nopa: food blog

Knoll Organics Brooke Town • Jun 17, 2010 • Post A Comment

Husband and wife Rick and Christie Knoll were not always growing some of the best produce around. Before they moved to Brentwood in 1979, they were gardening out of their backyards in Santa Ana, California. At the time they considered themselves "alternative suburbanites," but many years later they would become leaders in soil evolution. The onetime alfalfa field, purchased by the Knolls in 1979, has gradually become a year-round agro-system, in which diversity feeds the farm and the living organisms below the soil.

Rick Knoll received his PH.D. in Organic Chemistry from U.C Irvine, while Christie Knoll studied voice in Oakland. Their lifestyles and education brought them to the world of Biodynamics, which they believe nurtures the soil. In a nutshell, Biodynamics can be understood as a combination of "biological dynamic" agriculture practices. "Biological" practices include a series of well-known organic farming techniques that improve soil health. "Dynamic" practices are intended to influence biological as well as metaphysical aspects of the farm (such as increasing vital life force,) or to adapt the farm to natural rhythms (such as planting seeds during certain lunar phases.) The importance of the soil remains clear when the Knolls proclaim, "We feel that the soil continuum is a fundamental aspect of ecological production that is beyond what ‘Organic' has become!" The Knoll's practices are clearly beyond Organic, incorporating Biodynamics, Integrated Pest Management, Ecological Farming and Sustainability. Their website offers a detailed guide to attracting insects and birds to a farm, which is a crucial factor in Biodiversity.

The production of Knoll Farms is year-round, and includes greens, garlic, herbs, figs, stonefruit, flowers and firewood. At nopa, we use a variety of items throughout the year. For Spring, their arugula is a staple in one of our salads, and we often sauté a number of their greens with garlic confit. For dessert, Knoll's Lemon Verbena shows up in one of our housemade ice creams.

Earlier this Spring, we used their pea greens, both in salads and in entrées, green garlic in a savory broth, and the farm's horseradish with crème fraîche. Green garlic - also called young garlic, is exactly what it sounds like: the green shoots of immature garlic bulbs that have been picked early. The flavor is definitely more delicate and not as spicy as garlic that is harvested and left to dry.

As Summer approaches, we get very excited about Knoll's figs, including Adriatic, Black Mission, Turkey and Kadota. There is something about a fig that seems so magical: biting into that first sample of the season, exposing a brilliant center and a delightful collection of tiny seeds.

Posted by Brooke Town on June 17, 2010 • Filed under Where Our Food Comes From • Discuss • Share: del.icio.us / StumbleUpon / Digg
Photos courtesy Knoll Farms

Chocolate by the Bay - A Visit to TCHO Caleb Taft • Feb 11 • 2 Comments »

San Francisco has a long and storied history of chocolate makers, dating back to the mid 1800s with the founding of both Ghirardelli and Guittard. And while there's no dearth of artisanal chocolatiers in town - all of whom purchase couverture for their creations - both pioneers have since moved their fabrication plants elsewhere, leaving just one chocolate maker in the city. And it's probably not who you think.

TCHO Chocolate, which launched in 2005, merges the Bay's love of Sweets with its love of Tech. We trekked out to Pier 17 in late January to check out their "Pod to Palate" process.

All chocolate comes from Theobroma cacao, an evergreen that grows only in equatorial countries, with the largest amounts coming from West Africa and Indonesia. Briefly, chocolate is produced from the nib, which must be culled from a seed within a pod growing from the trunk of the tree. Pods are split, the seeds left to ferment naturally, then dried, before being roasted and the nibs taken out to be ground and processed. TCHO monitors and generally completes the preliminary processing in country, sending the cocoa mass to SF for further refining and to be made into bars. Roasting in the country of origin allows for a more efficient shipping of product and creates further financial opportunities for these farm communities.

TCHO's commitment to farmers goes beyond merely purchasing beans, and they have several programs in place to create a better livelihood for growers, as well as produce higher quality cacao. Some of the beans purchased are Fair Trade certified, but TCHO also works in areas where no certifying body exists or the farms are of a scale outside those co-ops. In these instances, TCHO not only works in direct trade with the farmers, but creates infrastructure - such as upgrading the fermenting areas for greater efficiency - as well as installing technology that allows the growers to better understand their processes and how these affect flavor. Part of this technology also enables small scale production of finished chocolate - a treat most of these cacao farmers have never experienced!

Unlike other chocolate makers, TCHO chocolates are labeled by flavor profiles, rather than by percentage of cocoa or country of origin. The idea is to showcase the various inherent flavors in chocolate. Below are my tasting notes for the four available bars, as well as the couvertures for commercial use. You can visit their retail store on Pier 17 (no public tours just yet) or at www.tcho.com.

Tasting Notes:

Fruity 2.0
Perfumed and Roasty nose. Sweet fruit entry, round with a nutty finish. Organic and Fair Trade Peruvian beans.

Nutty 2.0
Sweet, Peanutty nose. Round on the palate, with sweet fruits and a long finish. A nice surprise. Organic and Fair Trade Ecuadorian beans.

Citrus
Bright, floral and orange nose. Fudgy and sweet in the mouth, slightly gritty texture. Organic beans from Madagascar.

Chocolaty
Fruity and Floral on the nose, rich and fudgy on the palate, with a citrus finish. My favorite, perhaps not as complex as others. Beans are from Ghana.

TCHOPro 68%
Fruity and nutty on the nose. Good snap. Citrussy attack on the palate with salt and coconut notes, and a light vanilla undertone. Finishes creamy. A blend of beans from Ghana and Ecuador. This is the couverture we are currently using at nopa, appearing both in our chocolate sorbet and in a ganache for macaroons.

TCHOPro 66%
Malty and Salty nose with Sour Cherry notes. Firm snap. Bright but low and winey fruit notes in the mouth with some salt. Short finish. A Fair Trade and Organic blend of beans from Peru and Ecuador.

TCHOPro 60.5%
Roasty and Malty nose with some Creaminess. Nutty and Malty on the palate with a sweet cherry finish.

Posted by Caleb Taft on February 11, 2010 • Filed under Where Our Food Comes From • Discuss (2 Comments) • Share: del.icio.us / StumbleUpon / Digg

Food and the Social Justice Movement Rachel Glueck • Nov 11 • Comment

Food is the altar of humanity. No matter the race or creed, nationality or history, there is no human society that has not centered itself around the table. Necessity aside - we have always viewed food as our gathering point. Since the beginning of our kind, food has been a symbol of the ties that bind families, a sign of the culturally enriched and a signifier of wealth; it has inspired wars and inflamed the imagination. Today, food is finding its niche in the grassroots movement, and nowhere in the western world is this more apparent than in San Francisco. Don't fool yourself thinking that dining out is merely a means of satisfying your hedonistic desires (or masochistic, depending on which establishments you patronize). You're fighting a war here. Ok, that might be more drama than you'd like to introduce into your digestive system, but there's a point to be made. Every dollar you spend on food can either go to directly support a local family, healthy ecosystems and crop diversity, or it can go to support a corporate farm, the degradation of our soil and water systems, and the reinforcement of monoculture crops. Of course, it's not always so cut and dry, but it's something to consider.

The eco movement has brought on a big push for organic edibles. The demand is rising and the market is responding. This is fantastic, but the mainstreaming of organics also has its pitfalls. One tends to think organic=good, non-organic=not-so-good. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. There are dozens of other factors to consider. What's the carbon footprint of that organic orange? How fresh is it? Are the practices of the corporation that owns those fields ethical? Does their profit benefit the local economy? Which should we support: the local, family farm that is not certified organic, or the corporate farm with an organic line that grows and ships its produce in from abroad? There are farms that use sustainable practices but can't get official organic certification due to high costs, or the fact that the farm bordering their fields uses pesticides. One can get bogged down with these questions, and in places where the options are few, it might be best to simply reach for the organic label.

In the Bay Area, however, we have been blessed not just with diversity and quality, but with endless opportunities to educate ourselves on the topic. In light of this, I decided to follow Diane Goodman - nopa's "Grandmother" and a leader in the sustainable food movement - to the farmer's market to find out just how, with all the choices out there, nopa decides which farms to buy from. The answer lies somewhere in the middle of crop location, seasonality, decades of farmer-buyer history, organic practices, and of course, quality. Watch the video below to see the nopa process of product selection, and to get a sense of our farm-to-restaurant relationships.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjKHz0Pt-bE

NOTE: This video sadly became a memorial piece to Diane Goodman, who passed away a year ago, shortly after the footage was taken. For all the love and passion she put into her life and work, she is an endless source of inspiration.

Rachel Glueck is a server at nopa
Posted November 11, 2009 • Filed under Where Our Food Comes From • Discuss • Share: del.icio.us / StumbleUpon / Digg

Video Filmed by Bergen Moore. Edited by Rachel Glueck. 2008