Posted on: Wednesday, November 3, 2004
Refining your olive oil
By Emily Green
Los Angeles Times
When food writers first exhorted us to drizzle olive oil hither and yon in the 1980s, the problem wasn't just that drizzle is a silly word, but that the oil wasn't right. The bland, golden olive oils then dominating the market were fine for frying, perfectly good for hummus, but there was very little around that was anywhere near good enough to garnish a newly grilled fish.
Photos by Brian Vander Brug • Los Angeles Times There's no shame in learning you've been doing it all wrong. Rome didn't learn to drizzle in a day. Plus, like our government, we could have had better intelligence. Back in the 1980s, we were told that the key was to make sure we used "extra-virgin" olive oil from a first pressing. This meant that it had less than 1 percent oleic acid, and the oil was pressed in the first run of the fruit. It turned out that more than
70 percent of olive oil on the market is extra virgin, and if olive oil isn't first-pressed, then it's not edible. It has been chemically extracted from spent pulp and will be industrial grade.
Beyond an oil's virgin status, guidance from food writers as to how to choose an edible oil was by no means clear. There are as many styles of olive oil as wine, from mild and gold to fiery and green. Elizabeth David gagged Britain by prescribing pungent green oil be used in mayonnaise, a French sauce best made with corn oil. Across, in the United States, pundits erred to blandness, giving the impression that one bottle of Bertolli fits all.
Things have changed and not just because of increased imports of fine European oils, but because of California ranchers, such as Joeli Yaguda in Paso Robles, planting dozens of new olive groves and selling oil in a startlingly fresh state.
This is now prompting a rethinking of how, when and why to use olive oil. California has one of only five Mediterranean climates suitable for olive production in the world. Add to that, we've got the farmers who listen to chefs.
New Directions
For years, local oil made from trees imported by Spanish missionaries has been nutty, golden and, often, too bland for garnishing. So instead of replanting more of the same trees, since 1992, a new wave of farmers from Napa to Ojai have been importing trees from Italy.
At Campanile and La Terza restaurants in Los Angeles, olive oils are now sold by the serving, like a shot of whisky, but for use in dipping your bread. To get the best from the oil, my advice is to pass on this option, and allow the kitchen to show you how to use fine olive oils. At Campanile, chef-proprietor Mark Peel is using the strong green flavors to transform familiar dishes. Take prosciutto and melon. By lacing it with a strong green oil, and scattering it with mint, he gives the sweet and salty notes of the ham and fruit a succession of strong herbaceous foils.
La Brea Bakery in Los Angeles, run by Peel's business partner, Nancy Silverton, is transforming pastries and even ice cream through Silverton's use of olive oil. Her new emphasis is on savory cakes, which results in regular offerings of olive oil scones with rosemary topping.
She has even enlisted olive oil in the dessert menu. In a dish designed for the opening of her friends' new restaurant, La Terza, she combined an olive oil cake with an ice cream flavored with oil. The upshot is a unique dessert, whose flavors run the gamut from salty to sweet, and whose overriding flavor is the bright young fruit of olives.
The two-oil kitchen
Where garnishing meets cooking is the point at which we discover the sheer force of flavor of these new green, green oils. The way to manage this is, at minimum, to keep a two-oil kitchen. Never be without a good mild marching oil (the kind found in most grocery stores). When you encounter a recipe where the oil stands in for butter, such as mashed potatoes, use the mild oil for the bulk, then garnish with the strong green stuff. It will save money and build layers of pepper and fruit flavors.
Use the same technique with hummus, smoked eggplant puree and all those unctuous Middle Eastern spreads.
To find the other California producers soon to be picking and crushing new season olive oil near you, or to buy it over the Web, go to Olive Oil Source (www.oliveoilsource.com) or California Olive Oil Council at (888) 718-9830 or www.cooc.com/home.html. For those hitting the road, producers such as Joeli Yaguda, who makes Pasolivo oil at Willow Creek Ranch in Paso Robles, welcome farm visits. For more information, contact www.willowcreekoliveranch.com/oil.htm or call (805) 227-0186. When buying oil in delicatessens and food shops, check the freshness; California oils are dated. Fluorescent lights in stores do the oil no favors, so another trick is to pull the bottle from behind the front display model.
Once you get your hands on some good olive oil, beware the final pitfall of the drizzle days of the 1980s. No kitchen supplement from that era was complete without a shot of oil and vinegar standing on a window sill or next to a stove. There is no worse place to store oil. Olives are fruit; olive oil is a fruit juice. You might as well leave out your orange juice and butter in the sun. If your oil has a buttery taste, then it's probably rancid.
The ideal place to store olive oil is in a cool dark cabinet, or, in hot climates like Hawai'i, in the refrigerator, though dealing with congealing and condensation is a bore. The art is to buy little, use it often and instead of drizzling, pour with a generous hand.
Twenty years later, we are only now seeing that sort of quality.
Olive groves in Paso Robles, Calif., and elsewhere in the state are the source of wonderful green olive oil.
In the past four years, pungent green oils made from Tuscan varieties such as Frantoio, Pendolino, Lucca, Leccino and Moraiolo have been appearing late every autumn in Southern California farmers markets. They disappear from stalls so fast that, for many of us, the only place we've experienced them is in restaurants.
Orange-olive oil tapenade makes a great topping.
