| 
 |
| 
|
Oliveto has a tradition of putting on special dinners. Besides being great fun and a break from the usual, the dinners have become increasingly important to us over the years for providing the opportunity to deeply examine a province of cooking and for reinvigorating us all.
Some of our dinners (Truffles, The Whole Hog, and Tomatoes) are so popular that we wouldn't think of discontinuing them. Then, too, we'll get interested in something new that simply must be explored. You'll find some first-time dinners in this calendar.
We also have smaller, spontaneous events during the year for which there will be only e-mails and mention on our NEWS AND EVENTS page. To be notified please sign up for our e-mail lists HERE.
|
 WHOLE HOG DINNERS
Wednesday - Saturday,
February 3 - 6, 2010
This year Chef Paul Canales has sourced free-range pigs from several more farmers to compement the beautiful animals we receive from Paul Willis and his colleagues at Niman Ranch pork cooperative. Different natural diets (including acorns), distinct breeds, and our broadening understanding of butchering, cooking, and preserving techniques will make for deeply complex and various flavors in a menu celebrating this "most generous animal."
>>Read more at the Oliveto Community Journal
PARTIAL MENU
Favorites
Warm antipasto of pork tongue, artichokes, and aged black truffles
Pappardelle nere with pork heart and wild mushroom ragú
Spaghetti with pork coppa confit, Calabrian hot peppers, breadcrumbs, and oregano
Tofeja del Canavese: Piemontese peasant braise of pork shoulder, little cotechinorollattini with borlotti beans sausages, wild boar spare ribs, and pork skin
Spit-roasted pork belly with Sicilian nero d'avola gelatina, chestnut honey, Castelvetrano olives, and almonds
Choucroute garni with spit-roasted pork "Pastrami," belly rib, and grilled classic frankfurter
Valrhona chocolate-caramel tart with candy-coated pancetta
New Items
Sobressada & Sbriciolona: traditional Catalonian spreadable spicy salame and Tuscan wild fennel salsiccia cruda with lard piadina and wild arugula
Boudin blanc "Wellington"
Cannelloni of pork, Chanterelle mushrooms, green garlic, and fontina Val d' Aosta
Canederli: Friullian bread and pork dumplings with pork & date sugo
Carved fresh roast ham with cracklings and kumquat-clove gravy
Wild boar scallopine alla Count Pavel Stroganov with Chanterelle mushrooms, caramelized onions, sour cream, and sage riso
Duomo of local kiwis in pork gelatina with Blood Oranges in caramel
Larded puff pastry cornucopia filled with Seville orange ice cream and kumquat-pomegranate compote
>> See last year's Whole Hog Dinners Menu
|
 OCEANIC DINNERS
June, 2010
June will mark the beginning of our ninth annual Oceanic Dinner event. Our Oceanic Dinners are the most spectacular of our special events. We will serve some sixty species of sea beings and plants, all absolutely fresh, harvested sustainably, and prepared deliciously, skillfully, imaginatively, and respectfully.
We've been taping "footage" about fisheries and fishermen, the dinners, and the fish themselves for years, and, with our new Oliveto Community Journal, finally have a venue for showing that compelling material.
Last year, Chef Paul Canales took the trip of a lifetime to Japan's enormous fish markets and visited with Japanese chefs several weeks ago and will share much of what he learned about fish butchery and cookery at the Oceanic Dinners.
>> See earlier Oceanic Dinners Menu
|
 TOMATO DINNERS
August, 2010
About a week before Tomato Dinners, when most of the tomatoes we will have to choose from are available for tasting, Chef Paul Canales and the cooks sit down with scores of varieties, mostly heirloom but some-like Early Girls-hybrids, and sort out which are the best, what their characteristics are, and how they might be prepared to best advantage. Amazingly, there is considerable variation even within varieties.
Every year, the variables of soil, weather, planting times, irrigation, and various farming practices yield surprising outcomes in flavor and texture. A farmer who produces a magnificent Pink Brandywine one year may offer a less flavorful one the next; but her Mortgage Lifters the same year might be nonpareil. Based on that tasting, each August we purchase around 3,000 pounds of the best tomatoes from local farmers for this joyful event.
>> See earlier Tomato Dinners Menu
|
 TRUFFLE DINNERS
November, 2010
To bring home the point that you don't know what kind of white truffle season you're going to have until you're on your way to the Milan airport, we thought we'd relate the story of last year's season.
Weeks before our trip to Italy, we phoned our contacts and got the gloomy news that there'd been only a brief flooding that summer and hot, dry days in the fall. And as truffle season began, importers here pronounced white truffles of poor quality and hugely expensive. (Truffles were, in fact, scarce and pricey, but the quality was pretty good. It was the expense that had importers unwilling to take a risk.)
Once in Italy, we began our pursuit, as usual, at the Alba Truffle Market in Piedmont to check out our fallback*. We made sure that if we couldn't obtain good truffles from our friends in Tuscany and Umbria, we'd still have something to bring back. Later, with three days left before our flight home, our principal sources had little for us; early the next morning we'd have to drive back to Alba.
But first, there was one more tartufao to meet. Just as we arrived, a huge, impenetrably black cloud passed overhead and unleashed an enormous torrent. Through that downpour came a grinning Mirco, who had in his satchel the biggest truffle we'd ever been offered, along with other beauties just out of the ground, impossibly fragrant. In Umbria, it was the same story: white truffles were steadily coming in from the countryside, a few hours from the earth. We cancelled Alba.
*The shelf-life of white truffles is brief. We serve them less than ten days out of the ground, sometimes as few as four. We remove the soil at the last minute, just before our return trip. The truffles are kept refrigerated and semi-moist; we repack them regularly.
>> See earlier Truffle Dinners Menu
|
|
Whole Hog Dinners
BALSAMICO DINNERS