Driving south from Bari is the town of Bitritto home to Oliodecarlo, a family business reaching back some 400 years. First came the olive trees and then the mill and now a thriving business offering a range of olive oils and vegetables preserved in olive oil as well as a variety of “elixirs” produced by…
Cook with “The World’s Best Olive Oils”
Two of my favourite Spanish olive oil producers have made a killing at the 2022 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition. Both based in Andalucia, they are Oro Bailen in Jaen with four Gold Medals and Finca La Torre in Malaga with three. Both producers caught my attention some years ago and they have both gone…
Northern Puglia: San Severo to Bari
Puglia, which takes up most of the heel and toe of Italy, is one of my favourite regions of Italy. I love the food and the independent spirit of the people. It is also a great place for a holiday. The countryside is extremely varied and the history fascinating and though there are plenty of…
Changes to my one-day olive oil tasting and appreciation classes
From now on I will only be offering my one-day tasting classes to ready-made groups of colleagues or friends. It is no longer efficient for me to gather together groups of people one by one. The numbers required for such classes will be a minimum of four to a maximum of seven. As a result…
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…