Making Olives — Part One

Ever tasted a fresh-picked olive? If so, you know that olives are one of those magical foods that undergo a complete transformation on the way from tree to table — the briny, deeply-flavored, tasty little morsels we love to snack on bear little resemblance to their bitter, astringent cousins on the branch except in that they are green (or purple) and grape-shaped. I always imagine the delight with which some primitive Mediterranean fellow must have discovered that the olives bobbing around in the sea tasted a whole lot better than those horrid little fruits on the tree nearby!

There are a variety of methods for curing olives, ranging from simple (i.e., toss them in the sea) to complicated indeed. Our olive trees are laden this year, so we'll be making several kinds of olives: water-cured, lye-cured, and salt-cured... and, of course, sharing the methods with you here...

The simplest, and quite possibly the oldest, method of curing olives involves soaking them in water to draw out the bitterness — a similar technique to the one the Native Americans in our area used to render acorns palatable. Breaking the olive's skin allows the water to penetrate and wash out the astringency more quickly; it's a bit time-consuming, but the result will be a much tastier olive, so it's worth your while. And the work goes quickly if you round up a few pals to help — it's one of those pleasantly mindless activities, like shelling beans or polishing apples, that are well-suited to conversation and daydreaming!

This recipe is adapted from the UC Extension publication "Olives: Safe Methods for Home Pickling." You can download the complete document at anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu (highly recommended, with a nice variety of methods for curing olives.)

Water-Cured Olives, Kalamata style

This is a good place to start — a simple method, adaptable to any amount, large or small. You'll need olives that are ripe but firm; ours are fairly red with a greenish tinge, but you could use riper ones too, as long as they aren't soft (be sure to check them over for worms!) Uniformity is important when making olives: pick fruits that are fairly even in size and ripeness for the best results. A gallon or two is a good amount to start with.

ingredients and supplies:
• Firm-ripe olives (light to dark red)
• Water — plenty of it!
• Pickling salt
• Red wine vinegar
• Olive oil
• Sharp knife or razor blade
• One-gallon glass jars, or other similar glass or plastic containers
• Extra jar or bucket for mixing brine

Rinse and drain the olives. With knife or razor blade, make two or three lengthwise cuts on each olive, on opposite sides of the fruit, to pit depth. (These olives were fairly large, so we made three slices; smaller olives would only need two.)

Place the olives in the jars or your containers of choice, and fill with cool water. Place a small saucer, wooden disc, or a plastic bag filled with water on the surface to keep the olives submerged — too much air exposure will turn them dark. Soak for 24 hours, then drain and cover again with water.

Change the water once or twice daily. After about a week, taste the olives to check for bitterness; continue to taste every day or so until the olives are no longer bitter. (It may take up to three weeks to remove all the bitterness.)

To make the brine: Mix one pound (1 1/2 c) pickling salt with 1 gallon cool water. Stir to dissolve, then add 1 quart (4 c) vinegar; pour mixture over drained olives. (Note: this will make enough brine for 10 lbs of olives; you can increase or decrease the amounts to suit your needs.)

Drizzle about 1/2 inch olive oil over surface, close container firmly, and store at 60-80° for about 1 month before eating. The olives may be stored this way for up to a year.

* * *

If slicing each olive sounds like too much work, you can also make cracked water-cured olives: start with green olives rather than red, and give each fruit a whack with a mallet, rolling pin, rock, or other similar device. You want to crack the skin and meat, but not mash the fruit. Proceed as above, replacing the red wine vinegar with 2 cups white wine vinegar. Pour brine over drained olives and refrigerate. Let the olives soak in the brine for at least four days before eating; keep these ones in the fridge, where they will also last for up to a year (provided you don't eat them all up immediately!)

Happy pickling!

Fresh From The Garden: Zucchini Gratin

Finally — a way to use all that zucchini! (And, no, we're not talking about zucchini bread that only takes a squash or two; this will use a whole basket full!)


This recipe is adapted from Richard Olney's Simple French Food (which, incidentally, has a considerable section devoted to zucchini.) Flip through the "vegetables" chapter and you will come to a delightful revelation: just about anything can be made into a gratin, and furthermore, once gratinéed, it will be absolutely delicious. Case in point: the infamous zucchini, staple of summer gardens, the very definition of overabundance. No matter how many (or few) seeds you plant, there always seems to come a point where the zucchini far outnumber the willing zucchini-eaters ... cue the recipes for zucchini bread, zucchini pancakes, zucchini chocolate cake, et cetera...

... or just find a little parsley and garlic, some cheese, a couple of eggs, and a handful of other ingredients and cook up a scrumptious gratin — perfectly simple, perfectly summer!


Zucchini Gratin (Gratin de Courgettes)

2 - 1/2 lbs small zucchini, sliced coin-thin (we use a mandoline for this)
4 Tb olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 c bread crumbs
About 1/4 c milk
2 eggs
4 cloves garlic, pressed or finely chopped
One small bunch parsley, chopped
8 ounces cheese — Gruyere, Jack, or a mixture
2 Tb butter

Toss the zucchini with olive oil in a large skillet over high heat — I do this in two batches — until limp and just barely starting to brown, about 7 minutes. (As you heat the zucchini, it will release water; toss gently until most of the liquid is evaporated.) Season with salt and pepper to taste.


While zucchini cooks, mix together bread crumbs, milk, eggs, garlic, and parsley in a large bowl. Add zucchini and cheese; toss to coat evenly. (Add a little extra milk if it looks too dry — the mixture should be moist but not soupy.) If you like, reserve about 1/3 c cheese to sprinkle over the top.

Pour into a buttered gratin dish; top with dots of butter and, if you like, the remaining cheese. Bake at 400° for about 25 minutes, or until browned and bubbly. Serve warm or at room temperature.

We brought this to the marvelous Placer County Slow Food pot luck picnic earlier today — what a fantastic array of homemade foods and local ingredients!

Honey Harvest Time

Way to go, bees! We just harvested 150 pounds of honey from our hives — more photos and the details of the process forthcoming (when we're not too sticky to type...) And, yes, we'll be at the local Farmer's Markets soon with scrumptious B H Ranch honey for sale!

The Perfect Peach Tart

It's always a race to see who gets to the peaches first — the birds, or us. This year, we were feeling particularly protective of our small crop, as a late frost took just about all our stone fruit; a handful of peaches looked like all we'd get. To our surprise, as the peaches started to ripen and turn to a more obvious and easy-to-spot color, we were thrilled to see that we'd actually have a decent, albeit smallish, crop of peaches this year — enough to make some jam, and this simple, scrumptious rustic tart. I love love love this recipe because it's so simple — flour, sugar, butter, peaches. All you need. Of course, when you're working with so few ingredients, they all should be the best you can find... especially the peaches. Make sure they're fragrant, fresh, and ripe but ripe!

These peaches came from a tree that my grandfather started from a peach-pit! The little sprout is now a tremendous tree, and it makes some of the best and prettiest peaches I've tasted. When storing peaches, remember to set them on their stem ends, with their pointy blossom ends facing up; they'll keep better that way.

OK, now for the recipe!:

B H Ranch Rustic Peach Tart

For the crust:

1 1/4 c flour
1 stick (1/2 c) salted butter (or unsalted butter plus a generous pinch of salt)
1/2 tsp sugar
about 1/4 c vodka + ice water *

*Trust me on this one! It sounds weird, but it works. Fill half a 1/4 c measure with vodka; top it off with ice water, and proceed as usual with your recipe. Too much water allows gluten chains to form and toughens the dough, but the vodka — being alcohol, not water — lets you add extra liquid to the dough without toughening it. It's magic — perfect pastry every time. Cooks Illustrated Magazine ran an article on this technique several years ago in their December issue, and I've used it ever since. You can apply the same trick to any pie-crust recipe; just swap out half the water for vodka. The alcohol evaporates during baking, but if you'd rather skip the vodka, you can go ahead and use all ice water; just be careful not to over-mix.

For the filling:

2 lbs peaches, preferably freestone, peeled and sliced
2 Tb sugar
1 Tb flour
1 Tb butter

Place flour and sugar in food processor; pulse to blend. (You can also use a pastry cutter for this recipe if you prefer.) Add butter in 1/2" chunks; pulse until the mixture becomes a coarse meal with plenty of butter chunks visible. Sprinkle the water/vodka mixture over the dough and mix (carefully, just barely) until the liquid is evenly distributed. (You may need to add slightly more than 1/4 c. The dough should look chunky, kind of like cottage cheese.) Place dough on a sheet of plastic wrap; shape into a flat circle, wrap, and chill for about an hour (can be made in advance).

Make the filling: place sliced peaches in a bowl; gently toss with flour and sugar.

Roll out the dough between sheets of waxed paper, making a circle a little larger that 12 inches in diameter. Transfer the dough to a sheet of parchment paper and place on a baking sheet — I use a small pizza pan — preferably something with a rim, in case it gets a little juicy while baking.

Pile the peaches in the centre of the dough circle, and gently lift and fold the edges of the dough over the filling. Pinch the dough to seal and hold it in place. Dot the peaches with bits of butter. Use your fingers to dab a bit of water on the pastry, and sprinkle with sugar.


Bake the tart at 375 degrees for about half an hour, until the crust is golden and the peaches are tender. I like to sprinkle a little extra sugar over the hot peaches as soon as I remove the tart from the oven; the sugar melts and forms a pretty glaze. Serve the tart warm, preferably with whipped cream or ice cream!

Reasons To Love Summer — And to Quit Complaining About the Heat!

Well, it's hot. Finally. Really hot. The usual California strategy of coping with the scorching summer — reminding one another that, "well, at least it's a dry heat" — is now more often than not being met with an exasperated, "yes, but it's still too darn hot!" The air conditioner is getting a workout, but there's still plenty to do outside... so, after a week of hundred-degree-plus days, it's time for a cheerful reminder of why we love summer. With any luck, it'll inspire you — and us — to head back outdoors and soak up the best of the season!

1. Everything's growing! The garden has gone from this...

to this...

...in a month and a half!

2. Blackberries! (More on those soon.)

3. Bastille Day (and of course the Fourth of July too) — the perfect occasion for a picnic with plenty of fresh produce. Plus aïoli and pyrotechnics!

4. Fresh herbs galore... which means some scrumptious pesto!

5. Timmy, our handsome rooster, is molting. It's just too funny watching him strut around, trying to maintain some shred of dignity with only two of his magnificent tail-feathers left. (Sorry, Tim — we know this isn't helping!)

6. Washing the car seems like less of a chore and more like a pleasant activity. (...on the other had, though, mucking out the chicken coop seems less like a chore and more like a form of torture. Of course, the girls find it all quite entertaining to watch:)

7. Should we need to raise a small army, I'm pretty sure we could feed it quite well on zucchini for the rest of the summer. (Check back soon for a scrummy zucchini gratin recipe.)

8. Farmer's market season is in full swing!

9. The peaches are ripe — which means peach jam, peach tarts, peaches straight off the tree...

10. And finally, one word: Tomatoes!!

Up Close — Baby Bees!

...well, sort of. They're actually full-grown when they hatch, but they're darn cute anyway!
These are drone (male) bees — you can tell by the domed covers on the unopened cells. Above, two bees are chewing their way through the wax covers on the cells.

This guy's almost out! If you look closely, you can see a varroa mite on his back — the little orange-brown dot. There are also a few mites visible on the surface of the honeycomb. Not good. The female mites lay their eggs in the cells along with the bee larvae; when the bees hatch out, so do the mites. Beekeeping would be a whole lot easier without those nasty little guys... but we're hoping that our colonies are strong enough to withstand the attacks. Wish them luck!

New Kids On The Farm

This has been quite a year for baby birds — especially bluebirds, which is wonderful! We watched these guys from the beginning...

(note the chicken feathers in the nest!)





...and finally, this brave little guy was the first to venture out into the Wide World Beyond:

Propagation Time: Fig Trees!

Around here, we love figs. Fresh, dried, straight from the tree — you can never have too many! We recently went to the California Rare Fruit Grower's grafting exchange (an absolute wonderland for tree geeks!) and picked up, among other things, a handful of unusual fig varieties. If you have a favorite fig tree, or know someone who might be willing to share a few twigs, propagating cuttings is an easy way to grow your own tree — but don't stop with figs! This same method can be used with apples, grapes, and more...

...but figs, we've found, are one of the easiest trees to propagate. Start with clean, straight twigs, about a foot long, taken from a tree's new growth — the dark, smooth branches, not the rough gray ones. Make sure your cutting has plenty of buds; these will be the points at which the twig takes root. You'll also need pots and dirt. (We're using one- and five-gallon plastic pots filled with fresh potting soil. Clean, new dirt reduces chances of disease, and good drainage is important; you could use compost or garden soil, but we'd rather not take chances!) Have a pair of clippers handy, and another stick for digging holes.

Begin by filling your pots with soil and trimming your twigs to wherever the buds are densest — most of ours are about 8 to 10 inches long. Again, the buds will sprout the roots, so you want as many as possible in contact with the soil. You can watch this sprouting process, if you like, by placing a spare twig in a jar of water and setting it on a window sill for a couple weeks; when the white roots start to emerge and grow, go ahead and plant the twig.

Use a stick to "drill" the holes in your pot of soil. One-gallon pots are good for one twig, while a five-gallon pot will hold two or three and will need watering less frequently. (A good thing — rooting cuttings need regular water in order to "take".) Place the cutting several inches deep in the hole, enough to cover at least two or three buds, and press the soil down firmly. And if you're planting more than one variety, don't forget to label them!

Finally, give your cuttings a good watering and place the pots somewhere sunny and warm to take root. Ours will be residing in the greenhouse:


Here's a fig tree we started from a cutting a couple years ago. As you can see, it's a far cry from the little twigs we're planting today — but with any luck, they'll do just as well!

Introducing the B H Ranch

Welcome to the Boorinakis Harper Ranch! We have been talking about starting a blog for a while, and as winter is a (relatively) slow time of year here on the ranch, it seemed like the perfect time to take the plunge. We'll be posting updates on seasonal goings-on about the farm, as well as plenty of photos, recipes using seasonal local produce, gardening and farming how-to's, and stories about the process of going completely organic with our pear orchard. And, of course, our flock of charming chickens will surely make regular appearances... starting now!

the gals (and guy)

My great-grandfather, George Boorinakis, started our farm in 1918. Now, eighty years later, we're keeping the family business alive and thriving — and we're still growing the most delicious pears you've ever tasted!

George Boorinakis

The Boorinakis Harper Ranch is a small family owned and operated business, and we are passionate about keeping it that way. We're committed to incorporating sustainable farming practices wherever possible — watch for details in upcoming blog posts — including integrated pest management and low-spray techniques to minimize our environmental impact, and keeping bees to pollinate our crops. And, since we’re local, our produce is never transported over long distances or kept in cold storage. Our goal is to provide our community with a local source for the freshest, tastiest fruits and vegetables around!

Even though it isn't our main crop season, there's plenty happening on the ranch in winter. This is the time of year for propagating fruit trees from cuttings, for planning the summer garden, and for pruning, pruning, pruning:



...because before you know it, the orchard will look like this!


-julia boorinakis-harper

January on the Ranch