Once a luxury, now the zesty olive is indispensable
By Judy Schultz,
Photo by Chris Schwarz,
When I was little, olives were reserved for special occasions. Only New Year’s Eve and visiting priests rated stuffed olives, the queen of all pickles.
The advent of Kraft Theatre on television moved olives down a notch or two on the specialness scale. Suddenly, everybody’s mom was using them. A commercial break was just long enough to slather Cheez Whiz on a plate of Ritz Crackers and top them off with olive faces: olive eyes, olive nose, olive grin.
I still have a weakness for the queen of pickles, and if you show up at my house before dinner on a hot summer night, you’re probably going to be looking at a bowl of mixed olives and almonds, well-salted, with a frosty Corona.
In the place where I hope to spend a lot of winters, we’ve already planted a dozen olive trees — half kalamata, half picholine — with another three dozen or so to go this year.
I love looking at them from my upstairs window. Even when young, they’re graceful trees with a tendency to gnarly bark, and they’re covered with small silvery leaves that tremble in the wind. Their berries range from green to dark purple-blue, a petite beauty among the pickle plants.
People who grow olives recognize two kinds — oil olives and table olives. Either way, it’s a labour of love, as it takes the fruit of an entire tree to produce a single litre of olive oil, and table olives are tricky and time consuming, taking up to a year to cure away their natural bitterness, caused by a nasty-tasting phenolic compound called oleuropein.
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Joke of the day…!
“May olives be eaten with the fingers?
No. Fingers should be eaten separately.” (anon)
source
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Beyond olive oil: Specialty oils, from grapeseed to walnut, enhance flavor
By Jolene Ketzenberger,
Olive oil just isn’t exotic anymore. Though it trumped vegetable oil as the U.S. consumer’s cooking oil of choice nearly five years ago, today’s oil options have expanded far beyond corn, canola and even extra-virgin olive oil.
For healthfulness and versatility, says Indianapolis gourmet shop owner Jack Stearns, grapeseed oil is hard to beat.
“Grapeseed oil is probably the healthiest oil you can use,” Stearns says. “It can be used for salad dressings, frying — anything you use oil for.”
After grapes are pressed for wine, the seeds are separated from the skins and stems. The seeds are dried, then pressed to expel the oil.
Grapeseed oil contains vitamin E and antioxidants, but it’s the oil’s high smoke point and light, neutral flavor that make it popular with chefs.
“Grapeseed oil is great to saute in,” says Dave Foegley, executive chef at Indianapolis restaurant Downtown, who recently created several dishes using premium oils.
Nut oils, on the other hand, such as walnut, hazelnut or almond (and pecan oil is on the horizon), often have more flavor. These can be used to enhance the nutty flavor of a dish, says Foegley, who used almond oil with a mustard-champagne vinaigrette to top a smoked salmon salad with romaine hearts, avocado and bacon.
“It doesn’t have to be tossed greens in a bowl,” Foegley says. If you have a salad with hazelnuts or walnuts, make your dressing with a little of that oil to enhance the flavor so it comes through more.”
Walnut oil, while significantly more expensive than regular cooking oil (the La Tourangelle brand is generally available for less than $10 for a 16.9-ounce can), seems a bargain when compared with more expensive oils. Argan oil, for example, is produced in southwestern Morocco from the fruit of the argan tree, an ancient species that grows only there, and costs about $34 at specialty stores for an 8.5-ounce bottle. But the toasty, nutty oil, pressed from kernels found inside the fruit’s pit, adds an authentic touch to Moroccan tagines, couscous and other dishes.
Truffle oil, generally extra-virgin olive oil infused with truffles, is another deliciously pricey option, ranging from $5 to $10 per ounce to more than $100. But a little goes a long way, Foegley says.
“With truffle oil, you just need a drop,” he says, “because it’s so pungent.”
Mushroom oils, Foegley says, are more forgiving.
Such exotic oils, while often available at specialty food shops, may not all be on supermarket shelves. But premium olive oils are easy to find and can add considerable flavor, notes Foegley.
“Good extra-virgin olive oil is one of the nicest things you can use,” he says.
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4th Annual Paso Robles Olive Festival
August 25th, 2007
10:00am – 5:00pm
Downtown Paso Robles City Park
www.pasoolivefestival.com
* Free Olive Oil and Olive product sampling
* Producers from all over California
* Olive Oil Tasting lead by the California Olive Oil Council
* Culinary Row serving great food
* Wine & Beer Tasting
* Open Olive Dish Cooking Contest
* Free Olive Oil Ice Cream
For more information call (805)-238-4103
835 12th Street, Ste D
Paso Robles, CA 93446
www.pasoroblesdowntown.org
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Linda Stafford demystifies extra-virgin olive oil
It’s not always the label on the wine bottle that attracts admiring attention at dinner parties.
Sometimes it’s on the one containing green-gold extra-virgin olive oil.
In the past 7 years there has been a small revolution in the winelands that has nothing to do with grapes. It gathered momentum when Italy’s Giulio Bertrand bought Somerset West’s Morgenster Estate from the Cloete family and planted not only vines but Italian varieties of olive trees. His reasoning was that international interest in the health benefits and fresh flavours of olive oil had already taken root in SA and would grow. And what is now pressed at Morgenster – and elsewhere – is indeed helping to make olive oil epicures of us.
But olive oil is a victim of hype. It is good stuff, but has been steeped in snob value to its detriment and the detriment of many a dish that is supposed to be made with butter. After all, the basic indigenous fat that a country uses is the key to its cuisine. And olive oil is one of the great joys of hot – not cold – Europe.
“The phoney mystique draped over olive oil has done it absolutely no favours,” writes leading London restaurant critic A A Gill. “It has made a snob of the most proletarian, earthy, basic stuff. Olive oil is at heart a peasant. It feels most at home with simple, rural food.”
After all, it is a condiment that dates back, in its heartland of Tuscany at least, to the 7th century and perhaps even earlier.
Olive oil is low in saturated fats and thought to be responsible for the low incidence of heart disease in many Mediterranean countries. But it is still a fat and those on low-fat diets must go easy on it.
Made from black olives and graded according to acidity, the best oils, extra-virgin and Italian – though France, Spain and Greece all produce good oils – must have an acidity of less than 1%. Look also for the words “first pressing” or “cold pressed” on the label; found only on extra-virgin bottles, this indicates oils of the lowest possible acidity and most character.
The best oil should not be wasted on frying, because heat changes its fresh, peppery flavour. Italians and Spaniards usually keep two varieties in the kitchen: a plain one for cooking and an extra-virgin for salads.
But labels can be confusing. For instance, though it might make much of its origin in an area of Italy, it may be made of olives grown elsewhere and only bottled in Italy. Nor are all bottles dated – and olive oil does deteriorate, especially if exposed to light and heat.
So rather splash out on a few and trust your tongue in picking a favorite.
[Source] Click here
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