Some days I miss it, miss the artichokes and the life we built around them. Every day I go down to visit my father, who still lives on the property. Some people say it’s great to see the land restored to its native state, back to what it was hundreds of years ago. I wonder who here knows what it looked like then.”

Lisa Crawford Watson lives with her family on the Monterey Peninsula, where she is an instructor of writing and journalism for California State University Monterey Bay and Monterey Peninsula College. Lisa is also a freelance writer, specializing in art & architecture, health & lifestyle and food & wine.

For related stories, see p. 38 and 39. For Marie Odello’s recipes for Artichoke Linguini, Artichoke and Chicken Sauté and Artichoke Hearts stuffed with Crab, Macadamia Nuts and Boursin Cheese, go to www.ediblemontereybay.com and find the “Recipes” tab.

Fields of the Future

If all goes according to plan, the Big Sur Land Trust (BSLT) could soon return some 30 acres of the legendary Odello artichoke fields to organic agricultural production—and install a new system of hiking trails that would connect it to the pristine Palo Corona Regional Park.

“Getting into organic farming takes awhile to put the infrastructure in place,” says BSLT Director of Philanthropy Lana Weeks. “If it happens any time in 2012, it will be great.

“The Southbank Trail is open, but the Regional Parks District has the key to Palo Corona, so our hope is to figure out parking and logistics to enable people to go from Southbank Trail into Palo Corona by walking right past the farm fields. Eventually this will be called the Carmel River Trail.”

The farmland to which Weeks refers is the 30 acres in front of the Odello’s Palo Corona barn, closest to Inspiration Point. She often studies the land in wonder and amazement at all that has happened historically on that piece of land, while imagining the generations that have gone before her, cultivating and living “off the fat of the land.”

“Here we are, hundreds of years later,” she says, “and that piece of land still has not been developed or destroyed. Six cultures have lived and worked on this very land before us—the Rumsen Indians, the Spanish, Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese—and it was somehow sacred to each of them. I find it amazing that so many cultures found the power of this place. It is a very spiritual space to withstand time and never be developed beyond farming. I marvel at the blessing.”

Weeks’ hope and expectation is that the BSLT can work in partnership with the organizations that will develop the system of

trails and the organic farm, creating a seamless experience and a legacy of land for future generations to experience.

The Odello artichoke fields were very nearly lost to all but several dozen homeowners when previous buyers of the property sought several years ago to develop the land into 82 tract houses.

That plan was thwarted when actor-director-developer Clint Eastwood and his former wife, Maggie, stepped in to purchase the property. The Eastwoods saw some 130 acres of the Odello fields as a kind of crossroads to provide public access to state and regional parklands, if preserved.

“In essence, the Eastwoods gave 30 acres in that development plan to the BSLT,” says Alan Williams, president and CEO of Carmel Development Company, who works with Eastwood on his development projects. “The BSLT, working with the State and Regional Parks districts, has come up with a beautiful plan to tie it all together.”

Photo by Geneva Liimatta

The Castroville Artichoke Festival: Starlets, barbecues and a parade

She came to town as an afterthought. A relatively unknown up-and-comer chosen to replace starlet Doreen Nash, who had canceled a jewelry store appearance at the last minute, the young Norma Jean would have to do. It was 1948. Her stage name was Marilyn Monroe, and it was just catching on. At least she was pretty enough to promote diamonds.

During some free time between appearances, jeweler Stan Seedman attended a Kiwanis Club meeting in Salinas, where banker Randy Barsotti suggested they take Miss Monroe to Cal Choke for a photo session on behalf of an artichoke promotion. Perhaps, he said, they even could crown her the “Artichoke Queen.”

Marilyn Monroe’s legendary sash remains on display at the Castroville Chamber of Commerce. And her status as the first Artichoke Queen continues to lend a certain cachet to Castroville and its celebrated crop.

Sponsored by six local artichoke growers, the Artichoke Queen contest continued and became a highlight of the annual Castroville Artichoke Festival and Parade, which commenced in 1959.

In the early days, the festival was little more than a barbecue and a parade. Folks could count on chicken, beans, salad, coffee and a fresh-picked Castroville artichoke.

Today, the “Artichoke Capital of the World” and its festival attract some 30,000 people for the two-day event. The festival has grown into a city-wide celebration, featuring an Agro Art Competition of three-dimensional fruit and vegetable artwork, live music, children’s entertainment, arts and crafts, wine tasting, field tours and a farmers’ market.

And then there are the artichokes, prepared just about every way one can: fried, sautéed, grilled, marinated, pickled, fresh and creamed.

What: Castroville Artichoke Festival 2012

Where: Castroville, California

When: May 19, 10am–6pm and May 20, 10am–5pm

Cost: $10 adults, $5 active military, seniors and children ages 4–12; free for age 3 and under Contact: 831.633.2465 or visit www.artichoke-festival.org

Photo by Carole Topalian

It’s a crisp autumn evening in the Santa Cruz mountains. Birds are chirping and cawing in the surrounding redwoods that point faithfully toward a deepening blue sky. Hordes of commuters are corkscrewing their way home along nearby Highway 17 in anticipation of a well-earned dinner or cocktail in front of their favorite TV show or, better yet, with friends or family.

Meanwhile, Cynthia Sandberg is scooping cow manure out of cow horns and stirring it into buckets of well water with a broomstick. Later, she and six apprentices will use paintbrushes and cornhusks to flick this solution onto thousands of plants before the sun completely disappears and darkness takes over.

This image may seem ritualistic, even creepy to some. But it’s just another day here at Love Apple Farms, a 20-acre, terraced property with sweeping views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, which serves as an educational center and the exclusive biodynamic kitchen garden for chef David Kinch and his two-Michelin-star Los Gatos restaurant, Manresa.

As the light begins to fade, farmer-proprietor Sandberg gathers her apprentices and farm partner, Daniel Maxfield, and begins to explain the idea behind Preparation 500, one of the many methods used in biodynamic farming.

On the Farm Cultivating a Cutting Edge

Cynthia Sandberg’s Love Apple Farms

By Cameron Cox Photography by Jorge Novoa

“The land is breathing in as we go into winter,” Sandberg says between scoops, “and this preparation from the cow horn has taken into it the earthly forces from being buried and also through the manure from the cow.”

All of these forces are infused into the well water, creating a potent homeopathic substance that will help fertilize the plants and protect them through the cold months, encouraging growth and vitality.

The mixture is meant to be stirred by a human arm, wooden stick or some other natural material for one hour in one direction, creating a vortex, with random pauses “to create chaos.” Then it is stirred in the opposite direction to further enhance the forces already present. Seems a bit witchy, but reasonable.

“The final piece that is added to this elixir is our own thoughts,” Sandberg continues rather sternly, “so while we’re stirring we try to infuse our good thoughts and hopes and dreams for the garden into the winter. And it’s a very thoughtful process, so there’s no talking during it.”

Love garden: This page, Cynthia Sandberg in a rare moment at rest. Opposite, clockwise: vegetable and flower beds; Kinch, opposite, by Mark Holthusen; one of Sandberg’s “love apples.”

CLASSES AT LOVE APPLE FARMS

As the “farm to fork” movement gains momentum, more and more people are looking to cultivate a deeper connection to the food they eat through cooking, gardening and urban homesteading classes. Love Apple Farms offers all of these, and more. If you were ever curious how to keep bees, chickens or worms; adopt biodynamic principles into your garden or just start a garden; install a drip irrigation system; make cheese, butter, beer or soap; or pickle and preserve the things you grow, this is your place. Sandberg, Kinch, and Kinch’s partner, Foodie Handbook author and Chez Pim blogger Pim Techamuanvivit, are among the instructors.

All classes are held at 2317 Vine Hill Road, Santa Cruz 95065. To see a full listing of courses and to register online visit www.loveapplefarms.com/

LOVE APPLE FARMs TOMATO PLANT SALE

Begins Saturday March 10 and runs through June Ivy’s Porch: 5311 Scotts Valley Drive, Scotts Valley Open M–F 10–5pm and Sa–Su 11am–4pm

This is a new retail location and will be open seven days a week. More than 100 tomato varieties will be sold; Sandberg suggests doing a little research beforehand to help narrow down what tomato species grow best in your climate.

Tips on growing tomatoes can be found at the Love Apple website: www.loveapplefarms.com

I am flummoxed. A photographer and I have just arrived after a two-hour, traffic-choked, white-knuckled drive from San Francisco to interview Sandberg and then be on our merry way home, and here we are, summoned to stay very still and very quiet for one hour before getting a word in. This is not the introduction I had anticipated.

Soon we would learn that on this land, humans can wait; plant life takes precedence. Farming insists you surrender to something much greater than yourself, your sense of time, your expectations or your preoccupations. It’s quite freeing, really.

We settle into the process, which proved to be entirely meditative and calming. Everyone takes turns stirring the preparation while others look out onto the now-dusky garden, or walk quietly over to milk the goats. Any residual stress or irritation we had carried with us from our drive is gone, and we are fully present, grateful and positive. By the end of the hour I couldn’t help but wonder: Is there witchcraft involved in biodynamic farming?

Sandberg motions for me to follow her quickly through the garden so she can continue the day’s duties, and there are many. If you ever visit the farm, bring athletic shoes. You will move. There is always something to do.

In between weed pulling and watering, Sandberg helps illuminate some of the concepts behind biodynamics.

“One of the key tenets is that you are trying to create a closedloop system, wherein you create as much of your own fertility as possible,” she begins. This entails keeping animals such as goats, pigs and chickens and composting the animal manure as well as weeds from the garden. Any of the produce that isn’t used by Manresa goes to the animals for food, and moves on to the compost pile as manure. This limits the need for bringing in outside goods, and solidifies the garden as a self-contained, self-sustaining unit.

Mere organics, on the other hand, do not require that you maintain your own animals or produce your own fertility, allowing a farmer to rely on outside sources for seed, manure and compost but potentially creating a much larger carbon footprint.

At this point biodynamics is looking less to me like voodoo magic and more like an impressive, practical and viable model for sustainable agriculture.

But Sandberg admits that she, too, was a bit skeptical when she first heard of biodynamics. A trip to the garden at Copia in Napa changed her mind.

“I saw tomato plants in their prime with more vigor than I’d ever seen. So I asked the gardener how he got his tomato plants to look like that in October and he said ‘biodynamics.’ He was clearly sick of explaining it to people, so he just said ‘look it up.’”

Sandberg did her homework, and her research turned up talk of the moon and stars and cow horns and skulls stuffed with chamomile and manure.

If it wasn’t for that trip to Copia, she would have dismissed it all as “a bunch of phooey,” she says. “But I had seen the tomato plants, and the proof was in the pudding.”

The proof is here as well. Love Apple Farms—whose name stems from France’s adoration of the tomato or La Pomme D’Amour, literally “Love Apple” in French—is thriving on its biodynamic practices and provides the restaurant Manresa with 80% of its produce, up from 30% just a few years ago.

When asked if she ever thought she’d be farming for a restaurant kitchen, Sandberg was quick to reply: “Never. I was just a gal with a nice garden, selling her tomato plants to her neighbors.”

In fact, before the majestic 20-acre farm and before the apprentices and partnership with Kinch or the magazine profiles, Sandberg was a civil attorney and novice gardener just struggling to keep her plants alive.

Frustrated, she took a few horticulture classes at Cabrillo College and began gardening in earnest, focusing mainly on heirloom tomatoes. Her efforts paid off.

“I had too many tomatoes one year and decided to have a sale. I didn’t have any time to interact with my customers and tend to the garden so I had a money or honor jar—which I still have.”

It all started with more tomato seedlings than Sandberg was able to plant, and later, the fruit of her vines. She began holding the sales every year, and they were wildly successful.

Sandberg also let customers come onto the property and take tours of her vegetable garden, and even began teaching gardening classes, which she still does today and proclaims her “second love.”

Soon Sandberg was known as the “Tomato Lady,” quit her law job and became, as she puts it, “totally tomatoes.” The tomato plant sale still continues—and will run this year from March 10 through June. (See box on this page.)

“I saw tomato plants in their prime with more vigor than I’d ever seen. So I asked the gardener how he got his tomato plants to look like that in October and he said ‘biodynamics.’”

Eventually word of Sandberg’s tomatoes reached Kinch. At first, he asked Sanberg to provide the restaurant with tomatoes and in 2006 they formed a partnership wherein Love Apple Farms would provide much more than tomatoes. Sandberg then purchased the farm’s expansive current location, and moved in. She now shares the property—once home to Smothers Brothers’ Smothers Winery— with her apprentices and upwards of 90 hens, some goats, worms, dogs, a pig and a mildly obese cat named Sergio.

Love Apple Farms, which is undergoing Demeter certification for biodynamics, now boasts more than 100 varieties of tomatoes as well as about 200 other cultivars, the likes of which you just won’t see in your average garden: red ribbon sorrel, ficoide glaciale, litchi tomato, salad burnet, piment d’espellete and purslane, just to name a few.

“I’m always trying to find something new and different, from all over the globe,” Sandberg says. “I’m always trying to expand the repertoire for [Kinch]. He’s a trailblazer in his cuisine and of course that ups my game because then I feel like I have to help him always differentiate himself. That’s why he has this garden.”

Kinch, a long-time Santa Cruz resident, is entirely hands-on. He is often seen in the garden tasting cultivars, foraging even outside the garden’s perimeter for unusual edibles, brainstorming ideas for that day’s dish.

“What we have is a working farm and a working restaurant,” Kinch says. “We’ve made it a viable partnership, and that makes it unique. Every decision we make is based on the quality of what we can do and controlling the quality of the ingredients we offer our guests.

“This partnership creates a closed circle between the guests, the farm and the kitchen and allows us the ability to serve guests food that fully imparts a sense of place of the California Coast.”

Before each season, Kinch and Sandberg sit down with Sarah Lieber, Love Apple’s garden manager (and very first apprentice), to review the crop list so that he can choose more or less of a cultivar.

When Kinch is not in the garden or the restaurant, he’s researching new cultivars.

“He attends seminars and goes on trips all over the world and to nurseries and gardens and talks to chefs and gardeners to try to find what’s endemic in that area and then brings me back the seeds,” Sandberg says. “We’re very esoteric.”

Love Apple Farms has to constantly rotate these unique cultivars for the restaurant so that they are available throughout the entire year. It’s a challenge, to say the least.

Sandberg explains: “Most farmers would put in a field of carrots, harvest the field of carrots 60 or 90 days later, then sell them at market. But we have to provide mature carrots for him two or three harvests a week for 52 weeks, so that’s very different—and we’re doing it times 300 different cultivars.”

In order to achieve this, Sandberg plants smaller quantities of many different cultivars in the same bed, keeping in mind the varying needs and growth rates of each plant.

“Also, we harvest crops in different stages of their development, as the chef often takes them in younger or older versions of the plant than what most people would think.”

Timing, attention to detail and constant communication between the chef and grower are key.

Add to this the management of over 100 on-site animals, two classrooms hosting a myriad of courses, farm tours, the live-in apprentices, on-site weddings and special events, and an extensive and successful online presence and you scratch your head wondering how Sandberg is still standing.

Maxfield, the farm partner who has been working with Sandberg for three years, describes the amount of work to be done as “stunning.”

When asked when and how she relaxes or unwinds, Sanberg simply replies, “I don’t. I’m still figuring out how to do that.”

Thankfully the apprentices, as well as Maxfield, help lighten the load.

The apprentices live on the farm for three months and learn all aspects of the garden as well as animal husbandry and assist with classes. They are required to take at least one horticulture class at Cabrillo College to supplement their learning experience.

Many of the apprentices, Sanberg says, come from culinary backgrounds and are later recruited by fine-dining restaurants from around the country that are interested in starting their own kitchen gardens.

Sandberg motions for us to leave the garden. We’re losing light rapidly. The apprentices have successfully doused all of the farm’s plants with Preparation 500 and said blessings upon the garden, which is now awash in cobalt blue. The day is done and it is time for the photographer and me to be on our way home.

As we walk back from the top terrace to the driveway above, Sandberg scoops up her cat, Sergio, to bring him indoors where he will be safe from night predators. She has hours of computer work ahead of her. One of the apprentices brings us a jar of fresh goat’s milk for the road.

We feel present, grateful and positive. We thank Sandberg for her time, which is clearly precious.

I later asked Sandberg what good thoughts, hopes and dreams she infused into the preparation that evening:

“That the garden would be wonderfully abundant and fruitful,” she says.

Amen.

Cameron Cox is a general food enthusiast and divides her time between making and eating soup, chasing down the next best hot sauce and pretending cheese consumption is a viable substitute for cardiovascular activity. She was born and raised in Carmel and writes to you from Oakland.

On the web: For an article on a class with Kinch and Pim Techamuanvivit and an interview with Pim, please go to www.ediblemontereybay.com and find the link to the Spring 2012 issue; click through to this story and they will be at the end.

Recipes: For recipes from this class—Kinch’s Nasturtium Risotto, Salt-roasted Beets with Sweet and Sour Vinaigrette and Braised Carrots, and Pim’s Gingerbread Cake with Plum Compote—go to www.ediblemontereybay.com and click on the “Recipes” tab.

In the Kitchen Local Treasure

Cal Stamenov’s glorious obsession with ingredients

By Deborah Luhrman Photography by Patrick Tregenza

“You’ve gotta see this,” Chef Cal Stamenov told me, his eyes dancing with excitement.

He was carrying a small square box just delivered by courier, and he sliced it open to let me lift the lid on a styrofoam container inside.

An unmistakable aroma filled the room and I saw three lumpy paper bags that I could tell were filled with truffles. Some were black; the more aromatic were white; all were shipped fresh from northern Italy.

My mind started spinning when I saw the enclosed invoice—more than $6,000!— but as we removed the paper towels from around each golf–ball-size truffle, Chef Cal’s mind was racing with ideas for preparing these culinary jewels.

“There aren’t a lot of restaurants around today where you can go and have caviar, or foie gras or abalone or black and white truffles,” Chef Cal says. “Those are the ingredients I like to cook with; that’s just the way I was trained.”

Cal Stamenov, chef and culinary director of Carmel Valley’s Bernardus Lodge, calls his cuisine “California natural,” but it’s more sophisticated than it sounds. Luxurious, yet full of vivid, fresh flavors. Simultaneously local and world class. Seasonal, yet exotic. Extravagant ingredients from the finest European purveyors sharing the plate with foraged delicacies from the fields of the Central Coast and the waters of the Monterey Bay. “Natural” might sound like the right word if you are visiting royalty or if—like Chef Cal—you have spent much of your life cooking with the world’s most celebrated French chefs. For us mere mortals, his cuisine is simply extraordinary.

Happily, morsels of those truffles I helped unpack made it into my dinner that night at Marinus, the lodge’s gourmet restaurant.

In fact, since it was winter, truffles featured in three dishes on the tasting menu. They first appeared in the seafood course:

Maine lobster and Monterey Bay red abalone, served with porcini agnolotti, Swiss chard and black truffle sauce. The steamed lobster and seared abalone were a real treat, but the tiny porcini-stuffed pasta pillows in their fragrant, earthy sauce stole the show, providing a perfect foil for the frost-sweetened chard.

Next came my favorite dish of the night: Sonoma duck over white truffle risotto, porcini mushrooms and foie gras in duck jus. The duck breast was cold-smoked over alder wood before being seared to crisp perfection in Chef Cal’s kitchen; the risotto was a creamy, sensual delight; and the foie gras added a decadent note to this heavenly plate. Truffles even appeared in an ice cream on the dessert plates.

Success Story

At age 52, Chef Cal sounds somewhat nostalgic and remarkably humble when he talks about an upward career trajectory that took him through some of the world’s ritziest restaurants before he settled in the Monterey Bay area 16 years ago.

He grew up in Castro Valley, an East Bay suburb of San Francisco, the son of a Bulgarian physicist who escaped from behind the Iron Curtain. At home his father cooked Central European dishes and “lots of lamb,” while his mother prepared the desserts.

Cal planned to become an engineer, but when he found out he hated his college classes and his part time job at an engineering firm he packed a suitcase, headed straight for the California Culinary Academy and didn’t look back.

Once finished at CCA, he crisscrossed two continents to accept assignments where he could refine his cooking.

“I never worked for the money,” he says. “For me it was all about the experience, the ability to work with first-quality ingredients and see others work with them.”

His first post was in the pastry kitchen of the famed Four Seasons Restaurant in Manhattan, and from there, he was accepted into the training program at the Swiss Hotel School in Bern.

“They made me measure everything precisely and taught me how to keep clean, which can be difficult when you are working with chocolate,” he laughs.

Returning to the Bay Area, Chef Cal got his first job as a pastry chef at Masa’s in San Francisco. “It was a traditional French restaurant and one of the hottest restaurants on the West Coast at that time, kind of the French Laundry of its day,” he says.

Next, he traveled east to work at JeanLouis Palladin’s restaurant Jean-Louis at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC. It was considered a mecca of French cuisine and famous for being one of the most expensive restaurants in the country.

Palladin was instrumental in creating what he called nouvelle cuisine américaine, featuring the top ingredients to be found around the Chesapeake Bay. But Cal stayed only a year before persuading his boss to place him in one of Europe’s finest kitchens, working for legendary chef Alain Ducasse at the three-Michelin-star restaurant Louis XV in Monte Carlo.

“Alain Ducasse was a quiet chef and worked seasonally. We changed the menu four times a year and the food was just beautiful, so natural and uncontrived,” he recalls.

“We did a lot of wild game and roasted birds. There were good steel pans, and herbs strewn over everything, good olive oil, good seasonings, and when it came out of the oven

Drawing on his classic French training, Chef Cal Stamenov likes to take the finest and most exotic local ingredients and elevate them to the status of haute cuisine.

it smelled so wonderful. Then being able to use the pan juices for your sauce, that’s a big deal—just true, natural flavors.”

The experience had a fundamental influence on the way Chef Cal cooks today.

“That’s the style I like to cook: no foaming, no chemicals, just real honest food,” he says. “Every time I see that foam I think it looks like somebody spit on the food. It just looks disgusting.”

Returning to the Bay Area, Cal headed for Napa because he felt the wine country was the capital of food culture in California. There he worked at Domaine Chandon in Yountville under chef Philippe Jeanty and gained an appreciation for heirloom produce from the vegetable gardens that were sprouting everywhere.

As he hit his 30s, Cal decided it was time to head his own kitchen and began looking around. The Highlands Inn in Carmel invited him to audition for the top chef’s job by preparing 24 different dishes for an eight-person tasting panel in just three hours. He won the panelists over, moved to our area and began learning about the array of fine ingredients produced and procured right here in this region.

When Bernardus Lodge opened in 1999 Chef Cal took the helm of its restaurants. Over the years he has helped define the inn’s elegant style and build its reputation, overseeing the kitchen of Marinus and the more casual Wickets bistro, as well as the Will’s Fargo steakhouse in Carmel Valley Village and catering operations at Laguna Seca racetrack.

“It’s a real pleasure to work at a winery restaurant. We cook with the juice, grill with the vines and serve the wine to our diners,” says Cal, who has even been known to slip sprigs of sourgrass from the vineyards onto his salad plates. (For more on Bernardus Winery, see page 49.)

Celebrity Diners

Unlike frenetic cooking shows on TV, the atmosphere in Chef Cal’s kitchen is calm and quiet. Cooks at the meat station and at the fish table grill, sauté and finish dishes with smooth, expert movements. There’s no yelling or screaming—Chef Cal says that went out in the ‘80s. Staffers say he often communicates when dissatisfied with just a sidelong glance.

More often there’s a lot of joking around, like the time a sous-chef decided to coat his shoes with gold pastry dust before serving Olympic track star Michael Johnson—famed for racing in golden Nikes. Johnson quipped that he hoped the food was up to Olympian standards.

Loads of celebrities have dined at Cal’s kitchen table and signed the walls above the banquette. One of the first was Julia Child, who enjoyed spot prawns while Chef Cal fretted that the roast chicken and vegetables she ordered were perfect. They were.

Leonardo DiCaprio has come in often, each time with a new girlfriend. And US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has a favorite corner table near the TV in Wickets bistro, where he dines whenever he’s in town.

Chef Cal is also in demand to cook for private events. Last year there were two highlights: a last-minute call from Oprah to cook dinner at her home in Montecito, and a buffet prepared for Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. executives, who had gathered in Carmel Valley to hear about the future of technology from none other than Apple’s Steve Jobs and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

“It was such a pleasure to stand and listen to them speak while we tried to keep the food from getting cold,” he recalls.

All About the Ingredients

Chef Cal’s desk overlooks the loading dock and co-workers say the only time he gets really excited is when a purveyor pulls up—especially when they come bearing exotic local ingredients like tart Lady apples or briny sea urchins. For years Cal’s been working hard to develop solid relationships with the best local providers of fruits and vegetables, seafood and foraged foods, particularly wild mushrooms.

“In France we always brought our best providers—of wild strawberries for instance—into the kitchen, sat them down at the chef’s table and gave them something to eat and that’s what I try to do here,” he says.

There’s a special place in his heart for Monterey fisherman Jerry Wetle, who gets plied with hamburgers when he brings Chef Cal the pick of his catch—usually sea bass, salmon, swordfish or tuna. He also has a soft spot for Freddy Menge, who provides wild

Inn Scents

Perhaps it’s the lavender-lined sidewalks and entryway that lift the mood. Troubles seem to melt away and world crises shrink into oblivion when you enter Bernardus Lodge in Carmel Valley.

Dutchman Bernardus “Ben” Pon—who moved to the area in 1983—has tried to create “an oasis where you can indulge in the better things in life.” His work resulted first in a winery and then in a country inn as elegant as any to be found in the Old World.

The Bernardus estate includes 57 guest rooms and a spa, where some of the wine is used in vinotherapy treatments and some of the lavender is used in artisan soaps and lotions.

There are two restaurants. In the elegant Marinus, diners can sit in the glow of a 12-foot stone fireplace or book one of two special tables: the chef’s table in the midst of the kitchen action or the wine cellar table inside the lodge’s 35,000-bottle collection. Wickets is a more casual restaurant with equally delicious food where locals love to come for lunch, sitting out in the sunshine next to the fountain on its Tuscan-style patio.

Owner Pon—a former race car driver who twice won Le Mans as part of the Porsche rally team—knows a little something about high performance. Uncompromising quality along with an efficient and gracious staff make Bernardus guests feel like fortunate family friends.

mushrooms that he has foraged and heirloom apples that he’s grown in his orchard in La Selva Beach.

And while the route his truffles take to Bernardus may leave a long carbon footprint, Chef Cal’s vegetables and herbs are grown on the premises and at one of the vineyard properties up the road or at Swank Farms in Hollister, just an hour away.

Cal’s other little secret is that he grows some of the more exotic fruits on the menu himself.

He is a member of the California Rare Fruit Growers and owns two acres just down the road from Bernardus. There he has planted more than 250 varieties of fruit-bearing trees, bushes and vines. He also raises chickens and used to have goats—until they started eating his plants. Avocado trees planted six years ago are finally starting to bear fruit and there is plenty of citrus, including the multi-pronged Buddha’s hand citron and tiny finger limes that contain granules of juice that pop like citrus caviar.

The Next Generation

Bernardus pastry chef Ben Spungin, who at age 34 has worked under Chef Cal for six years, spins out some of the kitchen’s wildest creations. His desserts tend to be complex compositions of tastes, textures and temperatures.

One of the desserts on our tasting menu was a “foraged” plate of candy cap mushroom mousse and hazelnut cake, with black truffle ice cream. Another called Chocolate Semi-Freddo included artfully arranged twobite portions of Valrhona chocolate pudding, toasted meringue, chocolate streusel and mint ice cream.

“Some chefs don’t care a lot about dessert but Cal does,” says Spungin. “He realizes it’s not just the savory food that matters, but the overall picture.” Spungin likes being inventive with local ingredients not often found in a kitchen: He makes caramels scented with pine needles and ice creams flavored with things like honeysuckle and oak bark. The honeysuckle ice cream is very fragrant and the oak bark ice cream tastes a little like toasted marshmallows.

Spungin says he appreciates the way Chef Cal nurtures young cooks by taking them along to events like tastings and meetings of the Rare Fruit Growers.

“I thought I knew everything when I started working with Cal, but then I found out that I didn’t know anything,” says Matt Bolton, who is now executive chef at the Hyatt Carmel Highlands.

“I was so fortunate to be working oneon-one with him. He taught me a lot of French techniques and I really honed my skills,” he says of the six years he spent working at Bernardus.

In fact, Chef Cal’s kitchen has been a real incubator of local culinary talent since it opened 12 years ago, with Bernardus alumni now heading four of the area’s top restaurants: Matt Bolton at Highlands Inn; Tim Wood at Carmel Valley Ranch; Jerry Regester at the Clement Intercontinental Hotel; and Jeff Rogers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. A fifth Bernardus alum, Christophe Grosjean, headed Aubergine at L’Auberge Carmel before returning to France last year and Matt Millea is executive sous chef at Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur.

“I hope that I’m helping elevate the quality of local cuisine,” says Chef Cal. “I don’t want to sound snobby, but food in our area has always been a little touristy. When chefs leave the Bernardus kitchen they try to maintain our level of quality; they use kind of the same ingredients, the same purveyors, and stay away from frozen foods.”

His pack of protégés keeps Chef Cal innovating to stay ahead. He would love to have the opportunity to earn Michelin stars, but unfortunately the famous French guide does not yet cover our area. At the same time Stamenov, who has three daughters, enjoys participating in local food and wine events, fundraising for the MEarth sustainability project at Carmel Middle School, and working in his orchard with hopes of seeing grandchildren plucking fruit from the trees someday.

For all these activities and because of his talent for training stellar chefs and transforming local ingredients into haute cuisine, it’s clear that Chef Cal himself has become one of the culinary treasures of the Monterey Bay area.

Recipes: For Chef Cal’s Mushroom Risotto recipe, go to www.ediblemontereybay.com and find the “Recipes” tab.

On the Vine Bernardus Winery

A passion for food-friendly, French-style vintages

About half an hour’s drive from the Bernardus tasting room in Carmel Valley Village, Bernardus Winery and two of its estate vineyards can be found in the Cachagua Hills amidst the oaks and chaparral.

Winemaker Dean De Korth and Vineyard Manager Matt Shea are the zany duo who have been striving to perfect Bernardus wines since teaming up six years ago, and it’s obvious they are having a blast in the process.

Harvesting of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes was finally underway the sunny afternoon I arrived to tour the winery. It was December 7th and possibly the latest Cab harvest in California. Hardly any leaves were left on the vines.

“I look for the seeds to turn brown and we were waiting for the skins to begin breaking down, which softens the tannins and reduces vegetable flavors,” says De Korth. There is a fine line between ripeness and rot, but once the decision to harvest is made a team of pickers swoops in and crates of grapes are unloaded onto a conveyor belt in front of the redwood winery for sorting and de-stemming before going into one of the fermentation tanks inside.

At an altitude of about 1,200 feet, the two Cachagua vineyards provide unusual growing conditions. Temperatures get as hot as the Central Valley in the daytime, but since the coast is relatively close nighttime temperatures can really drop. There is frequently a 50°

difference between night and day. Afternoon winds coming up from the ocean keep the grapes dry and reduce mildew.

“Cool overnight temperatures impart intensity and complexity,” De Korth says. “In places where it’s always hot you get those overripe jammy flavors with in-your-face high alcohol content.”

Bernardus’s “Bordeaux style” wines aim to seduce you with sophisticated subtlety. They are generally about 14% alcohol, rather than the 16% common in many Napa Cabs. “Like a lean racing machine,” says De Korth, with a nod to the Dutch owner Bernardus “Ben” Pon’s former career as a race car driver.

The seven-acre Featherbow vineyard and the 41-acre Marinus vineyard down the road are both in the Carmel Valley AVA. They are planted with Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, Malbec and Merlot. Shea has built an enormous composting system using pomace from the winery and restaurant wastes to mulch the vines. He also grows legumes in the vineyards as a cover crop and plants by the phases of the moon.

“I like to draw on the best practices from organic, biodynamic and sustainable gardening,” says Shea, who studied horticulture and sustainable vegetable production at Oregon State University. While the vineyards are not certified organic, Shea says there has been no pesticide use since he arrived.

Estate grapes, about to be harvested.

The soil is shale and sandstone rocks, sufficiently poor that the vines grow deep roots and struggle a little to produce the fruit. There are also seven acres of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes planted around Bernardus Lodge in what is called Ingrid’s Vineyard, a tiny estate vineyard named for the owner’s wife. Additional grapes are purchased under agreements with selected growers Gary Franscioni and Gary Pisoni in the nearby Santa Lucia Highlands region and Michael Griva in the Arroyo Seco AVA—all of whom produce grapes that are in great demand throughout California.

Yields from the 2011 harvest were 10%–20% below normal, due to cool spring weather and late rains, but that helps concentrate flavors.

“Every year nature rolls the dice,” Shea says. “But I think it’s going to be a great year for us. Up north there was too much autumn rain, but here we dodged the bullet.” Judging by barrel tastings of 2011 Merlot and Chardonnay, he is probably right.

Inside the winery it’s clear that no expense has been spared in the quest to make fine European-style wines in California. One huge room is filled with 18 Bordeaux holding tanks, not stainless steel as in most wineries, but commissioned in France and made of 10-foot slats of clear French oak, holding between 1,000 and 2,000 gallons each. The tanks are 20 years old so no longer impart flavor, but are used for fermentation and blending.

Each vineyard, varietal and harvest is aged separately in another huge room of the winery stacked with some 2,000 60-gallon barrels made exclusively of French oak.

“Mr. Pon said no American oak,” the winemaker explained, describing it as too pungent. “We want oak to assimilate into the wine in a refined way.” About a third of the barrels are replaced each year at a cost to the winery of half a million dollars.

De Korth, who was educated at the Lycée Viti-Vinicol in Beaune, Burgundy, and at the University of Dijon, is well versed in French techniques. He spends much of his time in the spring and fall tasting and blending wine from the various batches to get the desired effect.

“When I make a wine I have a picture in my mind and I try to build towards that image by trying to select the noble flavors like cassis or black cherry and minimize the ignoble flavors,” he says.

De Korth’s talents are apparent in the label’s flagship wine Marinus—a silky Meritage blend of Cabernet, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot grown on the Marinus Estate vineyard. He is also justifiably proud of two 2007 Pinot Noirs, one made with grapes harvested from Ingrid’s Vineyard on the premises of Bernardus Lodge and the other made with grapes from Rosella’s Vineyard in the Santa Lucia Highlands. All the reds make great pairings with Chef Cal Stamenov’s gourmet food at Bernardus Lodge. On the tasting menu, sommelier Mark Buzan often pairs Rosella Pinot Noir with duck breast and Marinus with Wagyu beef dishes.

Of the whites, the 2009 Monterey County Chardonnay is the winery’s best-selling bottle. It is minerally instead of oaky, which seems to be what customers are looking for these days.

Bernardus’s 2010 Griva Sauvignon Blanc was selected as one of the year’s top 100 wines by the San Francisco Chronicle. With grapes from Michael Griva, it was made in the dry New Zealand style, coldfermented in stainless steel. De Korth modestly says he made a varietally correct wine that smells and tastes just like the grape. Chronicle reviewers said, “Think of it as a greyhound, capturing the best of the variety’s lean, green side: padron pepper, bay laurel and verbena all play a role amid the racy fruit.” My less-trained palate found it crisp, slightly citrusy and delicious.

Bernardus winery is not open to the public, but the friendly tasting room in Carmel Valley Village is a good place to learn more. Exceptionally well-informed staff like to share their knowledge not only about Bernardus Wines and Carmel Valley wines, but also about the acclaimed Santa Lucia Highlands AVA, which is gaining more recognition with every vintage.

—Deborah Luhrman

Taste Test: De Korth tries the new vintage.

HOME ON THE RANGE

LOCAL GRASSFED ranches TAKE ROOT

Making healthier choices for animals and people alike

By Susan Ditz Photography by Ted Holladay

The cowboy life: Joe Morris and his nephew herding cattle this page and opposite; Julie Morris on overleaf

A century ago, raising grassfed beef was one of the Central Coast’s biggest businesses, and the sight of cattle grazing on natural forage in the shade of oak trees was a common sight. It was simply the way things were done.

Then came the industrialization and centralization of meat production at so-called factory farms. Also known as CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) or feedlots, these operations have dominated meat production for the last 40 years, providing consumers with low-cost cuts and the companies that owned them with big profits—but all at great cost to public health, the environment and the well-being of the animals themselves. (See sidebar, p. 55.)

But in recent years, local ranchers—notably in San Benito County—have joined a growing nationwide network that is promoting the return to a more holistic and healthy approach to raising cattle. They’re committed to spreading the word that pasturing cattle on local ranches, rather than shipping them off to fatten up at a feedlot, is much healthier for humans, far more humane for the animals, better for the environment and also a real benefit to the local economy.

For Joe Morris, owner with his wife, Julie, of San Juan Bautistabased Morris Grassfed Beef/T.O. Cattle Co., making the choice to pasture his cattle for the last 20 years has been a matter of values and heritage.

“I was born with my boots on, and nothing else has attracted me in the same way,” he says of the lifestyle he chose early on.

Morris’ ranching background dates back to his great-greatgrandfather, Richard O’Neill, who owned a butcher shop in San Francisco during the Gold Rush. In 1881, O’Neill, together with partner James Flood, purchased Rancho Santa Margarita (now Camp Pendleton) and formed T.O. Cattle Company. In 1927, Joe’s grandfather, J.J. Baumgartner, moved to San Juan Bautista, where Morris first learned about cattle raising.

Morris, a native of San Francisco, said that during summers growing up, he was “as attached to his grandfather as a flea to a dog.”

But before taking over the ranch with his wife Julie, then a journalist, in 1991, Morris took an unusual route: He graduated from the Great Books Program at Notre Dame, worked as a missionary in Venezuela and studied at the Graduate Theological Union at the University of California, Berkeley. A stint at the Spanish Ranch in Nevada helped him hone his approach to range management and affirm that he was meant to be a rancher.

As some may notice from his particular cowboy-style gear, Morris is influenced by the vaquero and buckaroo traditions that strongly emphasize a low-stress approach to caring for one’s land and ani-

mals, as well as a code of accountability. “The work is done elegantly,” he explains, likening it to fly fishing. “They [the vaqueros] used their brain as well as strength—it’s all performed as a dance: the cattle, the land, the people.”

The benefits of a grassfed operation to the land and the environment are extensive.

As they forage, cattle cultivate and fertilize the soil and encourage new plant growth, which reduces erosion, captures moisture and and builds stronger ecosystems, ultimately creating, Morris says, a “carbon sink” that sequesters carbon from the atmosphere and stores it in the soil.

This is critical because, according to research from the Rodale Institute, agricultural carbon sequestration has the potential to mitigate global warming and can be accomplished with no decrease in yields or farmer profits. In fact, those who are managing soils organically can convert carbon dioxide from a greenhouse gas into a food-producing asset.

At the time that Morris decided to adopt a grassfed model, he admits a lot of people thought he was a little crazy. But at the same time, meat recalls were increasing and consumers were starting to take a closer look at the entire food system.

In 2006, Morris formed a partnership with Liz and Everett Sparling, whose family has been ranching in San Benito County for seven generations. In addition to helping run Morris Grassfed, Julie Morris has become executive director of Community Vision San Benito County, a community development organization.

Morris provides consulting for others who want to go down the same path, and his holistic approach—in which the ranch and environment are an interconnected whole—has inspired additional local ranchers, like Sallie Calhoun of the nearby Paicines Ranch, to adopt similar practices.

Calhoun, a former software consultant who has owned the historic Paicines Ranch with her husband, Matt Christiano, for a decade, says she invested a lot of time studying the cattle business and determined that raising beef on grass “is just the right way to do it,” and conventional beef practices are “a fossil fuel-intensive, unsustainable model for agriculture,” referring to the immense amounts of fuel required to feed and transport conventionally raised cattle.

So instead, she follows an approach to running her 7,000 acres that is focused on managing natural grasses and legumes without requiring supplemental feed.

Part of Calhoun’s mission with the ranch activities is to reconnect people—particularly those living in urban and suburban set-

Researchers have been examining the health benefits of grassfed beef vs. grain-fed beef for several years.

One of the most recent studies conducted was published in 2010 in the Nutrition Journal and reported important findings about the value of grassfed beef.

University of California and California State University at Chico investigators studied decades of other research and ultimately concluded that grassfed beef may have some hearthealth benefits that other types of beef don’t.

Cynthia Daley, Amber Abbott, Patrick Doyle, Glenn Nader and Stephanie Larson determined that grassfed beef has more beta-carotene (vitamin A), vitamin E, conjugated linoleic acid and omega-3 fatty acids than beef produced using conventional cattle-feeding methods.

Mayo Clinic Cardiologist Martha Grogan, M.D. noted that this is significant because less total fat, higher levels of heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids and higher levels of CLA are thought to reduce heart disease and cancer risks. —Susan Ditz

tings—with the land by opening the ranch as a facility for such things as fundraisers, weddings, seminars and horse-training clinics.

“People often see ranch land like it’s just empty space—they need to understand that land must be carefully managed,” she notes.

In the Panoche Valley near Paicines, the Douglas family has for 16 years been raising Angus Beef cattle, white Dorper sheep and several varieties of pigs on large natural pastures. Dedicated to sustainable agriculture, they’re also committed to giving their animals a good life.

“Cattle weren’t meant to spend their life on concrete in a feedlot—it’s inhumane,” says Rani Douglas.

Instead, the Douglases’ animals are continually rotated on pastures to ensure that nutritious native grasses thrive. It also means that no chemicals, manufactured fertilizers or any other unnatural amendments to the land are ever used. The first time their animals are put in a truck is when they’re going to the processor.

Douglas isn’t just a rancher. She’s also an enthusiastic consumer.

“I’m partial to a leg of lamb with a curry crust,” she says. “For steak, you can’t beat a rib eye and for pork, my favorite is a slowcooked shoulder roast, which makes great pulled-pork sandwiches the next day!”

Grassfed beef has become increasingly common in area supermarkets, but currently much of it originates from out of the area or even out of the country.

Most local grassfed ranchers market their products directly to consumers via their websites, as many small vegetable growers are doing with Community Supported Agriculture subscriptions.

In fact, Morris runs a meat CSA, and all do some selling at seasonal farmers’ markets in Monterey, San Benito and Santa Cruz counties. Some use buying clubs, such as Santa Cruz Local Foods and Field to Feast, or deal directly with local butchers and chefs. But in all cases, the margins are very tight.

Indeed, the pricing of grassfed meat is a key challenge facing the rancher, the chef and the consumer.

For example, pastured animals cost more to raise and process, and meat can only be sold commercially if it is slaughtered and packaged by a U.S. Department of Agriculture-certified abattoir. Meanwhile, the facilities are governed by strict rules and those that were once located nearby, in Hollister, Gilroy and Santa Cruz, have been closed, as meat slaughtering has become more centralized. Today, there are just a few in California.

As a result, ranchers have to spend time and money hauling animals to be processed—as much as 10 hours one way—only to have to haul the meat back and then pay to keep it in a temperature-controlled warehouse.

“People need to understand the real cost of food,” says Loren Ozaki, known to many people on the Central Coast as a teacher and chef for Lightfoot Industries and The Rib King at local farmers’ markets.

A skilled butcher who does everything from curing meat to making sauces, Ozaki is a strong supporter of pasture-raised meats and buys only from small ranchers and farmers.

“A big operation can deal in volume, creating lower costs, but high-quality meat is grown on a small farm,” he adds.

It’s not just better for the cows

At Tassajara Natural Meats in Carmel Valley, Mark Shelley and his family estimate that $3 of every pound of beef they sell goes to processing.

“That doesn’t take into account any of the other costs to raise this meat,” he says.

Tassajara’s cattle graze on ranches in Big Sur and Elkhorn Slough, and are processed at a newly reopened abattoir in Newman (Sallie Calhoun was the driving force for getting it going), but it is still a three-hour trip one way.

“The processor is raising prices, so we have to increase the price of our ground meat to $7 a pound,” he says, and filets are much higher.

Ranchers make some adjustments to try to keep prices as low as possible.

For the Shelley family, that means processing cattle when they are young, about 700 pounds (what some have called free-range veal), which are raised on mother’s milk and grass. “That also enables us to sell every edible part; calves’ liver, sweetbreads, bones for stock and tongue,” he explains. They dry age (let it hang so natural enzymes tenderize) the meat for two weeks before it is cut and frozen.

Other ranchers in the region finish cattle longer to make what they consider the most advantageous weight and quality. Calhoun says she keeps her beef three years to finish properly and is limiting her grassfed herd to 20 until it becomes more economical to expand.

The ranchers also offer pricing discounts for buying a whole, half or quarter animal, which range from $6.30 to about $8.50 a pound. The challenge to the consumer is having enough freezer space to handle that much meat.

Meanwhile, people like Ozaki are encouraged to see more and more people develop what he calls a “better food value perspective,” or greater recognition of the higher value of healthful food versus less healthy food.

“After all,” Ozaki says, “isn’t your health worth it?”

Julie Morris agrees.

“If you want a protein-rich meal that is good for your body and good for the planet,” she says, “you’re going to choose grassfed.”

Throughout her more than 30-year career, Susan Ditz has enthusiastically worn three professional hats: writer, communications executive and organic herb farmer. She currently heads the Food/Ag Practice at Communications4Good in Santa Cruz.

Recipes: Please go to the “recipes” tab on the edible Monterey Bay home page at www.ediblemontereybay.com for Loren Ozaki’s tips for cooking grassfed beef as well as Sallie Calhoun’s recipe for Chuckwagon Chili and John Cox’s recipe for Filet with Caramelized Onion Puree and Brussels Sprouts.

Your local grassfed beef purveyors:

Morris Grassfed/T.O. Ranch • www.morrisgrassfed.com

Douglas Ranch • www.douglasranchmeats.com

Paicines Ranch • www.paicinesranch.com

Tassajara Natural Meats • www.tassajaranatural.com

Didn’t cows always eat grass?

If you ever wondered what happened to all the cattle that used to roam free to forage on ranches here and around the country, it’s not that everyone’s become a vegetarian.

In fact, the number of animals consumed in the U.S. is ballooning.

In CAFO: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories, published in 2010, editor Daniel Imhoff says that in the U.S. currently, “10 billion domesticated livestock—mostly chickens, pigs and cows—are raised and slaughtered annually…twice the number raised in 1980 and 10 times more than 1940.”

But over the last few decades, the livestock industry has become dominated by CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations), primarily for cattle. Commonly known as feedlots or factory farms, they evolved as a means to fatten animals more cheaply and quickly.

In a feedlot, cattle are “finished” in crowded pens with a specialized diet that typically consists of about 95% genetically modified grain—often subsidized corn byproducts resulting from the production of ethanol—as well as alfalfa and barley.

The high-grain diets quickly add fat or marbling, which contributes to tenderness and flavor.

But cows and other hoofed, cud-chewing mammals (known as ruminants) “are designed to eat fibrous grasses, plants, and shrubs—not starchy, low-fiber grain,” according to Jo Robinson, author of Pasture Perfect. “When they are switched from pasture to grain, they can become afflicted with a number of disorders, including a common but painful condition called ‘subacute acidosis’…causing them to kick at their bellies, go off their feed, and eat dirt.”

What’s more, feedlot cattle live a generally miserable existence and are prone to developing disease-causing organisms such as Salmonella and E. coli from unnaturally acidic stomachs caused by their diets and standing in confined, crowed conditions in their own manure. To reduce the risk, the animals are given chemical additives along with a constant, low-level dose of antibiotics, and that, in turn, is a contributor to the rise of antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

At a time when food safety is a major concern, according to a report in the Journal of Dairy Science, levels of E. coli are still usually higher in grain-fed cattle, and USDA beef recalls have steadily increased due to contamination linked to CAFOs. For example, in September 2011, 130,000 pounds of beef in 14 states were recalled due to suspected E. coli contamination and in October, 380,000 pounds of ground beef were recalled in California and Nevada. —Susan Ditz

Out to Sea Cooking for Solutions 2012

A party with a purpose

By Mike Hale Illustration by Bambi Edlund

The Monterey Bay Aquarium stands guard at one of the world’s most pristine ecosystems, its fierce advocacy fueled by the vivid reminder that just 80 years ago, our bay faced ecological ruin.

In his book The Death and Life of Monterey Bay: A Story of Revival, marine biologist Steve Palumbi describes these waters in the 1930s as “an overfished, industrial wasteland.” Just 150 years after Spanish explorers discovered the teeming bay, many of the sea creatures had vanished, and sardine factories spewed stench and waste before exhausting the fishery.

Those who damaged the bay grew inspired to preserve it, and they soon implemented groundbreaking principles of sustainability—including establishing a local marine refuge in 1931—that continue today.

When it opened in 1984, the aquarium vowed to help carry that torch, creating scientific and educational arms to find answers and sound appropriate alarms to prevent ecological backsliding. In 27 years, it has widened the path of public consciousness regarding the health of Monterey Bay.

To help protect fisheries, the aquarium hosted the first-ever Seafood Summit in the mid-1980s, and managing director Julie Packard became actively involved in groups like the Pew Oceans Commission and California’s Nature Conservancy.

This led to the creation of Seafood Watch, a sustainable seafood advisory program that raises consumer awareness about choices that

support healthy oceans. In its first decade, the aquarium distributed 40 million Seafood Watch regional consumer guides. (See illustration, opposite, showing sea life that meets Seafood Watch’s muster and thrives locally in Monterey Bay.)

The program has roots in the aquarium’s Fishing for Solutions exhibit that opened in 1997 and produced one of the first lists of sustainable seafood. It sparked interest in the power of the consumer and led to the formation of other advocacy groups, including FishWise of Santa Cruz, founded in 2002 to help grocery retailers in their seafood purchasing decisions.

When asked to develop a fundraiser for Seafood Watch, the aquarium’s director of special projects, Ginger Hopkins, turned to chefs, the influential tastemakers and trendsetters of the day. She wanted to plan a local food and wine event that was decidedly more thoughtful than the gaudy, gastronomic events seen elsewhere. Hopkins called it Cooking for Solutions, a celebratory showcase on sustainability and our connection with the fragile planet. The 12th edition takes place May 18-20 and features gourmet food and wine,

Celebrating the fish: Jellyfish float behind the action; Cindy Pawlcyn, the aquarium’s culinary partner. Opposite: Illustration of plentiful, sustainably caught seafood of the Monterey Bay by Bambi Edlund. We recommend you make a color photocopy and hang it in your kitchen!

Photos courtesy of Monterey Bay Aquarium/Randy Wilder

What’s new this year: expanded interactive “salon” series

How do you dress a fish? It might sound intimidating, but serious local foodies are likely to line up for an answer as part of an expanded Salon Series at Cooking for Solutions this May.

The interactive series (May 19-20, 10am-4pm) creates intimate, hour-long culinary experiences with chefs and artisans who provide tips, tricks and lively commentary.

“How to Dress a Fish” is led by Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Executive Chef Jeff Rogers.

“I want to take something sustainable, like black cod, and prepare it four different ways,” says Rogers. “Maybe a summer vinaigrette, a winter preparation with parsnips, skin on, skin off. I want to show versatility and seasonality.”

The series also includes the following:

• California Artisan Cheese: Take a tasting tour with the California Artisan Cheese Guild and a featured local cheesemaker.

• Bringing Home the Bacon: Join Tony Baker, executive chef at Monterey’s Montrio Bistro and owner of Baker’s Bacon, to learn the secrets behind making his Englishstyle bacon.

• Gold Rush: California Olive Oil: Peggy O’Kelly of St. Helena Olive Oil Company shows how she produces sustainable California olive oil in Napa Valley.

• Good Fish: Join Chef Becky Selengut, author of Good Fish, as she shares how to choose and prepare her favorite sustainable Pacific Coast seafood.

• The Future of Chocolate: San Francisco-based chocolate company TCHO fuses Silicon Valley innovation with Slow Food soul to make what it dubs “obsessively good, flavor-focused chocolate.”

• Chocolate: Raising the Bar: Join TCHO’s head chocolate maker for a guided tasting.

• Steak Out: Can beef be better for the planet? Join Chef Paula DaSilva and Niman Ranch for discussions about grassfed beef, humane husbandry practices and cooking methods.

• Handmade Gnocchi: Chef Jesse Ziff Cool cooks these light, delicate dumplings to perfection.

• Sweet Treats: Chef Jeff Jake from Silverado Resort and Spa will demonstrate confections and desserts made with milk, yogurt, butter and cream. It’s sponsored by Clover Stornetta, the nation’s first dairy to be American Humane Certified.

Classes cost $45 ($20 for aquarium members) with a oneday pass priced at $80. See www.cookingforsolutions.org for more details.

a gala, panel discussions, cooking demos, adventures and opportunities to meet the country’s most celebrated chefs.

A number of local restaurants will host the visiting chefs; area chefs who will present at the event include Art of Food’s Wendy Brodie, Earthbound Farm’s Sarah LaCasse, and Passionfish’s Ted and Cindy Walter.

Packard loves the tone of the event.

“We’ve been so fortunate to work with incredible chefs, winemakers and purveyors who share our deep commitment to transforming food systems so they contribute to healthy soils and healthy oceans,” she says.

The aquarium’s culinary partner, Cindy Pawlcyn, who has opened several iconic restaurants and and is overseeing a major renovation of the aquarium’s restaurant, calls the collaborative environment at CFS “inspirational.”

In the kelp forest: Wendy Brodie, a Carmel chef and caterer, serving at Cooking for Solutions.

“A lot of us are into sustainability, and sometimes that’s a hard sell,” she says. “So it’s nice to be with like-minded individuals.”

Brodie has volunteered her talent since Day 1 when she hosted Chez Panisse’s Alice Waters and other chefs at her Carmel Highlands home.

“I was so thrilled to be asked and included, and still am,” she says. “This isn’t just a party. Our local event is helping change the world.”

Mike Hale (the Grub Hunter) is a freelance writer and food blogger who lives on Spaghetti Hill in Monterey with his wife Melissa and a rotund orange tabby named Sopa. Read more at www.thegrubhunter.com.

Spring Foraging

Cooks Gone Wild

Miner’s lettuce, wood nettles, sorrel and how to find them

Story and Photography

by John Cox

It was curly parsley in the ‘80s, skewers of rosemary in the ‘90s and a rainbow of microgreens at the turn of the millennium. Today the world of food styling once again enters into a new era: an obsession with wild foraged foods.

Like many trends, it started at the vanguard and is slowly working its way into mainstream culture. Ten years ago Michel Bras published a book documenting a cuisine largely inspired by the wild greens and herbs surrounding his eponymous three-star restaurant in Languedoc, France. In 2006 Noma of Denmark landed a spot on Restaurant magazine’s coveted World’s 50 Best Restaurants list at a time when chef Rene Redzepi was leading the way with unprecedented use of wild foraged foods. For the last two years, Noma has won the title of World’s Best Restaurant.

Of course harvesting wild foods is not simply contained within an elite group of restaurants—foraging is as old as eating itself—and it is nothing new to the Central Coast. Intrepid outdoorsmen and adventurous cooks have long made use of wild local ingredients, and within certain ethnic groups wild edibles are highly valued as part of traditional cuisine. More recently, groups like Forage Oakland and Forage SF have helped educate more people on the Central Coast about finding free food in both wild and urban environments.

The image of collecting wild foods is quickly evolving from a largely secretive subculture into a fashionable mainstream hobby. It may only be a matter of time until smart-phone apps will be available to lead people to once hidden foraging spots. Urban Edibles, a group based out of Amsterdam, has already developed an app called Boskoi that maps wild foods in Belgium and the Netherlands.

But wild foods are still part of today’s cutting-edge cuisine and it’s a strange paradox: primordial ingredients assembled with precise precision. Chefs utilize wild flowers and plants not only to enhance presentation, but also to add contrasting flavor elements like acidity, spice and texture.

There is an old saying in kitchens that “what grows together goes together” and this concept has been taken to new extremes. Many times chefs will compose plates based on pairing an ingredient with items from its natural surroundings. A popular dish at Noma features a mosaic of wild blueberries with spruce shoots and wood sorrel.

Closer to home, chef David Kinch of Manresa in Los Gatos creates an homage to the tidal pools along our coast with local red abalone and sea urchin accompanied by seaweeds and other seasonal

ingredients. Neither of these dishes fits into the context of classical cooking—but both transcend traditional flavor profiles by creating a cerebral connection between the diner and a specific landscape.

As food blogs and social media fuel these emerging culinary styles, restaurants around the globe are trying to catch up on the wild-food movement. Don’t be surprised if you see someone consulting an iPhone and loading weeds into a Prada bag the next time you hit your favorite local hiking trail!

Starting to Forage

Luckily the combination of a mild climate and an abundance of parks and trails here along the Monterey Bay keeps wild foods readily accessible year round. While fall and winter are often considered the most prolific foraging seasons due to an abundance of mushrooms, spring is when the forests are filled with tender young plants like hedge nettles, miner’s lettuce and sorrel. Seasonal streams irrigate beds of wild watercress and bright orange banks of flowering nasturtiums. You can easily gather enough to make an entire wild salad, or simply gather a few leaves to accent a dish. (See related sidebar, p. 63.)

Before you start there are a few things you need to keep in mind: Know What You Are Looking For: You should never gather any wild food before learning proper identification from an expert. A field guide is a great reference and starting point, but it can’t replace hands-on guidance. There are numerous guides to wild food, but the most useful are those that focus on the smallest geographic region. One of my personal favorites, The Flavors of Home by Margit Roos-Collins, focuses specifically on the edible plants in the San Francisco Bay Area. Most importantly, no matter what, never, ever, eat something you can’t identify.

Hazards: Always be aware of your surroundings; many wild foods grow alongside patches of poison oak, so wearing a long-sleeve shirt and pants is imperative. If possible, wear light clothing and keep an eye out for ticks. If you are planning to go off trail you might consider treating your clothing with a permethrin-based tick repellent.

Plan, Communicate and Be Prepared: Before exploring remote areas, decide exactly where you are going and let someone know your plans. You should avoid traveling alone in the backcountry. Finding a few patches of wild edibles can easily lure you away from your intended path. Be smart and carry outdoor basics like water and a small first aid kit.

Wild things: Clockwise, from upper left corner, mustard flowers, radish flowers, nasturtium flowers and seeds, wild onions, onion flowers, wood mint, wood sorrel and wild fennel flowers and seeds.

Getting Started: To begin, all you need is a small pocket knife, a pair of gloves (for nettles and other thorny plants) and a bag for collecting. Remember to be discreet and only take what you can use. As a general rule, try to pick items that are at least 50 feet from the nearest road or trail to avoid contamination, and to preserve the scenery. Just like any outdoor activity, don’t leave anything behind. If you are removing items from the ground, be courteous and cover the area before you leave. Unfortunately not everyone is so considerate, and if you find trash along the way, try to remove it.

Keep a Notebook: As you find your favorite spots and recipes, keep a notebook to record your discoveries. Some items like wild garlic flowers are only available a few weeks out of the year, so it is helpful to remember where and when they pop up. If you are not adept at drawing you might consider pressing a few leaves and flowers into your notebook to help with identification and add an artistic touch.

John Cox is the chef at La Bicyclette and Casanova restaurants in Carmel and is also actively involved in teaching kids about sustainable, local foods. He has cooked his way across the country from Montpelier, Vermont, where he graduated from the New England Culinary Institute, to Hana, Hawaii, where was corporate executive chef for Passport Resorts.

Recipes: For John Cox’s recipes for Beef Tartare with Wild Mustard and Nasturtium and Wild Herb Dressing, please go to www. Ediblemontereybay.com and find the “Recipes” tab.

A Guide to my Favorite Spring Edibles

Wild Radish: The wild radishes that grow along the California coast are interesting in that they are actually a hybrid of a weed called jointed charlock and a cultivated radish. Both of these plants were introduced in the late 1800s but have completely hybridized over the last hundred years. Today it is believed that both original plants have been completely replaced by the current invasive hybrid.

Classified under Brassicaceae, wild radish is in the same genetic family as wild mustard and such cultivated plants as Brussels sprouts, broccoli and other flowering cabbages. The radish is a versatile plant and has a number of culinary applications. Young leaves and stems can be prepared by quickly blanching or sautéing in the same manner you would prepare rapini. (Do not eat raw leaves as some sources say they may cause indigestion.) When you can find tender green seed pods they can be either sautéed, added to a salad raw, or pickled and put away. The radish flowers make a beautiful and peppery addition to any salad or cold presentation. Though less popular—and too earthy and bitter for my taste—the roots from larger plants may also be harvested and can be roasted like a traditional root vegetable.

Local radish flowers cover a broad spectrum of colors, including white, cream, yellow and purple. The variegated flowers have four petals arranged in a cross shape.

Black Mustard: Legend has it that Spanish missionaries scattered mustard seeds along popular routes to mark them, hence their abundance along California roads and highways. Wild mustard is very similar in appearance to the wild radish above, with the exception of the flowers, which grow in bright yellow clusters and are similar in shape but much smaller.

You can treat the flowers and leaves the same as the radish. For a truly tedious labor of love you can collect the wild mustard seed and make your own mustard. Look for a plant whose pods have just begun to open.

Nasturtium: True to its Latin name, which literally means “nose twist,” every part of the nasturtium has an intense peppery heat reminiscent of arugula. Originally from Peru, the nasturtium traveled to Europe before making its way to the United States in the late 1700s. Young round leaves can be used as salads or to make a spicy pesto or aioli. The bright orange and yellow flowers are always a nice addition to salads. A frequently overlooked part of the plant is the seed pod, which can be either dried and used in a similar way to black pepper, or pickled whole like a caper. Nasturtiums are in the genetically diverse order of Brassicales, which encompasses both of the plants above, was well as more exotic edibles, like papaya and capers. (More on this later.)

Miner’s Lettuce: Not only is miner’s lettuce one of the few local wild edibles that is indigenous to the West Coast, it was so highly regarded by explorers as a dietary supplement high in vitamin C and iron that it was subsequently planted around the world, from Europe to Cuba. The name refers to the California gold miners who depended on its nutritional properties to fend off scurvy. But long before miners discovered it, native populations are said to

have left piles of miner’s lettuce outside of red ant hills so that as the ants traveled across the leaves they would excrete formic acid to mark their trail and thereby season the delicate greens.

While many local edibles can be somewhat spicy or astringent, miner’s lettuce is very mild and tender, with a taste and texture similar to domestic spinach. The plant itself is easy to recognize, with a slightly oblong leaf completely surrounding a slender stem that continues upward to a white or pink flower.

Wood Sorrel: Like its more commonly cultivated European cousin, wood sorrel has a refreshingly tart acidity reminiscent of lemon. The plant has long been valued for its medicinal properties and was once used to treat mouth and throat ailments. Some indigenous tribes chewed the leaves while traveling to alleviate thirst.

The heart-shaped leaves closely resemble a three-leaf clover. Since acidity balances bitterness, a few sorrel leaves added to a salad will help balance other more assertive greens like watercress or nasturtium. Another classic preparation uses sorrel leaves to make a sauce for fish. This can be as simple as pan-roasting a piece of fish with butter and then adding some garlic and chiffonade sorrel to create a quick sauce.

Fennel: The wild fennel that grows here on the Central Coast is genetically similar to the fennel in Sicily and along the coast of Southern Italy, and just like its Italian cousin, it is highly prized as a culinary ingredient. From the bright yellow pollen of new flowers to the dried winter stalks, each part of the fennel plant has a sweet anise flavor and aroma.

You need to be careful with proper identification, especially when gathering the dried plants, because they bear a similarity to poison hemlock. When fresh, the fennel plant has fine green fronds and a distinctive smell that makes it easy to identify. Dried fennel seeds are easy to store and are a great addition to fresh sausages or as a seasoning for meat. You can also collect the dried stalks for smoking or use the fresh fronds and local salmon to make gravlax, or cured salmon.

Wild Onion/Three Cornered Leek: These small wild onions grow in bunches and resemble grass, though each blade is slightly angular and has three points. During the spring a strong aroma of garlic is common along local trails where the plant grows.

The small white flowers with yellow accents are one of my favorite spring ingredients because of their simple elegance and clean flavor. I think that wild onions are most similar in flavor to a garlic chive. The flowers are perfect just the way they are, the stems can be substituted for chives or green onions, or tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper and then quickly grilled or roasted in a wood-fired oven. The bulb, while small, is excellent either pickled or shaved and used like garlic.

Wood-Mint/Hedge-Nettle: This plant is in the mint family even though it is commonly referred to as a nettle. It seems that most people overlook it as a culinary ingredient, but I find the aroma to be an interesting cross between apple and mint. I have blanched the leaves and incorporated them into pasta and used them to flavor roasted lamb. The aroma is unique and may not be for everyone, but when used sparingly it can add another flavor dimension in place of traditional mint.

—John Cox

Carried Away

Dine Local Guide

APTOS

7564 Soquel Drive • 831.685.3926 • www.carriedawayfoods.com

A cozy, green-certified take-out or eat-in café, Carried Away has a menu that changes weekly and features primarily organic, locally sourced ingredients. Owner-chef Tom McNary worked for many years at Chez Panisse and his dishes reflect the seasons. Soups, salads, entrees and desserts are all made fresh daily. Thin-crust pizzas available on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. Open M–F 11am–7pm, Sa 11am–5pm, closed Su.

BIG SUR

The Restaurant at Ventana 48123 Highway 1 • 831.667.4242 • www.ventanainn.com

A peaceful fireplace setting and rustic wood interior give way to a legendary terrace with some of the most amazing views Big Sur has to offer. Chef Truman Jones’ cuisine uses fresh, seasonal and sustainable ingredients sourced from local farms and foragers and reflects his memories of growing up on a farm and his experience working in some of the world’s most-acclaimed restaurants. The restaurant’s menu changes frequently and its wine list is award winning. The Ventana Bistro is available for private events. Open daily for lunch 11:30am–4:30pm, dinner 6–9pm.

BOULDER CREEK

New Leaf Community Market 13159 Highway 9 • 831.338.7211 • www.newleaf.com

The perfect place to stop for made-to-order sandwiches, trail mix and picnic supplies for hikers on their way up to Big Basin or Castle Rock State Parks. All ingredients are fresh and natural, meats are hormone free, produce comes from local growers. Open 9am–9pm every day.

CAPITOLA

Geisha Sushi

200 Monterey Ave. • 831.464.3328

Tucked into a quiet corner of Capitola Village, Chef David Graham has taken sushi to new heights, serving only healthy, sustainable seafood prepared in ways that let the freshness and flavors shine. And with such tempting offerings as salmon-like Arctic char, sweet marinated catfish, delicate Tombo Ahi and buttery walu, you won’t miss the net-caught blue fin or farm-raised eel or sea urchin. Produce used in Geisha’s menu items is sourced from local, organic farms, so you can be assured that when tucking into a meal in the airy pink space, you’re not only helping the ocean’s populations but local farmers as well. Open M–Th and Su11:30am–9:30pm, F–Sa 11:30am–10pm.

New Leaf Community Market

1210 41st Avenue • 831.479.7987 • www.newleaf.com

The New Beet Café at the entrance offers great alternatives to fast food, serving economical daily specials, wraps, pizza and homemade soup and smoothies—with free wi-fi in the dining area. Inside, a full deli has made-to-order sandwiches, healthy takeout salads and entrée items. Open 8am–9pm every day.

CARMEL

Carmel Belle

Doud Craft Studios • Corner of Ocean and San Carlos • 831.624.1600 www.carmelbelle.com

Passionate about sourcing the best local ingredients and meticulous about identifying them on the menu, Carmel Belle is a delicious choice for breakfast or lunch. Almost everything is organic, from the coffee to the meats and cheeses. Faves include a warm slow-cooked Berkshire pork sandwich with red onion-currant chutney on ciabatta, and their house-made mozzarella and asparagus panini. Open daily 8am–5pm.

Carmel Valley Ranch 1 Old Ranch Road • 831.625.9500 • www.carmelvalleyranch.com A soaring ceiling and picture windows framing coastal oaks bring the outside in at Carmel Valley Ranch. Chef Tim Wood describes his cuisine as “sophisticated rustic.” He takes freshness to lofty heights, sourcing vegetables from the Ranch’s own organic garden and Swank Farms at the height of ripeness—and often enough that he never has to refrigerate it, thus avoiding the flavor flattening that occurs when the sugar in refrigerated produce turns to starch. The restaurant also features local olive oils and wines and house-made ice cream and honey. Open for breakfast M–F 7–11:30am, lunch M–F 11:30am–5pm, dinner Su–Th 5–10pm and F–Sa 5–10pm, and brunch Sa–Su 11:30am–3pm.

Earthbound Farm’s Farm Stand Organic Kitchen 7250 Carmel Valley Road • 831.625.6219 • www.ebfarm.com/OurFarmStand Organic is essential at Earthbound Farm. In addition to fresh organic produce, prepared foods and gourmet groceries, the farm stand has a colorful salad bar and a certified organic kitchen. Under the direction of Executive Chef Sarah LaCasse, the kitchen turns out homemade soups and bakery goods daily. Take out or eat at outdoor tables set in the garden. The Farm Stand also hosts cooking demonstrations and other classes and activities. Open M–Sa 8am–6:30pm, Su 9am–6pm.

Photo credit Rob Fisher

Hyatt Carmel Highlands—Pacific’s Edge and California Market

120 Highlands Drive

• 831.620.1234 • www.highlandsinn.hyatt.com

Highlands Inn offers awe-inspiring views, stellar service and food that draws inspiration from local farms and purveyors. Built atop a craggy cliff overlooking Yankee Point and the Pacific, there is no better perch from which to view the setting sun or a breaching whale. Start your experience with a cocktail at the Sunset Lounge, followed by dinner in the glass-walled dining room at Pacific’s Edge (daily 6–9pm), featuring sophisticated California coastal cuisine from Chef Matt Bolton. For breakfast or lunch, dine al fresco on the redwood deck or indoors next to the warmth of a pot-bellied stove at California Market (daily from 7am).

Grasing’s

Corner of Sixth and Mission • 831.624.6562 • www.grasings.com

In an ivy-covered Carmel house lit by enormous wrought-iron chandeliers, Chef Kurt Grasing serves ultra-fresh coastal cuisine and upscale bar food for sharing. The dinner menu features chop house favorites, local farm-raised abalone and an eclectic variety of California wines at reasonable prices. Open M–Th for lunch 11am–3pm and dinner 5–9pm, F–Su for brunch 10:30am–3pm and dinner 5–10pm.

Mundaka

San Carlos between Ocean and Seventh • 831.624.7400 www.mundakacarmel.com

A convivial Spanish restaurant and tapas bar hidden away at the back of a Carmel courtyard, Mundaka is named for a coastal town in the Basque country and has a loyal following of locals. A surprisingly authentic kitchen led by Chef Brandon Miller produces organic specialties to share like patatas bravas, croquetas, tiny lamb chops and paella. Open for dinner 5:30pm–late every day.

Rio Grill

101 Crossroads Blvd. • 831.625.5436 • www.riogrill.com

The flavors of the southwest and beyond are highlighted at this locals’ favorite since 1983. The high-energy Rio features the talents of Chef Cy Yontz, who produces creative regional California cuisine using bold spices and an oak-wood fire. The recently renovated bar offers elevated cocktails and an award-winning wine list, catalogued and annotated on iPads, which are handed to guests along with their menus. (Sadly, however, they’re not for taking home.) Rio is open for lunch (11:30am–4:30pm), dinner (4:30–10pm) and Sunday brunch (11:30am—3pm).

CARMEL VALLEY

Bernardus Lodge

415 W. Carmel Valley Road • 831.658.3400 • www.bernardus.com

Chef Cal Stamenov oversees the kitchen for two restaurants at Bernardus Lodge. Elegant Marinus features starched white linens and gleaming crystal in a Tuscan yellow dining room. The menu changes daily and blends top California ingredients with decadent French preparations. Private parties can book dinner in the awardwinning wine cellar or at the chef’s table in the kitchen—where Julia Child and dozens of celebrities have dined. Next to the croquet lawn, Wickets is a more casual option with simpler preparations of exquisite local ingredients and produce from the lodge’s own organic garden. Sit next to the fountain on the sunny patio and try a brick-oven pizza topped with wild mushrooms or duck confit. Marinus: Open for dinner W–Su 6–10pm; Wickets Bistro: Open for breakfast 7–11am, lunch 11:30am–3pm and dinner 6–10pm, with light all-day menu from 2–6pm.

Lokal

13750 Center St. • 831.659.5886 • www.facebook.com/lokalcarmel

Chef Brendan Jones and business partner Matthew Zolan are aiming for the style to run high and prices low at their new digs in Carmel Valley Village. Ingredients will be sourced locally and the inspiration from Spain, Japan and other places that have also inflected the dishes that Jones has developed for his dad’s local icon, Cachagua General Store. Look for choices such as steamed buns with pork belly and spicy watermelon rind, burnt Caesar salad with asiago cheese lollipops and Spanish-style aged steak with local chanterelles. The laid-back but elegant interior features a 28-foot reclaimed fence wood bar where local wines and beer will be poured; an adjacent beer garden will open by summer. Open for dinner Thu–Sa, breakfast and lunch M-F and brunch Su. Check facebook page for hours.

New Leaf Community Market

FELTON

6240 Highway 9 • 831.335.7322 • www.newleaf.com New Leaf offers the best fresh food made and grown here on the Central Coast. Made-to-order sandwiches, salads and hot foods are all natural. No nitrates, hormones, antibiotics or artificial ingredients. Open 9am–9pm every day.

Freedom

Freedom Meat Lockers and Sausage Company

160 Hi Grade Lane, Freedom • 831.724.4355 • www.freedommeatlockers.com Worth searching out for their natural home smoked meats and sausages, this oldfashioned butcher shop also has a take-out deli with hot and cold sandwiches, side salads and homemade apple or berry pies from nearby Gizdich Ranch. Favorites include marinated tri-tip, skirt steak and pulled pork sandwiches. Gift packs and custom smoking of your fish or game is also available. Open Tu-Sa 9am-6pm, deli hours 10am-5pm.

HALF MOON BAY

New Leaf Community Market

150 San Mateo Road • 650.726.3110 • www.newleaf.com

Green plate specials offer healthy natural lunches for $5 daily and full dinners for $9.99. Lunches like Diestel turkey wraps and tri-tip sandwiches change daily. Hot dinner specials include classics like meatloaf with mashed potatoes and Smart chicken parmesan. Open 8am–9pm every day.

Marina

Wild Thyme Deli & Café

445 Reservation Rd. • (831) 884-2414 • www.wildthymedeli.com

Chef Terry Teplitzky offers a dizzying array of influences on the menu at his quaint and cozy café. A tantalizing slate of salads includes everything from traditional tuna and Greek to Asian cabbage and Chinese noodle. Also on offer is some of the best mango-chutney-bursting curry chicken in the region. East Coast classics, such as massive submarines, housemade corned beef and pastrami, as well as great Jerseystyle cheesesteak might smack of fast food, but everything is prepared with organic, locally sourced ingredients. Open M–Sa 10am–5:30pm.

MONTEREY

Monterey Bay Aquarium Café and Restaurant 886 Cannery Row • 831.648.4870 • www.montereybayaquarium.org Sweeping views of the Monterey Bay are the focal point of the upscale restaurant inside the Aquarium. Executive Chef Jeff Rogers prepares sustainable seafood approved under the Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program. Preparations range from New England clam chowder to Thai-style mussels, with child-friendly options as well. Complimentary binoculars offered for viewing sea life in the bay. Open 11am–5pm. A self-service café is open 10am–5pm. Aquarium admission required.

Montrio Bistro

414 Calle Principal • 831.648.8880 • www.montrio.com

This sophisticated bistro located in a historic brick firehouse in Old Monterey lures with a creative, seasonal menu created by Chef Tony Baker, a British expat with an eclectic style. Montrio’s faithful start early, enjoying the small-bite menu during happy hour at the lively bar—with a spirited, innovative cocktail program designed by mixologist Anthony Vitacca. Dinner begins at 5pm nightly, and patrons often linger well into the night. Montrio embraces sustainability, purchasing from local farms and vendors, following Seafood Watch guidelines and employing a triple-filtered tap water system.

Parker-Lusseau Pastries and Café

731 Munras Ave., Monterey • 831.643.0300

539 Hartnell St., Monterey • 831.641.9188

Ryan Ranch, 40 Ragsdale Dr. Suite 100, Monterey • 831.655.3030 www.parker-lusseaupastries.com

Gorgeous French pastries, cakes and tarts are lovingly hand-crafted by the young couple that owns this gem of a bakery, Ann Parker and Yann Lusseau. If you want something hot from the oven, go to the Munras Avenue location where everything is baked. The Hartnell shop is a rustic café in an historic adobe in Old Monterey. Croissants, quiche, eclairs, cream puffs and chocolates are all on the menu, along with a selection of sandwiches, salads and soup. Also offering custom cakes for weddings and other special occasions. Munras store open W-Sa 7am-4:30pm. Hartnell store open M-F 7am-5:30pm and Sa 7:30am-4pm. Ryan Ranch store open M-F 7:30am-3pm.

Stone Creek Kitchen

465 Canyon del Rey Boulevard • 831.393.1042 • www.stonecreekkitchen.com

A glass-walled kitchen in the middle of a spacious cookware shop turns out imaginative Mediterranean deli treats and sweets to take away or eat under the market umbrellas outside. Petite baguette sandwiches—like grilled chicken, artichoke hearts and Boursin cheese—are little works of art. Don’t miss the pistachio/cherry chocolate bark or the paella Fridays. Open M–F 10am–7pm, Sa 10am–4pm, closed Su except during November and December.

Tarpy’s Roadhouse

2999 Monterey Salinas Highway • 831.647.1444 • www.tarpys.com

This romantic, historic stone roadhouse—built in 1917 and set on five, beautifully landscaped acres—features dining in several semi-private rooms and on a cozy garden patio. Chef Michael Kimmel uses a wood-burning grill to prepare American country cuisine, including wild game, prime steaks and local seafood, daily from 4:30pm. A popular site for Sunday brunch (11:30am–3pm) and local weekday “power lunches” (11:30am–4:30pm), Tarpy’s also attracts a spirited bar crowd and is a popular spot for large banquets, meetings and celebrations.

The Wild Plum Café, Bistro and Bakery 731 Munras Avenue • 831.646.3109 • www.thewildplumcafe.com Tucked away in downtown Monterey, the Wild Plum is a local favorite for its fresh breakfast pastries and takeout entrées, like lasagna, sesame chicken and sustainable seafood. Everything is homemade on the premises and owner Pamela Burns haunts three farmers’ markets each week for the most delicious seasonal, local produce. Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner Tu–Sa 7:30am–8:30pm, Su–M for breakfast and lunch 7:30am–5:30pm.

PACIFIC GROVE

Happy Girl Kitchen Co. 173 Central Avenue • 831.373.4475 • www.happygirlkitchen.com

The menu changes daily at Happy Girl’s airy and bright Pacific Grove café, but the food is always delicious, organic and reasonably priced: The sandwich of the day is $5.50 and a bowl of the soup of the day is $4.50. To drink, you’ll find kombucha on tap and Blue Bottle Coffee brewed fresh. Homemade baked goods include a daily scone, cookies and turnovers. When it’s time to go, take home some famed Happy Girl preserves or another local artisan food product from the café’s wide selection. Open daily 8am–3pm.

il vecchio

110 Central Avenue • 831.324.4282 • www.ilvecchiorestaurant.com

Fresh, authentic Italian pastas, entreés and desserts at affordable prices draw crowds nightly and create a festive atmosphere at Pacific Grove’s newest hotspot. The warm, rustic interior was created using reclaimed and salvaged materials by owner Carl Alasko’s daughter Ariele—a Brooklyn-based designer. Many of il vecchio’s recipes originated at Rome’s renowned Maccheroni trattoria. Open Tu–Su 5–9:30pm.

Passionfish

701 Lighthouse Avenue • 831.655.3311• www.passionfish.net

If you’re looking for a restaurant with playful, spectacular food and a scrupulous commitment to sustainability, Passionfish is hard to rival. The elegant dining room is celebratory yet relaxed, and the award-winning wine list features many sustainable names and is priced at retail. Chef Ted Walter’s menu is ever-changing with the seasons, but always includes organic local produce, inventive slow-cooked meats and an array of sustainable seafood choices. The restaurant was the first to be certified by the Monterey County Green Business Program. Open every day from 5pm.

Point Pinos Grill

79 Asilomar Boulevard • 831.648.5774 • www.ptpinosgrill.com

With an unbeatable location on the golf course near Point Pinos Lighthouse, this clubhouse restaurant also has unbeatable food now that Chef Dory Ford and his team from Aqua Terra Culinary have taken over. Breakfast and lunch classics get his sustainable, gourmet spin, like buttermilk blueberry pancakes made from scratch, heirloom tomato tart, or arugula, fig and prosciutto salad. Happy hour prices and appetizer supper specials start at 3pm. Open daily from dawn to dusk.

SALINAS

Growers Pub

227 Monterey Street • 831.754.1488 • www.growerspub.com Decorated with sepia photos of field hands and packing houses, Growers Pub is really a restaurant where even your great-grandfather might feel right at home. A classic menu, built around its famous prime rib and steaks, also features salmon, pasta and salads made with local greens. Don’t miss the 1940s vintage bar with its once scandalous bare-breasted Indian maiden. Open M–F 11am–9pm, Sa 5–9pm, closed Su.

SANTA CRUZ

Cellar Door 328 Ingalls St. • 831.425.6771 • www.bonnydoonvineyard.com Adjoining the celebrated Bonny Doon Vineyard tasting room, the Cellar Door offers innovative and exquisite seasonal menus, both prix fixe and à la carte, served in an eclectically decorated dining room featuring an exhibition kitchen and woodburning pizza oven. Chef Jarod Ottley uses the freshest harvests of Bonny Doon’s own San Juan Bautista ranch and other organic farms around the region to spin the daily chalkboard listing of small plates, entrees and desserts. Open Th–F: 5:30–9pm, Sa 12–2pm, 5:30–9pm, Su 12–7pm; special communal dinners Wednesdays, with one 6:30pm seating and a price of $30 for three courses plus a glass of wine, Randall Grahm himself presiding.

Charlie Hong Kong 1141 Soquel Avenue • 831.426.5664 • www.charliehongkong.com Charlie Hong Kong has been providing the Santa Cruz community with healthy, fresh, high-quality food since 1998. The restaurant’s fusion of Southeast Asian influences and the Central Coast’s local organic produce is what has made it a neighborhood favorite. Its slogan is “love your body, eat organic,” and its cuisine is proof that fast food can be good for you. Open daily from 11am–11pm.

Companion Bakeshop 2341 Mission Street • 831.252.2253 • www.companionbakeshop.com

After five years on the farmers’ market circuit, Companion has opened its own bakery/café. It has a brick oven, where organic sourdough bread is baked throughout the day, and a long communal table for sharing a coffee with your neighbors. Eight kinds of sourdough bread and seasonal pastries are made with local, organic ingredients. Open Tu–F 7am–1pm, Sa–Su 8am–2pm, closed M.

Gabriella Café

910 Cedar Street • 831.457.1677 • www.gabriellacafe.com

One of the city’s most charming dining spots, Gabriella Café serves a CaliforniaItalian menu starring organic produce from local growers and the nearby farmers’ market, as well as humanely raised meat and sustainable seafood. There is a candlelit patio and a cozy dining room that showcases the work of local artists. Open for lunch M–F 11:30am–2pm, dinner every day 5:30–9pm, brunch Sa–Su 11:30am–2pm.

New Leaf Community Market

1134 Pacific Avenue • 831.425.1793 • www.newleaf.com

New Leaf’s headquarters in an old bank building on Pacific Avenue is a worthwhile stop for all foodies. Crowded with gourmet natural foods, it also has a deli with sandwiches, salads and hot entrées. A dining area out front is great for people watching and listening to street musicians. Open 9am–9pm every day.

New Leaf Community Market

1101 Fair Avenue • 831.426.1306 • www.newleaf.com

The Westside New Leaf has a large deli counter and coffee bar, with a big selection of sandwiches, salads, bakery items, soups and other hot foods. You can eat at an instore counter or at tables outside. There is a community classroom here for frequent cooking classes. Open 8am–10pm every day.

www.ediblemontereybay.com

The Penny Ice Creamery

913 Cedar Street

• 831.204.2523 • www.thepennyicecreamery.com

Lines out the front door of its converted Spanish bungalow are evidence of Penny’s popularity. All ice cream, including bases, is made from scratch on the premises using local organic ingredients when possible. Flavors change seasonally, but two favorites are bourbon bacon chocolate and strawberry pink peppercorn. Open Su–W noon–9pm, Th–Sa noon–11pm.

The Picnic Basket

125 Beach Street • 831.427.9946 • www.facebook.com/thepicnicbasketsc Across the street from the main beach, owners of the Penny Ice Creamery have opened an alternative to boardwalk fast food. Sandwiches, organic salads, coffee and beer, all from local food artisans, and of course Penny’s popular ice cream are all on offer to eat in or eat outside with your feet in the sand. Open 7am–midnight every day.

Ristorante Avanti

1711 Mission Street • 831.427.0135 • www.ristoranteavanti.com

A popular Mediterranean-style neighborhood bistro with a warm wood-paneled dining room. Food is prepared naturally and simply using local organic produce, wholesome oils and real Italian cheeses and meats. Avanti’s reputation is deeply engrained in the sustainable farming practices of the area. Hidden in a strip mall, this is a real gem. Open for lunch M–F 11:30am–2pm, for dinner Su–Th 5–9pm, F–Sa 5–9:30pm.

River

Café

415 River Street, Suite K • 831.420.1280 • www.rivercafesantacruz.com

A popular spot for breakfast and lunch at the Old Sash Mill, the River Café now serves dinner on Thursday and Friday nights. All meals are made with seasonal, local and organic ingredients, prepared with a Mediterranean flair. Homemade granola and quality panini. Dining inside or on their redwood deck. Open M–W 6:30am–6pm, Th–F 6:30am–10pm, Sa 6:30am–6pm, Su brunch 10am–3pm. Come by and visit their new organic produce and flower stall on Tuesdays 11:30am-4pm.

Verve

816 41st Avenue • 831.475.7776 • www.vervecoffeeroasters.com

1540 Pacific Ave. • 831.600.7784

104 Bronson St. Suite 19 • 831.464.8141

Award-winning baristas and carefully selected coffee beans, hand-roasted on the premises, make Verve a must-stop destination for coffee connoisseurs throughout the Monterey Bay area. A short walk for the surfers at Pleasure Point, the café is bright and modern and always smells great. Free cuppings offered on Fridays. Open M–Th 6am–7:30pm, F–Sa 7am–8:30pm, Su 7am–7:30pm.

Vivas Organic Mexican Restaurant 1201 Soquel Avenue • 831.425.8482 • www.vivasorganic.com

A splashing fountain suggests an old Mexican patio but the food is a modern, organic and delicious take on south-of-the-border classics like tacos, tostadas, quesadillas and burritos. All meats and vegetables are organic. Local juices, organic white and brown rice are available, as well as vegan options. Open M–F 10am–10pm, Sa–Su 9am–10pm.

WATSONVILLE

Gizdich Ranch

55 Peckham Rd. • 831.722.1056 • www.gizdich-ranch.com

Visitors from great distances love this third-generation, family-run farm business that popularized the “pik-yor-sef” experience just east of Watsonville’s Interlaken neighborhood. Tour the farm, pick fresh apples or berries or watch the action inside the juice-pressing barn. No one leaves hungry if they spend time at the bakerydeli that pleases with its fresh pies, shortcakes and pastries, along with hearty sandwiches and box lunches. This family friendly experience is also a treat for kids, who will enjoy the wide-open spaces and the homemade popsicles and slushes. Open daily, 8am–5pm.

Local Libations

What’s in a Name?

Mixologist Addison Kester dreams them up at 515 Kitchen & Cocktails

By Elizabeth Limbach Photography by Ted Holladay

Kester and his team of seven bartenders make weekly trips to the farmers’ market that pops up directly across the street every Wednesday, where they pick up ingredients like cilantro, kiwis and strawberries.

His greatest passion, however, is preserving the many seasonal flavors of Santa Cruz in elixirs that can be used year-round, namely, in home-crafted infusions and simple syrups.

“There are so many things that Santa Cruz can offer, but that you can’t get year-round,” he says. “It’s the idea of creating something that you know will be consistent three months from now if you make a couple batches.”

Kester’s cocktail menu is sprinkled with the resulting housemade simple syrups (including ginger, strawberry-cilantro, Earl Grey and black pepper) and alcohol infusions (thyme bourbon, Earl Grey gin, and cucumber vodka among them). Kester’s latest experiment is a coffee cocktail that uses house-infused Verve coffee whiskey with homemade pecan coffee bitters.

The reward of all this passion and effort is that despite having one of the tiniest bars in town (two bartenders barely fit behind it; three is pushing it), “we pump out enough volume to contend with some of the big boys in town,” Kester says. And voters in annual local newspaper contests consistently pick the 6-year-old establishment when it comes to “Best Drinks.”

As for Kester’s own story, 515 is a central theme. Sitting down with a Never Knows Best amidst the couches, dim lighting and fireplaces that the bar uses to produce a classic lounge-y, 1930s speakeasy effect, he admits: “I’m here all the time.”

And even when he’s not working, the young manager isn’t far— he rents an apartment across the street and organizes weekly get-togethers at nearby Verve Cofee Roasters for the staff to brainstorm ideas and discuss new drinks.

“I love what this establishment is about,” Kester says. “I would hope one day to either own this place, or own my own bar that is similar to it.”

515 Kitchen & Cocktails 515 Cedar St., Santa Cruz • 831.648.8880 www.515santacruz.com

Some call it Five-One-Five, while others, including head mixologist and manager Addison Kester, call it Five-Fifteen. Even the mouthful Five Hundred and Fifteen would be admissible, says Kester. “It’s a place of many names, I guess,” he laughs.

Thanks to Kester, a 25-year-old Santa Cruz native and UC Santa Cruz alumnus who became manager of 515 Kitchen & Cocktails at the barely legal age of 21, the place is now best known for its creative and delicious mixed drinks—and their equally creative names, which are laced with pop culture references.

The Never Knows Best, for instance, is a nod to the Japanese anime program Fooly Cooly, and was born from Kester’s desire to create a great fernet and Jameson drink. (The secret to his original treatment of the popular pours can be found in the recipe opposite.)

Kester’s vision for inventive concoctions means frequent tweaks to the drinks menu, which, like the dinner menu, is composed of fresh and largely local and seasonal ingredients.

Never

Knows Best ½ ounce fernet 1½ ounce Jameson Irish whiskey 3 sprigs of mint ½ ounce simple syrup Sparkling wine

Place mint and simple syrup into a pint glass, add ice and muddle. Add fernet and Jameson and shake. Strain into a glass and top off with sparkling wine.