Oregon Durum Wheat, Update 2

Durum wheat in Oregon has been an interest for me ever since I tried to make homemade ravioli last year.  I thought local durum would be easy to find considering that Oregon is one of the top wheat producers in the country. But when I tried to find local Pacific Northwest (PNW) durum, I couldn't.   When I started doing some research, I found that durum wheat growing has a long and sorted history in Oregon involving university scientists, corporate underwriters, and even a foreign geneticist.  But in the end, no durum had been successfully grown with real commercial potential. 

And then I heard of the WSU durum project.  I contacted Dr. Mike Pumphrey and asked him if I could find out more about their program.  Dr. Pumphrey directed me to Dr. Aaron Carter who is the winter wheat breeder for WSU and had recently started working on the PNW durum project.  Neither had heard about the OSU durum trials from the 1990's, but had gone ahead with their own trials based on what grows well in California, Arizona and Italy.

Recently I wrote to Dr. Carter to see if the results were in.  At the time, the trials had been completed, but the data was not ready.  He promised to get back to me with results when they were ready. 

Good to his word, Dr. Carter sent me the trial results from the WSU PNW Durum trials.  You can download the results, but here is the summary from Dr. Carter (emphasis mine):

I will provide my disclaimer again that this is only one year’s worth of data and at that we had a very unique spring in Washington so before making any recommendations I would like to see another year of data.  Overall though, it appears that durum can be competitive with hard spring wheat and quality standards appear to be met.  Let me know if you have any questions.  As far as I know, there is no commercial production of durum in the PNW so your problem with locally sourcing this is still present.  The addition of another year of data may be enough to convince producers to grow it if there are markets identified...

I will make the upfront comment right now that this data is only from two locations in 2010 and should be regarded as such. The 2010 year was very unique in Washington as we had a very cold, wet spring with a lot of disease pressure. More disease was seen in Pullman than in the Othello location. Pullman is a rain fed location receiving around 22 inches of annual precipitation. Othello was irrigated using a center-pivot system and is located in central Washington. Weed pressure was controlled at both locations. Stripe rust was the major disease at both locations, with Pullman receiving the higher, more uniform pressure. Data is included for stripe rust reaction in Pullman. Also included are five hard spring wheat cultivars used as comparison. The Othello location had unusually low test weight and yield potential for an irrigated site. Yield appeared competitive and protein levels were acceptable.

WSU seems to have had success where others have not.  As Dr. Carter says, Durum production can be competitive.  This was news to me.  I was  under the assumption that durum was a long shot in the Northwest and growing it was difficult.  But the early indicators from the WSU trials show reality may be very different. 

Why isn't PNW Durum Happening? Three Reasons
To help answer this question, I reached out to Scot Lany of Eat Oregon First and the Basque Ranch.

When I showed Scot the test results from WSU, he was not surprised.  It just makes sense the durum should be able to grow well in central and eastern Oregon (and Washington).  The test result yields looked good and the protein variation was narrow enough to be acceptable. 

The issue to Scot was not if it would grow; the issues are everything except growing a durum crop.  In particular, Scot identified three trouble spots:

1.  Cross Pollination.  If you are going to grow durum, in a state that has 975,000 acres of wheat (source), you are going to cross pollination problems.  To avoid this, you need a half mile barrier between your durum and any other types of wheat.  That's a half mile of unused land that could be used to grow a profitable crop of soft white wheat.

2.  Storage and Transportation.  Infrastructure in general is a problem. Wheat is a commodity.  When wheat is grown, it is normally grown in huge quantities.  Quantities so big that wheat can really only be thought of as a "regional" product, as opposed to a "local" product.   Harvesting the crop takes large equipment.  Storing the crop takes gigantic facilities.  Moving the crop takes trucks and trains.  If everyone is growing one kind of wheat, then that makes it possible to share costs because the equipment and facilities needed to do the job can be shared.  Durum processing would need to be kept completely separate from the other kinds of wheat.

3.  The Politics of Co-Ops. Because commodity farming requires such huge investments in equipment and infrastructure, most wheat farmers join co-ops.  Co-ops provide all sorts of benefits to being in the club.  They can help when someone has equipment problems.  They lower costs on necessary supplies, like fuel.  They help with marketing and education programs.  It's more than a giant club that buys in bulk for its members, it also handles the marketing and selling of the wheat.  In this environment, deciding to go your own way by growing a crop that is not what the co-op grows is not supported.   The co-op only buys and sells what it buys and sells. And the big co-ops only buy what they can sell in the biggest markets for the most profit with the lowest risk.  In Oregon, that means 8 types of wheat, but mostly soft white winter wheat.  If you aren't into that, you should find a different co-op (if you can).  There is no "I" in co-op. 

Oregon Wheat Variety Study 

A Different Point of View from the Oregon Wheat Commission
To get more insight into the issues, I spoke with Tana Simpson, administrator for the Oregon Wheat Commission.  Tana was very nice and explained to me more about wheat in Oregon. 

There are two main co-ops in Oregon--the Mid-Columbia Producers and Pendleton Flour Mill.  All of these are set up to handle huge amounts of grain (primarily Soft White wheat) from the farmers of Oregon.  One thing you will notice is that only one of these co-ops has the word "mill" in its name.  That is important because Oregon exports about 92% of all the wheat grown here, mostly to Asia.   And that wheat is exported raw.  The only large scale commercial mill in all of Oregon is the Pendleton mill.

This idea that we export almost all the wheat we grow is very important because it dictates what is grown by creating an environment of very strict standards for the product.  Soft White wheat grows really well in Oregon.  Because of that, the quality and quantity can be consistent enough for the international export market.

The OSU durum wheat trials showed that durum production is not consistent enough to meet these types of strict standards.  Because of that, what is grown here can't play in the "big leagues" of the international export markets.  Thus, no one really wants to grow durum.  Why grow second-rate durum when you can grow first-rate soft white?

Consequently, if anyone is going to grow an alternative crop, they need to start out with smaller local organizations such as Bob's Red Mill or one of the others.

One More Reason Why We Don't Have PNW Durum
I spoke with Josh Dorf, CEO of Stone-Buhr, about the PNW durum situation and he brought up a great point.  PNW durum is an experiment and experiments are expensive.  Those extra costs for infrastructure and processing would have to be passed on through higher prices.  These higher prices would not be able to compete with the existing durum producers in Montana and North Dakota.  If they can't compete, they won't sell, and then the experiment would fail.   The work that WSU is doing may help to reduce the doubts that a viable crop can be grown, but it does not change the fact that there will be lots of extra costs to create the infrastructure needed to get the grain to market.

Going Home Grown
So, is it possible to roll your own?  Sure it is.  The new WSU trial results are very promising.  It won't be easy, but here are a couple examples of people who have bucked the system.

Basque Ranch. At Basque Ranch they grow Triticale wheat, a variety developed in the UK as a cross between wheat and rye that was meant to be exported to Africa to fight world hunger. Scot heard about this, thought it was pretty cool and decided to plant a couple acres.  He took it to a private mill and gave out some samples to Pasta Works and other places in town and they liked it.  The next year he planted 4 acres, and it all sold.  This kept going until this past year he planted 40 acres of Triticale.  Scot created his own market.  Now he is one of only 2 or 3 growers in the state that has a commercial crop of Triticale wheat.   Available through Eat Oregon First and Fork Revolution.

Stone-Buhr (distributors of Sheppard's Grain).  Easily the largest scale producer of the bunch, but still centered in the Northwest.  Sheppard's Grain is notable not because they are growing alternative wheat, but because they are doing it on their own terms.  Eschewing the co-op system, the farmers work together as a pool.  Costs are based on the true cost of growing the wheat and everything is Food Alliance certified.  Because of the record keeping required for Food Alliance, Stone Buhr is able to tell you exactly who grew the wheat you are buying on their Find the Farmer website.  The Sheppard's Grain / Stone Buhr system builds the regional grain industry based on sound ecological practices and pays the farmers based on true costs (not commodity board price fixing).  They provide a great example of how to keep local values even on a large scale.  Available at most major super markets.

Where does that leave PNW Durum?  
Basically no where...until someone steps up to the plate and plants a few acres of durum.  I'm sure there are plenty of local restaurants and grocery stores that would carry the product.  I'm sure there are plenty of people who would buy it.  And if the WSU results hold true through the next round of trials, then there may be no reason not to grow durum here.  But someone has to take the risk, and right now there are no takers.

Making Ketchup, Mustard, and Mayonnaise Local

Sometimes food just needs a little help.  Brats need mustard.  Crab cakes go great with Aioli.  You can't have mashed potatoes without ketchup (or so says my daughter).  Condiments are so useful and so ubiquitous that not being able to make them locally is a big oversight in any local food plan. 

All of the preparations I did below were not done using locally sourced ingredients.  In fact, I didn't even try to local source them.  There are a couple reasons for this.  The most important reason is that I have never made ketchup or mustard before.  Having never made them before, I thought it more cost effective to do a practice run using less expensive ingredients, learn how to make the stuff, work out the kinks in the recipes, then spend the money for local ingredients later when I know I'm not going to screw it up.

Making Ketchup Local
If you look at the ingredients, ketchup is really an Autumn and Winter food--after we've eaten our fill of late summer sliced tomatoes but want to keep that sunny goodness going through the dark months.  By spring you've probably used up whatever ketchup you'd made.  Besides, spring foods don't really lend themselves to ketchup (fiddle heads and ketchup anyone?). 

I went for the simplest recipe that I could find, thinking that I could make fancy ketchup later, but I at least needed to know the basics first.  I used my Epicurious app to find a simple homemade ketchup recipe that got good reviews.  It wasn't hard to find. There were several. 

My thoughts were also leaning toward how I could adapt the recipe to 100% local ingredients, knowing that not all ingredients can be sourced locally.  Here are the original ingredients:

• Canned Tomatoes
• Onion
• Olive Oil
• Tomato Paste
• Brown Sugar
• Cider Vinegar
• Salt

Then, for fun, I added a little bit of Worchestershire Sauce and some Bourbon-Chipotle sauce from Fire on the Mountain.

Most of these seem pretty easy to replace. 

Canned tomatoes = Fresh Tomatoes, blanched and peeled

Onion = Onion

Olive Oil = Olive Oil

Tomato paste = This can probably be skipped.  may not have as strong a tomato flavor, but i think it will be okay.

Brown Sugar = a little bit harder.  the closest we can get is local honey.  This would add an interesting herby sweetness. 

Cider vinegar = it is possible to find from a local orchard, but it is also pretty easy to make at home.

Salt = you'd have to make your own salt. 

Worchestershire Sauce = just skip it.

Bourbon-Chipotle Sauce = use some local crushed red pepper.

A note about preparing ketchup.  This was my first time and one thing that I learned is that the texture of ketchup is really key to it tasting like ketchup.  Or maybe I should say the lack of texture.  Store bought ketchup is completely smooth, it has no texture at all.  I used the fine plate on a food mill for mine, but it still had little tiny chunks in it.  These chunks make it seem a little bit like tomatoes sauce, rather than ketchup.  Next time, I'll make sure to run mine through a fine chinois to get all the chunks out and achieve that super smooth ketchup texture. 

Making Mustard Local
I like course grain mustard more than any other condiment, so I was really looking forward to this experiment.  I was hoping to replicate McMenamins Terminator Stout whole grain mustard, which I think is pretty good.  But it turned out to be harder than I thought.

To make whole grain mustard, I looked to James Peterson's great book, Sauces.  He has a very simple whole grain mustard recipe in there, that I adapted to use beer instead of wine and malt vinegar in stead of wine vinegar.

• Mustard Seed
• Shallot
• McMenamins' Terminator Stout
• Malt Vinegar
• Salt and Pepper

Really pretty simple, but to localize this is a little bit harder. 

Mustard Seed = not sure.  I haven't found a local Oregon producer of mustard seed.

Shallot = shallot

McMenamins' Terminator Stout. = Unfortunately, although this is produced locally it is not sourced locally.  You'd have to substitute for something like Rogue Brewery's Chateau Rogue Black Lager.  The Chateau Rogue line of beers are all sourced 100% locally by Oregon farms.  These are the only line of beers that I have found that do not use any imported ingredients. Go Rogue!

Malt vinegar = Cider vinegar?  Local vinegar options are very limited.  There are some fruit vinegars and Cooper Mountain vineyard makes a local Oregon Balsamic.  However, all of these are cost prohibitive.  When I started looking around, I did not find a single Oregon vineyard that was making wine vinegar.  None of them wanted to divert part of their crop from wine production.  This is a real bummer for local food.  I understand there are cost pressures and growers want to get the highest margin they can, but by neglecting the basic ingredients, we are left having to import what could easily be created here.

Salt and pepper = you can make your own salt, but pepper is just not available.

A note about making mustard.  When mustard is first made, it is hot.  I thought I'd messed something up when my mustard tasted like wasabi-horseradish-vinegar-fire sauce.  Mustard needs time to mellow, and there is no telling just how long that will take.  Right now, my mustard has been mellowing for 3 days and it is still a little too hot for my taste.  Luckily, mustard does not go bad, so you can leave it out and take a taste every day to see where it is at.  When letting your mustard mellow, make sure not to put it in the refrigerator.  Refrigeration basically stops the mellowing process and your mustard will be fixed at that heat.  I didn't know this at first and put one jar in the refrigerator.  Three days later the other jars are developing a nice flavor while that one jar still makes my eyes water.

Making Mayonnaise Local
Local mayo is not really possible simply because every recipe I found called for canola oil or peanut oil, neither of which we have here.  What we do have is olive oil.  And we have garlic.  This mean that while we can't make traditional mayonnaise, we can make something better--Aioli.  Aioli is like garlic mayonnaise, but a little bit different.  It has less ingredients, is full of garlic and tastes outstanding on crab cakes.  It is better than mayonnaise in my book. 

I turned again to James Peterson's Sauces for a simple Aioli recipe, and really it couldn't get simpler.

• Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Garlic
• Egg Yolk
• Salt and Pepper
• Lemon Juice

If we want to do this local, here's what we'd have to do:

Garlic = garlic

Egg yolks = no problem

Salt and Pepper = make your own salt, but pepper is out.  That's okay though, because the pepper doesn't
really contribute that much in this recipe.

Lemon Juice = it is possible to find local Meyer lemons.  But you gotta look.

Extra Virgin Olive Oil = Extra Virgin Olive Oil.  There are several producers of local olive oil for this, but cost will be an issue.  The recipe in Peterson's book calls for 2 cups of oil.  That is 16 ounces of oil.  Considering that a 12.7 ounce bottle of oil from Red Ridge Farms costs around $17, you can see that this will not be a cheap aioli.  In fact, it would say that it is cost prohibitive to make aioli with local oil.

A note about making aioli.  If your aioli breaks while you are making it, James Peterson says to beat an extra egg yolk, then add the broken aioli to is slowly to re-bind it.  This worked for me.  Peterson also says that extra virgin olive oil is fragile and will become bitter if over worked.  However, when I looked on YouTube, I found plenty of chefs using their Kitchen Aids to do the mixing.  I tried doing the hand method then resorted to a Kitchen Aid to get the job finished.  It seemed to work for me.

Local Sourcing Local Condiments
Overall, most condiments can be simplified and adapted to local ingredients just fine. There are a couple sticking points though, mainly with vinegars and oils.  This really brings to the front a problem that I have been running into more and more with local sourcing in general. Eating local is more than a nice chicken from the farmer's market or a pint of u-pick strawberries or a bag of sweet corn in late summer from Sauvie's Island. While all these things can be wonderful, the food we eat every day is made up of many more ingredients.  Almost all of these can be sourced locally, but are not.  Cost pressures and thin margins lead growers to pass them over because they do not generate the profit that "premium" products do. But if we are really, truly going to cook and eat locally, we need to find ways to source all our ingredients locally.  Eating local cannot be a "gourmet" event every day.  There is a place for premium products, but we need the staples too.

A Whole Pig

I didn't kill the pig.

When you tell people you are going to butcher a pig, most people think that includes killing the pig.  But it doesn't.  Slaughtering the pig is the process of killing it, and that's handled by a USDA certified slaughter house.  Butchering the pig is the process of cutting it up.  Slaughtering is an efficient and mechanical process (when done right), but butchering is a creative process.

I'm getting ahead of myself...

Going Full Piggy
This all started because my family has been talking about getting a pig for a long time.  We already get whole chickens and have gotten a quarter of beef.  A pig seemed the next step. 

A few weeks ago my family did seven days 100% local. During that week we did not eat anything that was not sourced locally. The experience was interesting, fun, challenging, and enlightening. Some parts were easier than others and some were harder. One thing that came clear was that eating takes a certain amount of skill. It takes different skills than we normally work on in an everyday home kitchen. Cooking skills and presentation skills are nice--they create and refine the meal. But what we seldom work on are production skills. These production skills are normally left to other people, like butchers, and they add to the price of what we buy. The price of everything can be brought down if you learn to do some of the production yourself. Pound for pound, steaks cost more than a loin.  When price becomes an issue, as it can when eating locally sourced food, learning to buy big can help you spend smaller.

Through Foodbuzz, I found a local vendor, Eat Oregon First, that sells whole pigs.  Normally they sell to local Portland restaurants but they are starting to branch out into consumer direct sales.  So I gave them a call.

Here is the catch.  When you buy a hog from Eat Oregon First, you buy the whole hog.  And it comes whole, which is to say slaughtered but not butchered, because they normally sell to restaurants who employ talented chefs who know how to break down an animal (Eat Oregon First does sell amazing beef by the cut, but not pig). To take care of the butchering, I hired Tracey "Tray" Satterfield of the Portland Meat Collective.  She was my own personal butcher for the day, and she was awesome. (If you ever need of a personal butcher, contact Tray at traceysatterfield@gmail.com)

The Three C's -- From Country to Corpse to Cuisine
Let me digress for a minute.  When you look at it from the basest perspective, eating animals is all about killing something, cutting up the corpse into manageable pieces, cooking it, and eating it.  Most of us deal only with the last two parts of that sequence, but there is a lot that comes before.  With wild animals we leave the care and feeding to Mother Nature.  Domesticated animals are different.  With domestic animals, how they are raised and what they are fed is directly the responsibility of the farmer. 

Everything starts with how the animal is raised. 

Get A Life, Pig!
It is important to me that the meat I eat is raised "well".  What does "well" mean?  To be completely honest, I'm not sure. It's something I'm still working out.  But I do know that "well" begins with pigs having a life.  I understand that these are domesticated animals raised solely for the purpose of food production, but food is not just about meat in the same way meals are not just about eating.  A home is more than a house.  Family means something different than relatives. There is more to what we eat than what we eat, and how we approach the dinner plate has meaning.  For me, ethical meat eating begins with understanding where your meat comes from and how it lived before it became delicious.  Pastures are an important part of this.  Wind and rain too.  Mud and pigs go together in my book.  Knowing the name of the farmer that raised the animal you are going to eat is very important
.
This pig came from Payne Family Farm in Carlton, Oregon and was raised by Mark Payne.  I spoke with Mark Payne over the phone about his farm and his pigs (hence no pictures, sorry).

Mark Payne is a fourth generation Oregon farmer, located just outside McMinneville.  In the 60s, it became clear to the Payne family that,due to the changing realities of modern farming and agricultural economics, they had to move away from the diverse family farm and focus on something that could provide the volume.  The Paynes chose Pigs.  Mark believes in taking good care of his pigs--a decent life and decent death--while understanding that the economic realities of modern farming necessitate a certain amount of production volume.

Mark's pigs eat grain that is locally grown in the Tygh Valley in Eastern Oregon.  Through partnerships with Basque Ranch, Eat Oregon First, and Rogue Brewery, Payne Family Farm is able to be the final part of a completely locally sourced cycle of food production.  I'll have more about this in another post. It's really remarkable what these guys have put together.

Back To The Bloody Parts
When I arrived at the Eat Oregon First warehouse, the pig had already been delivered and Tray was just starting work. Half the beast was laid on the table in front of Tray.  The other half lay on a second table along with the head.  Tray was just beginning to make the first cuts.  

Cutting the side into portions was not nearly has hard as I thought it would be.  I'd seen the pig diagrams many time and even have a copy of Basic Butchering of Livestock and Game that describes very clearly how to process a whole animal.  However, looking at pictures and actually cutting an animal are different things.  I knew I didn't want to try to take this on my own.  Tray really made it all simpler.  She walked through the animal, showing me what the lines were, how to find them, where the divisions made sense.  Watching her make the cuts and comparing them to the drawings in the book brought it all together. 


Inside of a side of pork, head removed, before cutting.

Slowly, methodically, the pig carcass was turned into stacks of the most wonderful cuts of meat.  1.5 inch thick bone-in chops started piling up.  A Boston Butt was magically pulled from the animal along with its twin, the picnic ham.  We found bacon tucked in under a sheet of spare ribs.  Hams sat in a clustered huddle, hiding inside the legs.  Tray's cutting was so well placed, that we wasted almost nothing.  I was pressed to figure out what to use for sausage meat!

Cutting out the spare ribs.

Sirloin Chop

Wrapping was like a carnivore's Christmas. I was a ghoulish Santa, I driving home with a load of meaty presents.

Home Is Where The Heart Is, and the rib chops, and the...

Honestly, a whole pig is a lot of meat.  221 lbs. of meat in my case.  I filled both freezers and still had the head left over, sitting in the refrigerator, in a plastic bag.  This did not make my wife happy, and I was a little unsure what to do.  Everything was fresh so I knew it would hold in the refrigerator for a couple days.  But I needed to make a decision quick before I ended up with a rotten pig head in my refrigerator.

The answer came from Jane Grigson's book, Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery.  She has a simple pate recipe specifically for pig head.  Exactly what I was looking for!  Here is my modification to the recipe based on what I had on hand:

1.5 lbs. meat cut from the head (jowls)
0.5 lbs ground pork (I ground the trimmings and the heart together)
1 large egg
2 oz. Madeira
1 large onion
1 Tbs. flour
Salt and pepper and dried herbs

It was toward the end of the day that I took this recipe on.  I'd already ground up several pounds of trimmings and the heart for sausage meat.  I'd started a slab of bacon curing in the refrigerator (based on the instructions in Charcuterie).  My last task for the day was to deal with the head.  It couldn't wait.  The next day was garbage day and I didn't want to miss my chance to get rid of whatever was left over. 

I cut the ears off and gave them to my dogs. Then I got out my boning knife and started with the fatty cheeks because that seemed easiest.  Keeping the thin knife as close to the bones as possible, I peeled the meat away from the face, exposing the jawline and teeth and moving upward toward the cheek bones and the open eyes.  The tongue was in there; I could see left over food (or blackened blood) in the pig's teeth.  It had a distinct odor--not like rot or sour.  It had a strange smell like blood, fat, fresh meat, and bad breath all together.  It smelled in a way that was different than any of the other parts of the body.  Maybe it was the amount of glands that are in the head.  Maybe it was the tongue.  Either way, it made me take a step back and gather myself.  At this point I thought about skipping the head.  It seemed an unnecessary trouble--it was difficult cutting.  And the smell was getting stronger and making me sick.

Jonah was in his bouncy chair by the kitchen doorway watching the whole thing.  Kim and Hazel had gone Christmas shopping, so he stayed home with me.  He was smiling and bouncing and having a good time chewing on his hands and his toys and watching me trying to cut up a pig's head.  He was unaffected by the smell.  It didn't bother him at all.  He was having a great time doing his baby stuff right where he was.  I was the only one feeling sick.  I was making myself feel sick.   It was all mental.  Jonah wasn't sick, so why should I be?  After all, I choose to do this.  I requested this pig be killed for me.  He's not chomping on acorns and checking out the sows.  He's sitting in my freezers and in my refrigerator.  And his head is sitting, open eyed, on my cutting board, because this is what I wanted.  I had to finish what I'd started.  Throwing out a whole pig's head just because I didn't have the stomach to finish the job would have been...disrespectful.  Disrespectful to what I was learning.  Disrespectful to what I was trying to do.  And disrespectful to the pig.  That is not what I wanted this to be.

Pate. (colors adjusted a bit for poor lighting)

I gathered myself, stepped back up, and then the job became easier.  I had not use for the brains, so I didn't crack open the skull.  I've never liked head cheese either, so I didn't make that.  I got as much from the jowls as I could, took out the tongue, and went on to make my pate.

If you want to see pictures of the pig's head here are the links.  Warning: you might get grossed out.

Pig's head before.
Pig's head after. 

Over the next week, we had a dinner party for the solstice and the pate was well liked by everyone.  For that same party I did an 8-bone loin roast with a salt, garlic, and pepper rub that turned out great.  The bacon finished also.  The day was clear so I smoked it with hardwood outside, then cut it by hand and vacuum sealed half pound packages.

I'm working on a brown sugar glazed ham for Christmas dinner--it's brining in the refrigerator right now.  The Christmas ham--I guess I really was wrapping presents.