Just heard a great story from Andy Swinscoe at The Courtyard Dairy in Settle about the creation of a traditional unpasteurised goats cheese on a farm in the Pennines near to Hebden Bridge. The cheese won Best Raw Milk Cheese at the Great Yorkshire Show. Gillian’s Story: Gillian Clough farms only ten acres (that’s just…
Three of the Best
I am really encouraged by the range of aroma, taste and flavour and downright quality of extra virgin olive oil this year. Over the last few weeks I have been busy tasting a variety of evoos from around Europe and most of them are pretty good. However, just a few of them really stand out…
Greek Casseroles
Starting a new recipe collection: Not everyone realizes quite how versatile extra virgin olive oil can be in the kitchen but the growers certainly do. Some time ago I put together a collection of recipes from olive oil producers around the world and published it as my e-book Remarkable Recipes. Great olive oil recipes for…
Extra virgin olive oil tasting day in London
Karen Cryan is a real olive oil enthusiast “There’s nothing like a good Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) and I tasted sixteen of them at Judy Ridgway’s olive oil tasting class held in London last year”. Here Karen describes her quest for olive oil knowledge and reviews one of my olive oil classes. “My zeal…
Sicilian olive oil great choice for pasta
It’s nearly ten years since I visited the Disisa olive groves in the Monreale región of north western Sicily. I was impressed with the oil from these groves then and so I was very glad to see recently that the Disisa oil is now on sale on thegiftofoil webste. The name Disisa is derived from…
Dramatic designer bottles catch the Eye
This is the latest in eye-catching designs for the Galateo & Friends Signature range of Italian extra virgin olive oils. It is by the internationally acclaimed artist, Lazaro Rosa Violan and joins three other specially commissioned evoo bottle designs for this company. Lazaro opened his design studio in Barcelona in 2003 and since then has…
Weddings – The French Way
A wedding reception is one of most important events that you may want to cater for yourself. So after all the hard work of writing A Banquet on a Budget I thought it would be fun to ask my friend food writer and food stylist, Louise Pickford who lives in south west France with her…
Planning a Wedding Reception? Save Thousands by Self-Catering
Statistics show that the average wedding reception costs £7,000. You can save a good deal of this amount by doing the catering yourself. The money you have saved can then be spent on the honeymoon or put towards a down payment on your new home. However, catering for a large scale celebration can be daunting….
Adopt an Olive Tree
From time to time I get emails from olive growers offering the chance to adopt an olive tree in their grove. The idea of adopting an olive tree sounds quite intriguing and so I thought I would have a further look at the idea. First of all I wondered why would anyone want to adopt…
Swiss Olive Oil
Swiss olive oil – what nonsense you say, yet just down to road from my Swiss home there are numerous olive trees growing happily in the Ticino sunshine. This part of Switzerland, south of the Alps, boasts a Mediterranean style of climate and the weather is such that olive trees can not only survive here…