I have moved my one day olive oil tasting and appreciation classes to Brighton from this month. I am very grateful to Charles Carey of The Olive Oil Merchant for the use of his lovely showroom for so many years but the time has now come to run them from my home in Brighton. The…
New Olive Leaf Drink from Zeet
Any reservations I might have had about food supplements using olive leaf extract are completely confounded by the new organic Olive Leaf Water Infusion from Zeet. It does not, as you might think, taste particularly of olives but has an attractive almost honied flavour all its own. There is also a peppermint flavoured infusion. However,…
2021 Award winners with the producers’ suggested recipes
Details of the winners of the 2021 olive oil awards are beginning to trickle in and so I will be reporting on them as they arrive and pairing them with recipes recommended by their producers. The first of these uses one of the two oils from La Cultivada which have won top awards at the…
Olive Oil and The English Vegetable Year: Spring
Spring is a great time of the year for vegetables; the restricted range of winter vegetables opens up and suddenly a whole host of new vegetables decorate the green grocer’s shelves. I have chosen two of my favourite vegetables on which to concentrate this month. They are the quintessentially English watercress and asparagus. Watercress Watercress…
Brexit Border Problems
It is not just the English/northern Irish border that is experiencing delivery problems due to Brexit as I am finding out. It is also currently quite a serious problem for small importers bringing in premium products from the EU. So, if like me, you are keen on food from small artisan producers rather than from…
Memories: Lunaio and the Seggiano brand
The small town of Seggiano is tucked away at the foot of Monte Amiata in the Grosetto region of south western Tuscany. It is still quite a wild area somewhat off the Tuscan beaten tourist track. The mountain is volcanic and there are numerous hot pools which the locals say are great for swimming even…
Olive Oil and The English Vegetable Year: Autumn
This is a new series for my blog, marrying up two of my favourite foods: Vegetables and Olive Oil. The tendency is to think of dishes based on Mediterranean vegetables when cooking with olive oil but in fact this lovely flavoursome ingredient can enhance traditional English vegetables equally well. Autumn sees the beginning of the…
Cooking with Andalucian Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Following my virtual tasting of Andalucian oils last week I immediately started to look for some really authentic recipes from the region to try out. Here are the results: Pipirrana My first recipe comes from Elena Garcia at Spanish Gastro Larder and features their Finca Alamillos del Prior extra virgin olive oil from Jaen. It is…
Celebrating Andalucian olive oil
Engaged in my first virtual olive oil tasting yesterday. We tasted five excellent extra virgin olive oils bfrom the region, taking in four different olive varieties plus a blend of three of them. I knew all five oils well from many visits and tastings over the years and they did not disappoint. They all tasted…
Memories: Rovies and Odysea
My memories this week go back to the very early days of my work with olives and olive oil not very long after I had retrained to switch from wine writing to olive oil in the early 1990s. I had written a paper for the then European Union on assessing and describing extra virgin olive…