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Mary Bolton with Master Miller Bob Singletary |
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Our "science guru," Mary Bolton, joined California Olive Ranch in July 2011. She heads our team that evaluates and tests our extra virgin olive oil to ensure its fresh quality. Mary, 26, is a California native who earned her food science degree at the University of California, Davis. She's also a self-described "health nut." At home, Mary is an avid cook who enjoys preparing fresh, healthy dishes - like a salad of feta, tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, and artichokes dressed with our Miller's Blend oil and a splash of champagne vinegar
Tell us about what you do for California Olive Ranch (COR)?I head our Quality Assurance team. Our work covers everything related to oil quality, including: how the oil tastes and smells, governmental regulatory issues, food safety compliance, and research into milling and bottling.
Tell us about the tests you conduct to make sure our oil chemistry is perfect.There are about 25 different chemical test parameters that are used to certify oil as extra virgin. We test our oil to gauge its quality, the quality of the olives used to make the oil, and how quickly the olives were harvested and milled. We perform numerous tests on the incoming olives, too.
We use all this information during our milling process so we can control the utmost accuracy of - and retain the highest quality of - our extra virgin olive oil during production.
Can you tell us about how you taste the oil, and how you train team members in olive oil sensory evaluation so they know whether an oil is "good," "great," or "bad"?We're constantly improving our in-house
olive oil tasting panel through training sessions. We conduct weekly tastings to keep our taste buds active. Our production manager and I are now members of the UC Davis olive oil taste panel.
The key is to constantly taste oils and other foods that are known to stay in your memory bank. We taste
rancid, fusty, and musty oils, for example, to remember what rancid, fusty or musty oils taste like. Think sweaty socks or gym clothes - that's fustiness. Think about what mold smells like - that is mustiness of an oil that had olives that were stored too long. We train everyone to recognize these sensory descriptors, good or bad.
By tasting green apples, almonds, green tea, and even fresh cut grass, it reminds the brain of what that flavor/aroma is so you can easily identify it during a tasting. It's what we call "calibrating our brain" and calibrating our team to each other so that everyone tastes green tea.
What dishes do you enjoy cooking at home?Because I'm young, single, and try to stay active, most of my meals are easy to cook and require little time. The main dishes I cook are Italian or Latin-based. I have a sister-in-law from Peru and have learned a lot of delicious dishes from her.
I love simple saut�ed vegetables - squash, peppers, onions, with tomatoes and artichokes - combined with pasta and a topping of crumbled feta. A dish my sister-in-law introduced me to is lomo saltado - basically, the Peruvian dish for "meat and potatoes." I fry potatoes in our
Arbosana oil. I also saut� skirt steak, onions, peppers, chilies, garlic and tomatoes in our
Everyday Fresh oil. Pile all of that on some rice, and it is to die for! My favorite snack is the Arbosana drizzled with a Misto olive oil sprayer on homemade popcorn with a little bit of salt. It's a much healthier option than the packaged popcorn.
What do you do in your spare time?I love nature, so I try to get out as much as possible. The Oroville-Chico area is fantastic for hiking, swimming, and camping. I take my dog regularly out to the local park for hikes in the canyon.