How do you feel about olive oil? I’m a Midwesterner in the U.S. I’m not from France or Italy, nor Japan, nor South Africa. I have NO relationship with olive oil! So why am I publishing an article about appreciating olive oil? Good Question.
Peg had a phone conversation today with a lady about our daughter’s age. She’s had a lot of health issues during her life; I give Peg a lot of credit because on the occasions when they interact she is supremely patient even though she has very little in common with this person; but she’s a good and sympathetic listener. I’ve shared a bit about listening over the years. Good listeners are often taken advantage of it seems to me.
Anyway, this friend is a dyed in the wool FOODIE! And, if I’m brutally honest, there was a time when Peg and I were too. Back in ancient times, when Hector was a pup, all those donkey’s years ago…. 🙂 There are a lot of opportunities in life for obsessions. And if you’re going to be obsessive about anything I can think of many much more harmful fascinations to have than to be infatuated with food.
In our youth, we spent money on food, and dining out rather than spend it on psychotherapy. I was working at a stressful job and I didn’t have many people to vent to, or share with — not people I could trust my thoughts with. Gradually we developed our own therapy sessions. They were quite simple, albeit just about as expensive (back in the days before Medicare) as “actual” psychotherapy.
What did we do? We went out to expensive classic restaurants. Not the sort of places you read about now. Not celebrity restaurants, not places where the food is entertainment, and the portions are small and you are supposed to find your “satisfaction” in the look and expensive ingredients rather than having your hunger filled. No. To my knowledge when this was going on in the 70’s and 80’s the places I just referred to didn’t exist. That was a time when chefs cooked. They had a restaurant, they were there daily, they cooked classic dishes that delivered what the names of the dishes promised. They were impeccable in taste and appearance and it wasn’t all that hard to spend two or three hours eating.
We had a few such places here in town and we got to know them — maybe not all of them — but certainly we were regulars at a number of them. Reservations got us a decent table, we’d order one bottle of wine to get us through the evening and we would eat and talk, and talk and eat through all the courses — back in the day when we could manage an appetizer and a soup and a salad, and a main, and a desert or a cheese course. And yeah… it wasn’t all that uncommon to spend 2 or 3 hours at the resto and Peg would listen and I would share what was going on. She never offered advice, but she knew I needed to vent, and she was the best friend I ever could have had because she knew what I needed. I can’t say we ever had an evening “breakthrough” — if that’s the term for a psychiatric milestone. Breakthroughs weren’t on the menu. All we wanted was to get through what was going on and to make heads or tails out of experiences we had zero control over. Being out of control isn’t fun, but talking it all out helped. It helped a lot.
So it is that I listen to people today who are all hot and bothered about this food or that food and I smile. I remember the days when the Maitre ‘d would stand alongside our table with the duck press and squeeze the juices. Or when Royce the sommelier would recommend a wine to go with our meal. Those were wonderful times — not all that expensive compared to today’s gastronomic extravaganzas but still, pricey for our early marriage budget. But they were about more than food. And to me I think that was important. We were splurging, but it wasn’t JUST about a surfeit of food or drink. It wasn’t just about the fact that we could afford it — some times we really couldn’t and gave up other things to have our evening alone. It was about finding a tool that enabled us to function in a temporarily hostile environment.
I don’t know how many foodies use food for other purposes. Maybe a lot. Maybe none. All I know is that the most extraordinary FOOD I have ever tasted has always been in homes and in small restos where the only thing that mattered was simple quality. Steak Frites in Vezelay France. Cassoulet in Carcassone. There’s a list in my head but none of those meals were exorbitant. No. Our excesses were for reasons far beyond food. Today I don’t know how often that can be the case. The world has changed. I’m not here to judge whether that’s for the better or the worse. All I know is that world no longer exists. I see the changes over and over and over almost everywhere I look. And grieving does no good. The world moves on and we must move with it.
And so, here are some thoughts about appreciating olive oil. It’s interesting that the article refers to the oil scandals of a few years ago — giving lip service to the point I just made about times changing. But I hope you enjoy. Cheers, I’ll try to chat with you tomorrow. Stay safe.
BY ARI LEVAUX
JUL. 08, 2022 – 10:44 A.M.
A few years ago in Rome, I found myself in a cramped room drinking olive oil from a cup. I was with a group of food writers, learning how to properly taste olive oil before traveling to the hilltop city of Perugia, where we would put our new tasting skills to work at an annual event celebrating Italy’s best artisan extra-virgin olive oils. But first we needed a better understanding of the magical culinary ointment that we’d be sampling.
We weren’t walking around dipping bread in bowls of oil like you do in tasting events that steer you toward a purchase. This was a serious effort to understand the complex properties of a fine, extra-virgin olive oil, aka EVOO. To this end, we finished each sip with a loud, drawn-out slurp called a stripaggio.
First, we covered each sample cup with a hand to let the vapors build. We then would rotate the cup circularly to coax more vapors into the trapped air above the oil, and take a whiff, and stare thoughtfully toward the horizon. The smell of a good olive oil can be fruity or dominated by the famous “fresh cut grass” smell of chlorophyll, or more elusive odors like rosemary, artichoke, green tomato or “tropical fruits.”
At the time, Italy was reeling from some oil-based scandals, after it was discovered that olive oil labeled extra virgin oil from Italy was sometimes neither Italian, extra-virgin or even pure olive oil. The investigation involved trained tasters doing what we were doing, in order to discern the true elixir from the frauds.
After these deep nasal inhales, I learned to sip the oil and work it around my mouth, feeling the viscosity and tasting the progression of piquancy and bitterness that gives quality extra virgin olive oil its personality.
Finally, we slurped. The stripaggio is not delicate. Most people would be embarrassed to make sounds like that while eating, but not a roomful of gung-ho food nerds.
Sucking air through the olive oil in your mouth disperses oil droplets to hard-to-reach taste receptors of the tongue and throat, helping to paint a fuller picture of the oil’s flavor. Meanwhile, as the air stretches the oil you can feel its viscosity, and how it holds together in the turbulence of your stripaggio.
Some oil starts with a fruity whiff and a buttery kiss and stays smooth all the way through, making it good for baking, or for dressing a lettuce-based salad. Some oil starts with a kiss and ends with a slap, or at least a raspy cat lick to the throat, making it more suitable for pairing with stronger flavors like chicory salads, or drizzled on pasta or other savory dishes.
Since my olive oil education, EVOO began filling the niche that I previously filled with mayonnaise, as my “energy dense” condiment of choice. Mayo, like olive oil, has properties of texture as well as flavor. And they both improve food with fat.
Back home, I regarded California olive oil with newfound interest. As with wine, you can find some amazing olive oil coming out of the Golden State if you know where to look. They include large-scale, high-density operations with mechanical harvesters, as well as small artisanal producers much like the ones I visited with my group in Italy. There are Italian fingerprints all over California’s wine and olive oil industries, thanks to waves of immigrants who felt at home in that Mediterranean climate of the American West and planted many of the state’s original vineyards.
A high-end olive oil doesn’t come cheap, and should be appreciated to the max. You should consider it more of a main event, and less as a supporting sauce for the main event. The thing that the oil goes onto is a substrate, a stage upon which to display the star in all of its glory.
My favorite substrate is bread. I know, I just said that bread isn’t for real olive oil tasting. It gets in the way, because it tastes so good it’s hard to stay focused, and next thing you know you’re in a food coma. And if you try to slurp the oily bread you might inhale breadcrumbs and choke. The bread is for proper enjoyment of the EVOO, rather than evaluation.
So get yourself a good, crusty loaf, and some tasty olive oil, and some salt. You don’t need pepper, because a good EVOO has those peppery notes. But some minced garlic will all but guarantee the addictive nature of the meal. Mix up the oil, salt and garlic, and start dipping. Let the seasoned oil impregnate the spongy bread and enjoy the greasy green grassy goodness.
From the Far Side of '70 