Italy Cooking Courses » Puglia Extra virgin olive oil

The Sunday Times writes about our olive oil tasting tours in Lecce

Stile Mediterraneo — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 18:40:51 +0000

We are so excited to find out that our extra virgin olive oil tasting tours in Lecce got featured in the May Sunday Times Travel Magazine.

I and Marika love telling our guests about the benefits of extra virgin olive oil for the heart and health in general. We love teaching them how to taste extra virgin olive oil and how to use it in order to preserve all its benefits. We love preparing dishes and pairing them with the right olive oils. We love when our guests go back home and tell us how picky and expert on olive oil they have become.

We love to contribute to the promotion of the best extra virgin olive oil producers from Puglia.

Millenary olive trees

Stile Mediterraneo — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 07:02:59 +0000

Yesterday, it was the WWF day in Italy and so also in Puglia all the beautiful WWF natural reserves were specially open to visitors…and children.
Marika was free from her work at the hospital and.…so this was the perfect occasion for a day outdoor, finally taking pictures of the beautiful flowers which have been coloring the countryside for the past months.
After a first stop at our favorite Natale ice cream artisan (of course Marika and I deserved some energy before the hard work!!) we took our bikes and headed to the nearby natural reserve.
It was sooo beautiful and relaxing: we were surrounded by kilometers and kilometers of brightly colored flowers: violet, yellow, white little flowers and purple poppies.
In the background thousands of olive trees that framed our lovely pictures……

We got so excited that bravely decided to take a secondary road …..

……. suddenly the most beautiful olive trees were around us!

Hundreds of years have passed and these olive trees are still here…..!! It’s just amazing how much more beautiful nature becomes with age and time!

200, 500, 800 years ..or may be more…I and Marika couldn’t agree about their age.

Please help! How old do you think they are?

Puglia extra virgin olive oil

Stile Mediterraneo — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:54:00 +0000

Since I became a professional extra virgin olive oil taster I had a chance to taste many olive oils from different producers. I am very pleased to find out that more and more producers are focusing on making very high quality extra virgin olive oils.

Puglia is the biggest producer of olives and olive oil in Italy. Out of the total Italian market, the region produces 37% of the whole olive production and almost 40% of the whole olive oil production (vs Tuscany which makes 2,9% of the whole olive production and about 3,2% of the whole olive oil production).
For years Pugliese olive oil producers have been focusing just on quantity selling their olives to Tuscany or other northern Italian regions.

Local producers are finally realizing that quality is more important than quantity, in a region that has been producing olive oil for centuries and that counts 40 millions olive trees, of which 40% are more than 1000 years old. This millenary history and important culture is testified by the many frantoi ipogei, underground and ancient olive oil presses that you find in Puglia.
The beauty of Pugliese olive oil is the fact that we have so many different varieties: Leccino, Coratina, Frantoio, Ogliarola, Peranzana, Rotondella, Garganica, Gentile…just to name a few.
The two varieties Bella di Cerignola and Termite di Bitetto are used as table olives.
All these olives have different colors and shape and result in olive oils with different flavors and taste.

In Puglia, we use extra virgin olive oil almost for everything, even to make homemade desserts and cakes. Very rarely we use butter at home…may be to make a cake for a guest or for very specific recipes.

What I find fascinating is how different and how better a dish can taste when we pair it with the right extra virgin olive oil (just as when you pair food and wine).
So many times, I go to a restaurant, order the best food and then I cannot enjoy it because the olive oil used is not extra virgin or it is not the right one for that dish. A bad olive oil can ruin your food. The right extra virgin olive oil can enhance the flavors and freshness of the ingredients.
Of course, I and Marika, we belong to the school that says that extra virgin olive oil should be used raw: when you cook it, you destroy all the flavors and healthy benefits.