California olive oil has held a place of honor in my pantry ever since I attended my first olive oil tasting in 2006 and discovered an emerging community of producers in the Golden State.  It’s a key  ingredient in this great quinoa, pistachio and cherry salad, which I’ll get to later.

Five years ago, the best-known California oils were produced by small growers raising Tuscan varieties for artisanal oils with high prices.   I saved them for special dishes and salad dressings.  For everyday cooking, I still relied on supermarket brands of extra virgin oils from Italy.

That changed when I tasted my first mass produced oil from a large California grower that uses modern methods of harvesting and pressing. Here was a fruity, fresh tasting oil at a price low enough for everyday use.  Imported oils were banished from my shelves.  Most probably don’t meet strict international standards for extra virgin oil, anyway, according to a University of California, Davis study released last year.

My olive oil education took another step forward last week, when I was invited to experience the harvest at California Olive Ranch in Artois, nearly 100 miles north of the state capital in the heart of the Sacramento Valley.  The Ranch was a pioneer in the U.S. when it planted its first high-density orchards of semi-dwarf olive trees on 75 acres near Oroville in 1999.  It followed a modern Spanish model for planting trees along trellises and harvesting them mechanically, similar to the way wine grapes are handled.

Today, the company is the biggest olive oil producer in the nation and its moderately-priced oils are sold in supermarkets and specialty grocers from coast to coast.  It grows Spanish and Greek varieties of olives on three ranches with a total of 5,000 acres in addition to contracting with other farmers for fruit grown on more than 5,000 acres.  Its olives go from tree to extra virgin oil in a few hours, thanks to high tech mills. Every truckload is tracked from ranch to bottle.

I jumped at the opportunity to tour the orchards and see those mechanical harvesters in action — not to mention taste oil fresh off the tree.  The harvest starts in early October, when the olives begin to hit their peak oil content, and continues into November most years.

From a distance, the Artois orchard looks like rows of neatly trimmed hedges stretching toward the horizon.  Only when you get closer is it apparent that the hedges are actually closely planted trees, their tops trimmed flat at about seven feet tall, arranged in rows about five feet apart. Some 650 trees are planted per acre compared with 125 in traditional planting patterns.

Ungainly yellow harvesters, looking for all the world like sheds on wheels, roll up and down the rows at the pace of a brisk walker.  As they pass over the rows, the machines squeeze and shake the trees, harvesting all but a few olives without breaking the branches.

As a treat, ranch manager Adam Englehardt offered five other bloggers and me a chance to ride on one of the harvesters.  It was noisy, dusty and great fun to watch the olives collect in bins then move up a conveyor belt to be dumped in a trailer traveling alongside in the next row.

“It’s still a pretty new technology and it’s still being refined,” says Englehardt, who notes that only three varieties are suitable for this process now.  They’re the Spanish Arbequina and Arbosana varieties and the Greek Koroneiki.

Once they’re picked, the olives are rushed to the nearby mill, where they’re washed, sorted and pressed.  The oil emerges from the press in a brilliant green stream before being piped to 55-foot tall stainless steel tanks, where it settles before bottling.  It’s never filtered.

Much of the oil is blended into the company’s Everyday California Extra Virgin Olive Oil or the Miller’s Blend, which won best of class in the Armonia Olive Oil competition in Italy.  The rest goes into single variety Arbequina or Arbosana oils.

The majority of the olive oil pressed last week won’t see market shelves until next March.  The exception is a small Limited Reserve bottling of new oil—the olio nuovo prized by Italians — that will be shipped later this month.   In our tasting, the new Arbequina oil was grassy and fresh with a nicely aggressive pungency — that tingling sensation you sometimes get at the back of the throat when you taste extra virgin oil straight up.  If you’d like to try it, you can sign up for the waiting list.

My favorite of the standard bottles is the Arbosana, a complex oil with citrus undertones and a peppery kick.  It was perfect for the salad, pictured above, that I was tipped to by Kirsten Wanket, the California Olive Ranch’s marketing manager.

The recipe comes from Fran Gage’s “The New American Olive Oil” (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2009) and it more than lives up to Kirsten’s billing.   Gage toasts the quinoa before cooking, which brings out layers of flavor I’d never before found in the tiny South American grain.  My only change was substituting the dried cherries I had on hand for the dried cranberries in the original.  Both bring a bright, tart note to a salad that only gets better as it sits in the refrigerator for a day or so.

I’m a sucker for kitchen gadgets.  If there’s a clever new product to prepare food easier, quicker or with better results, I’m eager to give it a test drive.

Very few of those gadgets make the cut, however.  They have to perform with flying colors or they’re off to the thrift store.

These three tools have found homes in my kitchen because I can’t imagine cooking without them anymore.  I can recommend them without reservation.

The beater blade at the top of the page is one of the best ideas in years.  The rubber wings on the edge of the beater efficiently scrape batter from the sides of the bowl of a KitchenAid stand mixer.  That means faster and more efficient mixing of cakes and cookies.

NewMetro Design is not the first with this idea.  I tried an earlier version by SideSwipe and liked it fine for a couple of months until the scraper tabs on the edge of the blade began to break off.  Other companies have jumped on the idea, too.   But this blade has performed beautifully for about a year and shows no sign of deterioration.   I’d be lost without it.

My blade works with a 5-quart, tilt-head KitchenAid and costs $18.35 at Amazon.  That’s not cheap, but it’s worth it.  NewMetro also offers blades for larger KitchenAid mixers as well as other brands such as Cuisinart and Viking.

This Thermapen thermometer has changed my life.  I’m an impatient sort, I know, and even instant read thermometers take some time to register the temperature of meat and poultry accurately.  More often than I’d like to admit, I tried to serve chicken  that was slightly undercooked because I didn’t wait long enough to get a good read on the internal temperature.

This thermometer redefines instant read.  It only takes a couple of seconds to get an accurate measurement.  I use it all the time, even to check whether bread is done all the way through.

It’s expensive at $93 for the new splash-proof model, which is an improvement over mine.  I asked for it as a present, otherwise I might never have sprung for such a high-priced tool.  Still, it’s a wonder and I no longer can imagine cooking without it.

This MAC vegetable cleaver hardly qualifies as a gadget.  It’s a serious knife from a Japanese knife maker revered by top professional chefs, including Thomas Keller of The French Laundry fame.

Still, it’s an unusual blade that deserves more attention.   Light, thin and incredibly sharp, it zips through most kitchen tasks far faster and more accurately than heavier chef’s knifes.

I bought it in San Jose’s Japantown last year when I was having problems with my right hand from too many years writing on a computer.  My German chef’s knives were difficult to maneuver and even my Global knives felt too heavy.  This 6½-inch MAC blade was just right.  And at $80 it was less expensive than the more conventional knives.

My hand is much better now, but I still reach for this knife first.

What tools can you not live without in the kitchen?

Meet one of my favorite kitchen helpers.

If I were heading off for college this fall, a rice cooker is the one appliance I would pack for the dorm.  No one-trick gadget, it can cook everything from macaroni and cheese to pot de creme.

Rice, of course, is what it does best.  I made rice in a saucepan for years and most of the time it came out just fine.  Now, however, everyone in my family can make good rice every time.  We also make terrific polenta, which only requires a few stirs while cooking.

My mainstay this summer was this super easy recipe for Rice Cooker Chicken with Ginger from Chef Laurent Gras that I spotted at the bottom of a page in Food and Wine.  I hesitated writing about it since it came from a magazine. But it was so simple and so good that I can’t keep it to myself.

Gras transforms jasmine rice with slender matchsticks of ginger, chunks of chicken thighs, fresh spinach and coconut milk.   Layer them in the cooker, turn it on and a delectable one-dish meal is ready in under an hour with no additional effort on the cook’s part.

I’m addicted.  Whenever I’m facing a tough day with little time to cook, I turn to this dish.  I could say the ginger is the secret, providing wonderful texture and fresh taste to what is potentially a bland dish, but the coconut milk contributes haunting aroma and complex flavor.

The recipe is fairly flexible.  Regular long-grain rice can be substituted for jasmine if that’s all you have on hand.

I’ve even made it with brown basmati rice and cubes of tofu, but that requires increasing the liquid slightly and adding the chicken and spinach about halfway through the cooking cycle since brown rice takes longer to cook.  Introduce about 8 ounces of tofu, cut into 1/2-inch cubes, in the last 15 minutes.

Don’t be tempted to substitute chicken breast meat for the thighs, however.  It gets horribly dry with the long cooking.

You don’t need a fancy fuzzy logic cooker like mine. It’s nice but fairly expensive.

Roger Ebert, the Pulitzer-winning film critic, swears by a simple pot with “cooking” and “keep warm” temperature settings in his new cookbook, “The Pot and How to Use It: The Mystery and Romance of the Rice Cooker” (Andrews McMeel, 2010), released this week.   Although Ebert lost his jaw to cancer and now receives his meals through a tube into his stomach, he used to carry a rice cooker with him when he traveled.  He offers recipes for beans, curries, chili, jambalya, beef stew and more in his cookbook.

The book I turn to for all my questions about using a rice cooker is “The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook” (Harvard Common Press, 2002) by my friends and former colleagues, Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufmann.  This is where I learned to make the soft Italian style polenta I love.  I usually cut the butter a little and stir in 2-3 ounces of goat cheese after the polenta has finished cooking.

If you like polenta but hate the stirring, try this recipe.  You’ll be a convert, too.

In the waning weeks of summer vacation, with the days already getting shorter and the first day of school on the horizon, few of us want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen.  Now is the time to make the most of the incredible bounty of the August garden.

I’m talking tomatoes, here, of course.  As far as I’m concerned, nothing compares to the deep, sun-warmed flavor and chin dripping juiciness of a freshly picked tomato.  Whether it’s a salty, smoky Cherokee Purple or a nicely acidic Early Girl, a good tomato needs very little help to make a good meal.

A couple of slabs of ripe tomato and a sprinkle of salt is the perfect mid-summer lunch.  Add toasted bread and a salty bit of cured pork and you have a simple feast of the season that crosses continents and cultures.  In America, it’s a BLT.  In Spain, it’s pan con tomate, or bread with tomato. One of the most popular offerings in the tapas bars of Barcelona, bread with tomato at its most basic is little more than a generous slice of toasted bread rubbed with the cut side of  a tomato half until the bread has soaked up as much juice and pulp as it can hold.  It’s a classic marriage of flavor and texture that only takes minutes to prepare. 

From that point, you can embellish as you wish. A clove of garlic rubbed over the toast just before the tomato adds a typically Mediterranean note.  So do a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of sea salt.

If you’re particularly flush, a slice or two of Serrano ham is a luxurious addition.   Or, like me, you could make do with some well-crafted domestic prosciutto, which lends savor and a measure of protein.   The ham should be dry-cured and sliced paper thin.  A garnish of good quality anchovy fillet is the crowning touch in my book, but you can leave it off if you share the widespread American prejudice against strongly flavored little fish.

A dish like this doesn’t really require a recipe, although I discovered a good guide in the new cookbook, “The Book of Tapas,” by Simone and Ines Ortega (Phaidon, 2010).  It’s a veritable encyclopedia of the little dishes served in Spain.

The critical point is to use the best ingredients you can find.

A substantial, rustic bread like the Pan Pascal organic demi-miche I found at Trader Joe’s is essential since it needs to absorb the tomato without falling apart.  A good local sourdough with a dense crumb and not too many holes does the job, too.  Get an unsliced loaf so you can cut thick slices. Toast the slices until well-browned under the broiler, on the grill or even in the toaster if it has wide slots.

The tomato must be very ripe and super juicy.  Dry-farmed Early Girls are ideal but any flavorful beefsteak would be great, too.  Cut the tomato in half across its hemisphere and rub in as much of the juice and pulp as you can.

Then drizzle with a good olive oil and sprinkle with a small pinch of sea salt.

Top with a couple of slices of the dry cured ham, garnish with anchovy if desired, and dig in immediately.  Summer never tasted so good.

I wasn’t planning on posting another asparagus recipe this spring.  Really, I wasn’t.  But the local asparagus is still so gorgeous at the farmers market that I find myself buying it every week.  Then this recipe landed in my in-box last week in a newsletter from Pizza Antica and all bets were off.

Chef and owner Gordon Drysdale is a pizza genius who’s turned his original pizzeria at San Jose’s Santana Row into a mini-chain with locations in Lafayette and Mill Valley.  I’ll never be able to replicate his thin crust but I’m grateful that he’s willing to give out some of his recipes now that I don’t get into San Jose that often.

The secret of this recipe is great asparagus and preserved lemon, that marvelous salty, tart condiment from the Middle East.  You can make your own, but it takes time. Or look for it in Middle Eastern markets.  The pizza is best with the real thing but you also can substitute the zest of a lemon, as I did in the photo above, for a touch of citrus tang that sets off the fresh flavor of roasted asparagus. An extra sprinkle of sea salt will help balance the flavors.

Drysdale also calls for roasted garlic, which serves as a mellow, nutty backdrop to the asparagus and fresh mozzarella.  If you want to skip that step, mince a couple of garlic cloves and use them instead.  Just be sure to cover the minced garlic well with the other toppings so it doesn’t burn in the high heat of the oven.  My garlic-loving spouse prefers this version.

For the asparagus, the chef advises slicing it thinly and I’m sure that works best with fat stalks.  For slender stalks, though, it’s better to cut them into lengths of 1½ to 2 inches.  They’ll cook through quickly in the oven.

I’ve included a pizza dough recipe from a previous post if you need one.  Trader Joe’s pizza dough is good, too, and a bargain at about $1 a package.

If you’re running out of fresh ideas for spring’s best vegetable, try this pizza.  It’s so good, I had to share.

If mention of olive oil turns your thoughts to Italy, it’s time to expand your horizons.  Some of the freshest most flavorful olive oil on the market today comes from California.

For more than two decades the state’s  boutique producers of high end oils have been getting all the attention.  One of the most popular and widely distributed, McEvoy Ranch, commands more than $20 for a 12.7 ounce bottle of its  intense, pungent oils from Tuscan varieties of olives.

Now, California is building a reputation for high quality oils delivered at a more modest price, thanks to intensive planting techniques, mechanical harvesting and a proliferation of high tech mills.   Although many may be familiar with the oils from the mammoth California Olive Ranch, with mills in Oroville and Corning, far fewer are likely to recognize the products of the state’s number two producer, Corto Olive.  That’s because most of its oil production is bottled under private labels for the likes of Zabar’s and Sam’s Club.

I chanced upon the Corto label in a Whole Foods store last fall.  The price was so reasonable at $5.99 on special for a half liter bottle (about 17 ounces) that I couldn’t resist.  It even carried a seal from the California Olive Oil Council, which signifies that it’s a true extra virgin olive oil, with minimal acidity, that has been cleared of any defects by an expert tasting panel.  That’s more than you can say for most of the imported olive oil on grocers’ shelves.

The oil wasn’t terribly complex but it delivered fresh olive aroma and taste with a nice little kick and none of the mustiness or off-flavors so common in supermarket oils.  It’s great for everyday cooking and makes a terrific pasta aglio e olio, the traditional Italian dish that draws its flavor from garlic and olive oil.

About a month later, I was lucky enough to tour the Corto plant outside Lodi with a group from the UC Davis Olive Center.  The mill stands in the middle of sprawling olive orchards planted about 700 trees to an acre in hedge rows designed to be harvested mechanically.  The olives go from tree to mill in a matter of hours.  After the vibrant green oil is cold pressed in machinery imported from Italy and Germany, the unfiltered juice is piped into stainless steel tanks for storage until its ready for bottling to order.

Barry Whitlow, the president of Corto Olive, says he has no ambitions to make gourmet olive oil with unique character. He just wants to sell honest and flavorful oil at a competitive price.  “We’re about producing an approachable oil, fruity and fresh,” he says.

Corto now has a permanent place in my pantry.  I pull it out whenever I saute vegetables, brown a piece of meat or make this California-style variation on aglio e olio starring whole wheat spaghetti and green garlic.

Whole grain pasta brings a pleasant, earthy flavor and a little more substance to this simple dish.  Green garlic, an early spring treat which is easily mistaken for scallion until you get a whiff of the lively aroma, is a little brighter and fresher tasting than the usual cloves.   (Mince the white and pale green portions of the stalk.)  Whole cloves are just fine, though, if green garlic is unavailable.

I often use a wok to cook the oil and garlic so I’ll have plenty of room to toss the spaghetti with the sauce.  A pair of short tongs also comes in handy.  You want to make sure every strand is coated.

This dish is perfect for a busy spring weekend when the welcome warmth of the sun and growing hours of daylight keep you out in the garden or on a hiking trail all day. It comes together in no more time than it takes to cook the spaghetti.   Although purists would never add cheese to aglio e olio, I confess that I like to dust it lightly with salty Pecorino Romano, which makes the flavors pop.

For more subtle dishes, I’m likely to reach for Belle Farms extra virgin oil from Watsonville.  Steve and Marguerite Remde produce a lovely Tuscan-style oil from a blend of olives grown on their small farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains.  It’s a golden, buttery oil with nice fruit and a little peppery bite on the finish—ideal for dressing a salad or drizzling over steamed broccoli.

The Remdes pick their fruit by hand, crush their harvest in Modesto and sell the oil at local wineries and grocery stores.  Marguerite also sells at the Cabrillo College farmers market in Aptos on Saturday mornings.

Oil from the 2009 harvest was just released a couple of weeks ago and I scored a bottle for my kitchen.  At $14 a half liter, it’s not exactly cheap, but it’s not a huge splurge either.

Life is too short to cook with inferior olive oil.

I confess I’m a gadget junkie.  I come by it honestly.  My dad has always been fascinated by the newest technological wonder and he’s built an impressive collection of toys over the years.  I’ll never catch up, try as I might.

I work to keep my addiction under control, though, now that I no longer get a regular paycheck.  That’s what makes the iPhone apps so much fun.  (I know, I know.  You have to buy the phone first but I’ve done a good job of rationalizing that purchase.)  The apps are cheap—as long as you don’t go overboard and download everything that looks remotely useful.

In the six months since I got my phone, I’ve been checking out and playing around with apps.  Some didn’t make the cut.  Others were one-trick ponies.  But I’ve come to rely on a handful, especially when I’m away from home and working in an unfamiliar kitchen without my collection of trusted cookbooks. Here are some of my favorites:

Shopper (99 cents)  At heart, this is a very simple shopping list organizer and that’s the way I like it.  You enter the items with the iPhone keyboard or select them from the menu and they’re automatically organized by the section where you’ll find them in the supermarket.  You can get fancy and share lists, create separate lists for different markets, comparison shop from local store flyers, or enter prices of the items you use regularly. But I never do.  That’s just too much work.

Although some reviewers have complained about advertising, I’ve never seen any on my lists.  Perhaps that’s because I don’t buy many big brand items.  A upgraded version is coming out soon that will be ad free—at a higher price, of course.

Shopping lists may be a matter of taste, though.  My husband loved the list he had on his Palm so much that he never warmed up to this one.  He’s installed MyShoppingLists (Sudheer Parwana $1.99) on his iPodTouch and I don’t like it much.

Locavore ($2.99) Since I write mostly about what’s in season, I like to know  what’s going to be in the market when I plan my blog posts.  This little app is a wonder.  It tells me what fruit and vegetables are  in season, what’s going to be gone in a couple of weeks and what’s arriving soon.  And it’s customized for my location.  When I travel, it will tell me what’s available where I am.

This is no mean feat.  I used to consult several different charts tacked to my bulletin board for this information and it wasn’t nearly as comprehensive. This app tracks 234 fruits and vegetables, both the familiar and the exotic.

If the product availability information weren’t enough, you can browse for most any produce item and the app will tell you where, if anyplace, it’s in season, connect you to more info on Wikipedia or link you to recipes on Foodista.com.  A GPS feature maps out farmers markets and farms near you.

Anyone who is trying to eat locally and in season needs this app.

Ratio ($4.99) Michael Ruhlman broke the cookbook mold when his latest offering, “Ratio” (Sribner, $27), was published last year.  The soul of the small volume is a collection of formulas—ratios—that professionals use for preparing everything from bread to creme brulee.   Now those ratios are available in a clever app that encourages cooks to get creative.

Plug in how much flour you want to use for pancakes, say, and a ratio will tell you the quantities of milk, eggs and butter required.  Basic instructions are included under the “details”  tab.

This information is just what you need when you’re in a relative’s kitchen preparing to cook breakfast.  The only drawback is the ratios work best by weight so you really need a kitchen scale, which your host may not possess.  There’s a provision for converting the weight of ingredients to cups, but there’s no option for teaspoons or tablespoons.  That can be pretty limiting.

Nonetheless, I like having these ratios available to consult while I’m grocery shopping or away from from my hard copy of “Ratio” at home.   You could store your own recipes in the app, but I haven’t yet. (Do you sense a theme here?)

Epicurious (free) If I’m going to look up recipes on the fly, I’m going to go to Epicurious.  It’s the only big data base on  the web with recipes I trust and it includes  more than 30,000 recipes from the late lamented Gourmet as well as Bon Appetit and a slew of cookbooks. There are 272 entries for roast pork alone.  It’s easy to search, the photos are nice, and the recipes can be viewed in landscape format, which is much easier to read in the kitchen.

Another nice app for recipes comes from Whole Foods (free) although it’s limited.  One of its best features is an “On Hand” search that offers recipe suggestions for the ingredients you have in your refrigerator and cupboards.  I was disappointed that it didn’t come up with pasta carbonara when I typed in bacon, eggs and pasta.  Maybe it’s not healthy enough for the database.  The app also maps the location of the nearest Whole Foods market, of course.

Kitchen Calculator Pro (99 cents) When I was working in newspapers, my fellow reporters and editors used to joke that if we were any good at math we’d have jobs that paid real money.  It’s true.  Just the thought of multiplying fractions to scale up a recipe from 4 to 6 servings gives me the willies.  This app does it for me.  It also converts units from cups to teaspoons or quarts to liters and it can convert weight to volume (handy for ratio questions) for a long list of common ingredients.

I didn’t find the interface intuitive since the home page is mostly icons—I’m a word person after all.  But the help function works well.

20 Minute Meals – Jamie Oliver ($4.99) I’ve long been a fan of British food phenomenon Jamie Oliver’s tasty, no-nonsense cooking but this app would stand out for its production values alone.   Each of the 50 recipes comes with step-by-step photos as well as complete instructions—presented in landscape format in easy to read type—and occasional voice-over cooking tips from Jamie.  They’re simple but not dumbed down.  As an added attraction, they’re filed in the phone’s memory and you don’t need an Internet connection to use them.

This app is ideal for beginning cooks.  In more than an hour of videos, Jamie offers advice on how to stock your pantry, what cooking equipment you need and even how to prepare garlic.   He’s charming, down-to-earth and helpful.  I learned a new trick for chopping onions.

Seafood Watch (free) Buying fish has become a minefield.  Some of the seafood I like best, including red snapper, has either been overfished. Or it threatens the environment, as in farmed shrimp and salmon.

I used to carry the Seafood Watch guides from the Monterey Aquarium in my wallet to help me navigate restaurant menus and shop responsibly at the market.  Now I just check out this handy app on my phone. It lists the best choices, good alternatives and what to avoid for your part of the country.  There’s a guide for sushi lovers, too, that includes the Japanese name for each fish.  Recommendations are updated regularly.

There’s no end to iPhone apps, it seems.  I just found one that helps you eyeball how much dry spaghetti you’ll need depending on how many people you’re serving and then time the cooking —Pastatime ( 99 cents).  There’s one that scans bar codes to track your daily intake from packaged food—DailyBurn (free).  Another serves as a pocket guide to cheese —Fromage ($2.99)

What apps have you found useful in the kitchen?

For the first time in several years, I won’t be attending the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco this weekend. If I were, I would be heading straight for the Food Should Taste Good booth to get another sample of their terrific tortilla chips flavored with black, green and kalamata olives.

A neighbor brought these chips to a New Year’s Eve party and I’ve been hooked ever since. I took them on a hike with some friends a few days later and they couldn’t stop eating them. The sturdy texture also made them good dippers for hummus.

Now, I’m not a big junk food eater and I generally avoid processed foods, but I make an exception for tortilla chips. Life is too short to pass up all the great flavor and satisfying crunch of good chips. I try not to buy them very often but I’ll rarely turn one down despite all the fat and sodium I know they harbor.

These chips remove a little of the guilt. They’re made with real food, including stone ground corn, sunflower or safflower oil, evaporated cane juice, sea salt and natural seasons — all organic. There isn’t an ingredient listed on the package that I can’t pronounce. Still, their calorie, fat and sodium counts are nearly as high as the big name commercial tortilla chips.

The brand offers a number of unusual flavors, including a chocolate version that I found a little odd but not as strange as I expected. Still, I’m sticking with the olives. It’s an inspired flavor combination.

You can find where to buy them at the Food Should Taste Good web site. In Silicon Valley, many Raley’s, Nob Hill and Whole Foods markets carry them in their natural foods sections. I found them at the New Leaf Markets in Santa Cruz County.

Another product I’ve become addicted to is the Asian Rub from Fire & Flavor. Of all the rubs and seasonings that came across my desk last year, when I was a food writer at the Mercury News, this is the one that I keep going back to. The aromatic blend of whole peppercorns, sesame seeds, onion, garlic and soy sauce works such wonders on usually boring chicken breast that it has become my seasoning of choice for a quick supper.

Usually, I just rub about a tablespoon of the mixture into the chicken breasts and pan roast them in an iron skillet:

Preheat the oven to about 400 degrees, heat a little olive oil in the skillet over a medium flame and add the breasts, skin side down. Cook the chicken, without turning, until the skin turns brown and crisp. Turn the breasts over and slide the pan into the oven for 15-20 minutes, until the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees or the juices run clear when the chicken is pricked with a small, sharp knife.

That’s it. I never cease to be amazed at how good it tastes. The same technique would work with your favorite poultry rub.

The key for me is plump organic chicken still on the bone. I had just about given up on chicken breasts when all we bought was pre-packaged skinless, boneless poultry — the only choice at the local market. They were so dull and dry that I turned to chicken thighs for most dishes.

Now we go to a natural foods store in the next town to buy our chicken from the butcher. It’s free-range and organic and the butcher wraps it in brown paper so there are no foam trays to send to the landfill. It also tastes so much better, but I have to say that even factory farmed chicken would taste better with the skin and bone, which keep the white meat moist.

If you’re watching your fat calories, just remove the skin before you eat it. That’s what my husband does. I, on the other hand, can’t resist at least one bite of the crisp skin seasoned with all those great Asian flavors.

Fire & Flavor sells the rub for $6.95 for 2.5 ounces on its web site, where you’ll also find a store locator.