Hasta La Ideas

A delicious day in the life and land of Nudo’s collaborative community

Since we covered Nudo’s “adopt-an-olive-tree” program a few years back, we’ve been repeatedly impressed by their commitment to bridging the gap between consumers and their food. With a global community of adoptive tree “parents” as well as a localized community of collaborative growers, the Nudo family goes far beyond their fields and presses. It’s a close community as well, with owners traveling to visit their trees and help with the harvest. The farm-to-table connection results in an olive oil that bears the innovative personality of those involved. On a recent visit to Le Marche as the brand’s guest, we met the trees, farmers, and olive millers who define Nudo Italia.

Beginning our day of immersion we left Casal Dei Fichi—our residence for the visit—early for the olive groves. Driving through Le Marche, it’s easy to become hypnotized by the textures of the trees and vines that decorate the landscape like massive bolts of corduroy. We arrived at Rosalio, the Nudo groves, where we picked and raked olives from the branches, which were collected and gathered on nets that ran down the hillside. When asked whether olives could be eaten straight from the tree, Nudo’s founder Jason Gibb explained that fresh olives are extremely bitter and even peppery (I tried one anyway. He was right.). He then told a story about a tree that grew by a cove, its olives falling into the sea. Washed in the seawater over time, the olives were found and enjoyed by a passerby—the reported discovery of brining. Gibb’s story fits with the Rosalio vibe, which is itself a kind of Italian fairy tale.

Leaving the groves by mid-morning, we arrived at the Corradini olive press to make lemon olive oil. Our freshly harvested olives were separated from their twigs and leaves, washed and sent into a basin where three granite wheels pulverized the fruit. Lemons were tossed whole into the mash, which let off a citrus scent of the infusion at work. After an extended cold mixing and going through a series of centrifugal presses, the oil was finally extracted and bottled, ready to be consumed after sitting for a month. This modern pressing process minimizes the olive paste’s exposure to air ensuring optimal freshness and the brightest possible flavor.

Gibb explained that the press charges by weight, so many farmers harvest later in the year when the olives are lighter, having begun to desiccate on the tree. He also notes that older growers prefer the traditional nylon press, which is more of an open-air process that results in an oil that goes rancid more quickly. Tasting oils produced in both the new and old ways I found the difference to be remarkable—olives pressed in the traditional manner had a much more basic, even blurry flavor. Nudo harvests their olives when they are just becoming ripe, paying a higher price to produce a better product.

Lunch came courtesy of Nudo collaborator Paolo Beretta and his wife Paola. The two run an “agriturismo” in Cossignano called Fiorano, where they grow olives for oil and grapes for wine production. Beretta worked most of his career as a dentist—a detail that’s evident in his impeccably maintained groves, vines and wine production facilities. Paola prepared our lunch alongside her mother, who were the keepers of a transcendental stuffed olive recipe that they were kind enough to share with us (see below).

Their “Olive Ascolane” was a delightful appetizer alongside the Fiorano wine. The olives were stuffed, then battered and fried in a mix of the family’s extra virgin olive oil and sunflower oil. The fleshy “tenera ascolana” olives are favored in this rustic dish, which is named for the town of Ascoli Piceno. The piping hot morsels were filled with mortadella and parmesan cheese, as well as minced turkey, beef, and pork.

Our route to dinner in the charming village of Loro Piceno was met with a pleasant interruption at Peppe Cotto, the local butcher. The unrestrained character of Piceno serenaded us with a pigskin trumpet—which complimented his bowtie, also made of pigskin—as he served up vino cotto, or cooked wine, with a wheel of sausage on the rim of the glass.

Before leaving, he found time to give a live performance of a composition that was written on a sheet of dried skin. His fat sculptures were truly mesmerizing, decorating the display case with familiar characters and animals. Of all his eccentric performances, it was the puppet show enacted with the carcass of a chicken that left us reeling on the way out the door.

Visiting this community made the experience of tasting Nudo’s product even more special. As a region with a blossoming agriturismo business, it’s a definite destination to add to any foodie’s vacation wish list. In the mean time, to get a taste for yourself, check out Paola’s mother’s recipe for “Olive Ascolane” after the jump.

Photography by Josh Rubin and Masiar Pasquali

Olive ascolane

Ingredients for 4

“Tenera ascolana” olives

Pork—200g/7oz

Turkey breast—200g/7oz

Beef—200g/7oz

Mortadella—100g/3.5oz

Parmesan—80g/2.8oz

Eggs—4

White wine—1 glass

Nutmeg—to taste

Salt—to taste

Pepper—to taste

Bread crumbs—as required

Flour—as required

Extra virgin olive oil—as required

Sunflower oil—as required

Brown the chopped meat in a pan with a little oil, add salt and pepper and drizzle with white wine. Cover as soon as the wine has boiled away and cook for another 10-15 minutes. Place the cooked meat in an oven dish with the finely chopped Mortadella, the grated Parmesan, nutmeg, salt, a whole egg and a yolk. Mince finely with a chopping knife or with the mixer until smooth and thick. Stone the olives by cutting off the flesh in a spiral—start at the top of the olive and try to cut the flesh off in one piece. Take a piece of meat about the size of the original olive in your hand, roll into a ball and spiral the flesh of one olive around it. Then dip the ball first in the flour, then the beaten eggs and finally the bread crumbs. Do this for all the olives. Heat up the extra virgin olive and sunflower oils until boiling and deep fry the balls until golden brown. Serve hot or warm as a nice starter.

A new sale site for community-curated tech products

The excitement of curated flash sale sites combines with community sourcing on Curisma, a new site for tech junkies and online shoppers alike. With a name that’s a mash-up of the words curiosity, curated and charisma, the MIT start-up applies the same principles to its business model. Twice a week, the website features an item chosen by Curisma community members. Carefully chosen to match users’ tastes, products span virtual keyboards to fingerprint-protected wallets. Curisma members hand-select the products, which means that you can potentially choose your own sale item. Several Cool Hunting picks have gone up for sale on Curisma in recent days and weeks, including Barnacle and Rev–>Table.

With a sharp eye for new and under-the-radar products, the site helps users stay ahead of the tech game, as it tracks activity with the Curisma-meter, which traces products added to the site. While Curisma remains in beta, it definitely shows promise and is an example of clever ingenuity in a digital setting. For more proof, check out the video above.

Competition-led innovation pushes positive social change

Like
Kickstarter for socially-minded projects, Yoxi (pronounced yo-see), an online platform to propose solutions to social issues, encourages activism by introducing a competitive element. After teams create pitch videos on Yoxi-identified problems—they launched with “Reinvent Fast Food“—the voting starts. Industry experts serve as judges, but their opinions only function to create dialog about the team ideas. Social game playing ultimately selects the winners, who can win up to $40,000 (with public donations matched by Yoxi) to make their ideas happen. You can literally help change the world just by voting; their latest competition “Trim The Waste of Fashion” takes on garment manufacturing.

One pair of jeans sold in the U.S. has often traversed seven countries in its making, with the cotton picked stateside then cleaned in China, buttons added in Taiwan, zippers in Hong Kong and so on. This extremely unsustainable practice affects everyone, so Yoxi’s tasking teams to generate a new system or program that will drastically reduce the carbon footprint fashion creates.

With the success of its first competition, Yoxi proves that these American Idol-inspired challenges can yield life-changing results that will better the world in a real way. To enter “Trim The Waste of Fashion,” assemble a three-person team, make a video about your idea and register before 1 July 2011.

How one global art community is connecting through sketchbooks

Five years ago, Shane Zucker and Steven Peterman, fed up with the challenge of making a living as artists, founded Art House as a student project. Now, the active online community has over 50,000 users and an art library that is traveling the United States.

Art House’s beginnings go back to Atlanta College of Art (SCAD since bought it), where Shane was studying graphic design and Steven, printmaking. Seeing their friends daunted by the task of getting into galleries as a daunting task, the two rented a space and held their own pay-to-play exhibit, charging artists enough to show so that it covered their overhead.

Shane’s father mentioned sketchbooks—what if people from all over the world paid to submit sketchbooks to be displayed? Between April and November of 2010, 28,000 people signed up to be a part of the Sketchbook Project and 10,000 of the sketchbooks sent out to people in 94 countries were sent back. The collection is now touring nine U.S.cities and you can even get a library card to check them out.

Shane sat down with me and a new member of the Art House team, Eli Dvorkin, recently to explain the power of community.

What is the meaning of paying to be part of an art project?

Eli: We’re not telling anyone that they are going to suddenly become famous through this. Also, we don’t sell any of the work. There’s no financial benefit to anyone here. If you think about the resources that go into this tour and having a permanent space in Brooklyn, it adds up to a lot of money and time. As five people or even 100 of your closest friends, you could never do this, but when 10,000 people come together, you can actually do it.
Shane: For a lot of galleries, art is a means of commerce. They make money. That’s just not us.

How would you describe the typical participant?

S: Serious artists. Scrapbookers. Moms. There’s a huge range of people who do the Sketchbook Project. There are teachers that have their students do it and then there are senior citizens who are just bored.

Is there any sense that you’re reigniting peoples’ involvement in art?

E: People have written exactly that to us. People say, “This is essentially my one outlet a year for my artistic impulses.” Overtime they sit down with the sketchbook and it’s with them for a good chunk of the year. We get little life stories. Like 10,000 lives on shelves. Only a small subsection is any formal study. It’s cathartic.

When you check out a book, you choose a theme. What’s with that?

S: Steve came up with most of the themes. My favorite is “Science Project Gone Wrong.”
E: I think I’d have to go with “Mystery Maps” even though I devised it. The themes are not rules, but it’s interesting to see how a teenager in Singapore and a senior in Canada interpret “Science Project Gone Wrong.”

What’s next?

E: We’re starting to collect a lot more information about the participants. When you check out a sketchbook, the artist has the option to be notified by SMS and eventually you’ll be able to get in touch through our website.
S: We’re going to relaunch the site and will be scanning most of the sketchbooks so that people can start tagging individual pages of books. You”ll be able to search “Photography” and “China” and find results. But what’s really cool is that we don’t have to do that, because the community is dying to get involved.

Any personal projects?

E: Shane, you better not!
S: No, this has been pretty full time. I haven’t even made a sketchbook. Steve started one, but I don’t know if he finished it.
E: We have a lot going on at Art House though. Soon we’ll be launching our own notebook collection. The names will co-ordinate to the sizes, like “Back Pocket,” “Messenger Bag,” etc.
S: And of course there’s the tour and soon we’ll start sending out the 2011 sketchbooks to participants!

The 2010 Sketchbook Project began in April, so stay tuned for this year’s launch. Also, to see the library in person, check out the 17,900-mile tour or the permanent location in Brooklyn.

Photography by Aaron Kohn

An LGBT retirement community geared toward open living

What began as an innovative project for LGBT retirees seeking refuge from cookie-cutter approaches to conventional retirement has evolved into something much more ambitious. More than 100 acres in the Mojave Desert will soon be the site of a $250 million idea, bringing together 10 architectural firms from five countries to succeed where so many fail by reclaiming shared community spaces that invite pedestrians and casual interactivity among neighbors.

Located near Palm Springs, California—an area known for perennial sunshine and wide-open spaces—Boom will cater to outdoor living with pedestrian pathways and communal spaces, as well as eateries, wellness centers and shops. Living spaces include private homes, assisted living and a nursing home. Each separate development will differ as the individual architects are being given free reign to realize their ideas of livability, adding diversity to the common goal of functionality and livability.

The first phase envisions 300 homes, but that figure could eventually double after full build-out. To get in on the ground floor, you can request an invite from Boom’s website.

Another exciting facet to the project is that the Boom community already exists in virtual space. Participants can brainstorm and create a shared vision with the developers and architects in these early stages when the buildings are still rendered lines in an AutoCAD program.

Stateside, recruited architectural talent includes Diller Scotidio + Renfro (known for their Blur Building in Switzerland) who have proposed cast waves that oscillate with each dwelling’s highest point, with its lower troughs serving as access points for lush greenery. Reinforcing the sense of community, not all of the effort is reserved for the luxurious homes. Arakawa + Gins, the firm behind Tokyo’s Reversible Destiny Lofts, plan a “Healing Fun House” designed for all ages, a sort of playground for children and adults alike to recreate the body and mind.

Ideas from abroad include Berlin-based J Mayer H Architects whose plans call for one- and two-story units with communal gardens. The Israeli duo L2 Tsionov-Vikton of Tel Aviv envision terraced roof gardens in modular dwellings designed to blend in with the desert environs.

But the overarching idea is a space where denizens celebrate life with each other rather than retreat into isolation that so many other modern developments ultimately foster—as lead designer Matthias Hollwich from
HWKN explained to his fellow architects, “Boom has to be about living, not retiring, about inclusion and not seclusion.”

See more images in the gallery below.