Olive Oil
The ubiquitous oil of Mediterranean cooking
Olive oil is the cooking oil of choice in most countries around the Mediterranean, although three countries are perhaps best known for it's use: Italy, Spain, and Greece.
It is produced from the fruit of olive trees, which can be hundreds or even thousands of years old, and comes in 3 main styles.
Extra Virgin
The highest quality and most expensive is extra virgin olive oil, which is made from the first pressing of the ripe olives. This first light pressing produces a strongly flavoured oil which is ideal for salad dressings and the like - cooking with it would be a waste, as the depth and subtleties of its flavour will be lost.
A good extra virgin oil can be very good indeed, with a deep dark green colour and a smooth peppery taste which can lift everyday salads to a new level. Some oils will sell for up to £40 a bottle or even more, which is perhaps a tad excessive for most of us, although it's definitely worth buying the best you can afford rather than the bog standard supermarket stuff, even if you limit your use of the 'good stuff' to special occasions.
Virgin Oil
The next pressing of the same olive pulp gives the middle quality of olive oil, plain virgin olive oil. This can still be a high quality oil for using uncooked, but is also very good for frying and other cooking.
The final kind of oil obtained from the last pressing is, as you'd expect, the lowest quality of all, and has little remaining of the character found in extra virgin. It is referred to simply as olive oil and makes a perfectly good deep-frying oil.
Each olive oil producing country will probably claim to make the best, but many people consider the oils of Italy, and in particular Tuscany, to be among the best available.
Click here to add a comment to this entry
