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EDIBLE NOTABLES Sweet times for award-winning Mutari Chocolate in Santa Cruz; Hollister’s best little Mexican-style bakery is a long family tradition; Olive oil is putting tiny San Ardo on the map, with a fth-generation family ranch now a modern day agricultural success
EDIBLE NOTABLES HOT CHOCOLATE
Sweet times for award-winning Mutari Chocolate in Santa Cruz
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BY LAURA NESS PHOTOGRAPHY BY PATRICK TREGENZA
Mutari owners Katy Oursler and Stephen Beaumier firmly believe chocolate makes you happy
Heavenly is the first word that pops into my head as the elemental essence of chocolate wafts from the Mutari factory and shop on Front Street in Santa Cruz. Inside, piles of cacao beans in burlap sacks imprinted with their country of origin line the floor, while empty sacks adorn the walls.
This isn’t just a chocolate shop; it’s a window on the world of cacao.
Owners Katy Oursler and Stephen Beaumier took over Mutari three years ago. Gourmands to the core, the couple stone grinds ethically sourced, single-origin cacao beans to create their drinking chocolate and confections under the Mutari and White Label brands.
“We are one of only about 150 bean-to-bar makers in the U.S.,” says Beaumier, a chef with a pedigree from Michelin-star restaurants Cyrus and Quince. Chocolate connoisseurs often visit Santa Cruz to seek Mutari out.
Explains Oursler, “Cacao grows in the rainforest belt around the equator. We travel around the world meeting farmers. Each farm has its own terroir, which you can taste in the beans.” The owners currently source from 11 different farms and typically pay four times fair trade for beans.
Oursler, who hails from Ithaca, N.Y., helped found Outstanding in the Field with Jim Denevan and specializes in farm-to-table events. Beaumier, a New Hampshire native, considers cacao one of the most challenging ingredients he’s ever worked with due to the combination of science and artistry needed to produce high-quality products.
Both live just four blocks from the shop, where Beaumier spends many an hour dialing in the ideal roasting time and temperature for each type of bean. A friend fashioned a drum basket for the eBaysourced Henny Penny rotisserie oven that was actually built for roasting chickens. Beaumier and Oursler paid $1,200 for it. A typical cacao roaster would have cost them $50,000.
When I break open a fresh-roasted Honduran bean, it imparts the aroma of chocolate-dusted pecans, and tastes much the same. Its crunch and flavor have me hooked. Oursler reminds me that cacao contains theobromine, a stimulant and antioxidant far more subtle than caffeine. A vasodilator, it can help lower blood pressure. Yep, chocolate really is good for you.
Cacao is sourced from 11 tropical farms and roasted in a repurposed chicken rotisserie
Oursler walks me through the cacao to cocoa process. After harvesting and cutting open the cacao pods, which contain between 30 and 50 beans attached to a placenta, farmers ferment the beans in wooden boxes with the white guava-tasting pith that coats the beans. After fermentation, the beans are dried, preferably slowly, to reduce acid.
Upon receiving the sacks of beans, Oursler and Beaumier handsort them before roasting. Beans are then cooled, cracked, winnowed to remove husks, ground into nibs and refined in liquid form. They are then blocked and aged for a month, before being conched and tempered in large melanger vats with paddles that revolve slowly for three to five days. Tempering ensures a sharp snap, a glossy appearance and an even, creamy melt. It’s time consuming and labor intensive.
Mutari produces about 100 pounds of 70% chocolate per week, from 100 pounds of beans. About 30% of the chocolate is lost in processing, with organic sugar and a touch of residual molasses making up the difference. Husks are used for fertilizer and to make cacao tea.
To preserve the terroir of each batch of single origin cacao, the two don’t add any dairy. “We only use Native Organics full-cream coconut milk in our hot chocolates,” explains Oursler.
So, how does it taste? Earthy, rich, multi-layered and contemplative—Mutari chocolates engage your every sense.
Choose from Himalayan pink salt, spicy Mexican and straight up hot chocolate, all flavors swirling in mixing machines on the counter. Served in ceramic mugs handcrafted by Jonas Davidson of Permanent Vaclaytion, the hot beverage approaches a ceremonial experience.
Even richer is Mutari’s sipping chocolate, with a whipping cream texture that defies quick drinking and is more like liquid pot de crème.
Oursler says the frozen dark chocolate, made with 77% Costa Esmeraldas Ecuador Ganache, topped with housemade organic whipped cream and chocolate syrup, is a fan fave. No wonder people come from far, far away for these decadent treats.
Mutari offers a selection of truffles, chocolate bars and baked goods, all made in house. The brownies are life changing. Snag a bar of Wild Bolivia (blueberry and blood orange), which won a silver medal out of more than 1,000 entries, at the 2018 International Chocolate Awards. The business won bronze for its Honduras La Masica (explosive raspberry and roasted hazelnut) in 2017.
If you really want to geek out on cacao terroir, partake in Mutari’s drinking flight, $15. Much like wine, you might enjoy Costa Esmeralda from Ecuador because you like cabernet for its tobacco, earth and pepper, while others might prefer Anamalai from India for its high acid and olive notes, more like cool climate syrah.
And, it’s all alcohol free.
Tours and tastings are available by appointment for eight or more guests for $20. Oursler says she and Beaumier plan to offer chocolate fondue parties, as well as special gift sets, during the holiday season. Oh, and they make their own marshmallows, too.
Laura Ness is a longtime wine journalist, columnist and judge who contributes regularly to Edible Monterey Bay, Spirited, WineOh.TV, Los Gatos Magazine and Wine Industry Network. Her passion is telling stories about the intriguing characters who inhabit the fascinating world of wine and food.
Mutari Chocolate Factory and Shop: 504 Front St., Ste. A, Santa Cruz, open W–Su Pop-up Chocolate House: 1108 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz, open F–Su www.mutarichocolate.com
tis the season for ice cream | thepennyicecreamery.com
EDIBLE NOTABLES EL NOPAL
Hollister’s best little Mexican-style bakery is a long family tradition
BY ROSEANN HERNANDEZ CATTANI PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHELLE MAGDALENA
Some people find their dream job after spending years at school or completing a fancy summer internship in one of the major cities, while others, like fourth-generation baker, Francisco “Frankie” Berlanga, are born into their vocation.
“My grandfather’s dad and all his brothers had bakeries in Mexico,” says Berlanga one busy Saturday morning at El Nopal Panaderia and Tortilla Factory on 3rd Street in Hollister. Berlanga, 34, operates both the flagship location and a second El Nopal bakery on 4th Street in San Benito County’s largest town.
Standing in front of a rotating commercial oven where a number of mini French loaves, known as bolillos, are baking and slowly turning a light golden color, Berlanga tells how a little pig helped shape the story of his family’s baking roots in the United States.
When Berlanga’s grandfather, also named Francisco, was a teenager, he worked at his father’s bakery in Nuevo Laredo, a town in Mexico located on the banks of the Rio Grande. There, as a young man he learned the family trade and more importantly, his father’s recipe for puerquitos, a soft gingerbread cookie that comes in the shape of a pig.
Mexican pan dulce (or sweet breads) are named after their shape. There are elote (corn), cuernos (horns) and conchas (shells)—a fluffy, slightly sweet yeast bread with a sugary topping in either pink, yellow, white or brown. All are perfect for dunking in coffee or champurrado, thick cinnamon-accented hot chocolate commonly served during the winter holidays, but it is puerquitos (pigs) that have the most distinct flavor, a mild ginger, not as spicy as a ginger snap.
When Berlanga’s grandfather moved to Laredo, Tex., his father’s gingerbread recipe helped him land his first job at a local bakery.
From that first job, the elder Francisco took his trade from Texas to California, working in bakeries in San Jose and Salinas and finally Pajaro—a working-class neighborhood in North Monterey County—where he opened his first bakery, El Nopal, in 1967. Nearby canneries and food processing plants, which at the time operated 24 hours a day, supplied a steady stream of customers, quickly garnering it a reputation for making the best pan dulce around.
Today, that location is run by Berlanga’s uncle. In Hollister, Frankie runs the bakery opened by his father Adolfo, a Vietnam veteran, who was scouting for a new location when he saw a for rent sign at a shuttered dry cleaners in Hollister.
The space came with a little house in the back alley where the young family would live. “It was great,” says Frankie, who has two older sisters, one of whom sells bakery products. One day the owner of the building asked his dad if he wanted to buy the property and he said yes. They did the deal with a handshake.
Berlanga says he may well be the last of his family to continue in the baking business. The long hours can be tough, he says, and he credits his ability to sleep on command and his wife, Cherub, for support, “I think I’m the last one— the last generation. It’s good work, but it’s every day.”
On a typical day, Berlanga arrives at the bakery at 8:30pm to get things ready. Then he returns home, takes a nap and wakes up at 1:00am to get back to the bakery to start baking for the day.
Every day the bread and pastries are made freshly, because like his dad Berlanga uses no preservatives in his dough. If there are leftovers, the discounted day-old bread is gone by the following morning. “Some people prefer the day-old bread,” says Berlanga, who himself starts off his morning with six pieces of the fragrant pan. “They say it is better to dunk in their coffee.”
The bakery also produces flour and corn tortillas, corn chips for area restaurants and, during the holiday season, rosca de reyes, a ring-shaped pastry that is typically eaten to celebrate Epiphany in January, and dough (or masa) for tamales, a holiday staple filled with either savory meat or cheese or made sweet with sugar and ingredients like raisins and pineapple for Christmas and New Year’s family get-togethers.
Like in Mexico where people visit the neighborhood tortilleria and panaderia daily for their fresh tortillas and bread, El Nopal is a regular stop for many of Berlanga’s customers, some of whom have known him since he was a kid helping his dad in the bakery.
“We have customers whose grown children now come into the store,” he says. One of his longstanding customers regularly ships packets of El Nopal tortillas to her daughter who lives across the country.
“I think she pays more for the postage than she does for the tortillas!” he says with a laugh.
Roseann Hernandez Cattani is a writer, editor and explorer, searching the globe and the Monterey Bay area for new tastes and treasures.
El Nopal Panadería and Tortilla Factory 216 3rd St., Hollister Second location: 1290 4th St., Hollister
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EDIBLE NOTABLES OLIVE OBSESSION
Olive oil is putting tiny San Ardo on the map, with a fifth-generation family ranch now a modern day agricultural success
BY KATHRYN MCKENZIE PHOTOGRAPHY BY BY DAVID ROYAL
Greg and Cindy Traynor of 43 Ranch
Just as with wine, there’s a technique to tasting olive oil. First, warm the tasting cup in your hands for a minute or two then swirl it, the better to release the aromas. Take a good sniff, and then a slurp.
That’s right. A slurp, which spreads the oil throughout your mouth and ideally deposits a bit on the back of the tongue, allows the taster to pick up on flavor notes that can range from hints of green tomato and black pepper to cinnamon and tropical fruits.
“Those flavors don’t get captured in grocery store olive oil,” says Greg Traynor, who is demonstrating the proper method at his 43 Ranch tasting room in South Monterey County. Every one of the three extra virgin olive oils (EVOOs) that the Traynors make has its own unique profile, from Picual’s leafy and grassy notes to the complex nutty/buttery elements of Helen’s Blend.
Traynor and his wife Cindy are on a quest to make outstanding extra virgin olive oil on their ranch in the tiny community of San Ardo, halfway between the salad bowl of Salinas and the vineyards of Paso Robles. In just a few short years, they’ve been remarkably successful, capturing major awards and winning attention from all over the world.
Their premium small-batch olive oils have won more awards this year than any producer in the state, including a Best of Show award for their Helen’s Blend at the 2018 Los Angeles International Extra Virgin Olive Oil Competition.
Not only that, they’re pressing oil for other ranchers, providing a valuable service for olive growers from Santa Cruz to Arroyo Grande.
Greg says he became fascinated with making olive oil 12 years ago after reading about the mass testing of oils done by UC Davis, which discovered most olive oils labeled as extra virgin…were not.
He also realized that the family ranch, which had been devoted in years past to cattle and barley production, might be the perfect environment for growing olives.
“My grandparents’ house always had olive trees around it and they grew really well,” he says. “I started investigating.”
He retired from a corporate career at Nike and headed to the family ranch with Cindy, who continues to work as a flight attendant in addition to her chores on the ranch.
As the fifth generation to farm the ranch, the two have made some profound changes. In 2012, they planted four varieties of olives: Picual, from Spain; Leccino and Pendolino, from Italy; and Lucca, a California hybrid—4,800 trees in all. They harvested the first crop three years later. Then, they tore down the family gas station next to Highway 101, which had been shut since the 1980s.
Friends and family love helping with the olive harvest at 43 Ranch
In its place the Traynors built a tasting room and olive mill, which opened last fall. It’s an undertaking that only the truly olive oil obsessed would want to pursue, but they’re just that: completely committed to making a premium product.
The mill and tasting room have a vintage industrial vibe, but their bones are completely modern, with the mill’s machinery and tubes inside and out, and two electric vehicle charging stations out front.
A display inside the tasting room shows family photos dating back to the early 1900s, and if you ask the question, “Where does the name 43 Ranch come from?” you’ll get quite a history lesson.
“Forty-three was my great-great-uncle’s land lottery number,” says Greg, whose maternal ancestor was a soldier in Napoleon III’s army, which invaded Mexico in the early 1860s.
How that soldier made his way to this part of California is anyone’s guess, but the result was a 60-acre parcel that has been passed down through five generations of the Goutx/Aurignac/Traynor family.
It is an ideal place to grow olives, with flinty soil and warm, dry weather most of the year. But like everyone else who farms, the Traynors deal with the whims of nature. Last year, they had a bumper crop. This year, not so much, due to a hot spell in February followed by a freeze in March, a combination that is plaguing olive producers up and down the state this year. But Greg, who is on the board of the California Olive Oil Council, says that there will still be olives to mill, since farmers near the coast have been less affected.
Greg and Cindy immersed themselves in olive oil culture by taking trips to Italy, where Greg learned to mill from old-timers there and investigated milling equipment, finally settling on Pieralisi, an Italian brand.
He also discovered that Americans don’t typically get the best olive oil from overseas: “The really good stuff doesn’t get imported much,” he says.
The Traynors pride themselves on their ability to produce olio nuovo, or freshly pressed olive oil, a rare delight that not many get to experience. The less-filtered product contains tiny pieces of olive, which makes it delicious but also more perishable, unlike EVOO, which keeps up to 18 months if properly stored.
“If I could sell olio nuovo all year long, I would. It’s the best,” says Greg, who can be found selling his oil at the Tuesday Carmel farmers’ market in season.
From the end of October until the beginning of December, the Traynors’ mill will run full bore—processing up to 2 tons an hour—as truckloads of ripe olives arrive from around the Central Coast. Greg says his first priority is milling as soon as possible after loads arrive “because fresher is better.” Olives that sit around for a long time start to break down and ferment, which makes for not-so-tasty oil.
Olives are loaded into a hopper for debris removal and cleaning then milled into a thick paste that moves through several other steps for oil separation and filtration. For extra virgin olive oil, additional filtration makes it 99.9% pure and a more stable product.
California has the strictest guidelines in the world when it comes to EVOO certification, adopted in 2014. Both a chemical test and a taste test are required, and oils with unwanted flavors, like mustiness or woodiness, can’t be labeled EVOO.
Part of the Traynors’ mission is to educate the public about what good olive oil should taste like. And the couple is getting another generation of its family on board.
“Our 2-year-old granddaughter slurps olive oil like a professional,” says Greg with pride.
Kathryn McKenzie, who grew up in Santa Cruz and now lives on a Christmas tree farm in North Monterey County, writes about sustainable living, home design and health for numerous publications and websites.
43 Ranch 65340 Los Lobos Road, San Ardo 831.627.2455 • www.43ranch.com
