Category Archives: Fruit

‘Tis the Season to Give an Olive Tree

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Nudo Italian olive oil. (Photo courtesy of Nudo)

As you contemplate braving the stores tomorrow to shop till you drop on Black Friday, here’s a great gift without any of the hassle.

Give the gift of an Italian olive tree, along with all the luscious oil it produces for a year.

You can through Nudo-Italia.

Jason Gibb and Cathy Rogers chucked their careers as TV producers to restore an abandoned 21-acre olive grove in Italy’s Le Marche in 2005. (We should all be so lucky, right?)

In addition to selling lovely olive oils, organic jarred pesto and dried specialty pastas, they also offer a program where anyone around the world can adopt an olive tree for a year. The project is a collaboration between Nudo and small-scale artisan olive oil producers in Le Marche and Abruzzo.

You can even choose the tree you want in a specific grove. Each tree produces about 2 liters of oil a year. For $105, you receive three shipments during the year.  First, a personalized adoption certificate and booklet about your tree. Then, in the spring, you’ll receive delivery of all the extra virgin olive oil from your selected tree. Finally, in autumn, you’ll get three flavored extra virgin olive oils to enjoy, as well.

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Fruity Over Fruit Bread

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Panettone Autunnale from Emporio Rulli.

Meet panettone, the only fruitcake-like concoction I actually adore.

The others? Cloying, gummy, heavy and dense as can be, they’re the butt of so many tireless jokes. For good reason.

Not panettone, though.

The Italian holiday bread — baked in the shape of a towering cupola — is airy and fluffy, thanks to the long proofing of the sweet dough.

For a really exemplary version, try the one made by the Bay Area’s Emporio Rulli.

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Luke’s Local: A Taste of Local and Sustainable at a Caltrain Station

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Owner Luke Chappell outside his Luke's Local store at the Caltrain station.

As you race to catch the train home after a day that’s left you running on empty, wouldn’t it be great to pick up a fresh, nourishing, convenient meal for the ride home?

You can if you stop at the San Mateo Hillsdale Caltrain station, where Luke’s Local opened this spring in an old, vacant ticket office.

This is a convenience store that’s all about local and sustainable food products, as well as gourmet-to-go meals, made fresh daily by a former San Francisco restaurant chef. We’re talking Dungeness crab mac ‘n’ cheese, skirt steak with creamed corn, and chicken stuffed with chevre — all precooked and packaged (at $7.99 each) for you to take home to heat up easily.

Or grab a dripped-to-order Blue Bottle coffee, a pastry from San Francisco’s Sandbox Bakery, an organic locally grown apple, a Free-Trade banana, or a chorizo breakfast burrito ($3.49) that you can nuke in the microwave there to nosh on your morning commute. And yes, Caltrain does allow food and beverages on its trains.

The front of the store, just a few steps from the train tracks.

Sure, the Palo Alto Caltrain station boasts a gourmet coffee kiosk. And the San Francisco station has a coffee stand and a Subway sandwich shop. But the Hillsdale station, where 1,300 passengers go through daily, is the only one with meals like this, prepared by Adel Benmahdi, who used to work at Orson in San Francisco.

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Wine Cocktails — Not an Oxymoron

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Pretty in Pink -- my own take on a wine cocktail.

Are you so over chocolate martinis and Cosmos?

Then, take a sip of the newest in cocktail creations — ones made with wine.

Scan the bar menu of some of the hottest restaurants in the Bay Area, and you’ll find more and more cocktails incorporating white or red still wines such as Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc and Gamay.

Far from old-school sangria or the wine coolers of your youth, these new wine cocktails are a mix of seasonal fruit, fresh herbs, and house-made bitters and syrups — all designed to complement the inherent flavors of various varietals.

Take a taste of them at Camino in Oakland, Flora in Oakland, Frances in San Francisco, Bar Tartine in San Francisco and Starbelly in San Francisco, among others.

Read all about how and why mixologists are mixing it up with wine in my story in today’s East Bay Express.

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Unusual New Peppers from East Palo Alto’s Happy Quail Farms

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Some like it hot. Or at least tongue-tingling.

That’s what Happy Quail Farms of East Palo Alto is hoping with its two new spicy peppers. Owner David Winsberg is believed to be the only one in the United States selling the Guindilla Verde from Bilbao, Spain and the Shaerma from Bhutan.

The light green, heirloom Guindilla Verde, with its grassy flavor and moderate heat, is perfect in piperade, egg scrambles, stir-fries or simply grilled and served alongside steaks. When it turns red, taking on a sweeter note, it’s typically used in Spanish chorizo, giving the sausages their distinctive, crimson tinge.

The dark green Shaerma is practically a national treasure in Bhutan, gracing almost every meal of the day.  Similar to a New Mexico Hatch chile in spiciness and to a Pimiento de Padron in flavor, this tender pepper is fairly hot, making it ideal for dishes with cheese to tame it a tad.

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