I thought I would share with you some interesting facts about olive oil that I learned in my cooking class.
- Olive oil is one of the most important unsaturated fats, and it goes back 6,000 years.
- You must soak olives in brine in order to make them edible.
- All olives start off green, then they turn black.
- Trees produce olives every 2 years.
- In the 80's, the olives in Italy were killed by a frost that came from Russia. This was pretty devastating as olive trees take a long time to grow.
- The different levels of olive oil:
- Extra Virgin - highest quality, no more than 1% acidity, no bruised olives are used, cold-pressed, first pressing by mechanical means
- Virgin - next highest, less than 2% acidity
- Olio di Oliva - a blend of oils, chemically rectified to reduce acidity to 1.5%, second pressing
Also, new recipes from this week are up! This week is the last week of new recipes from cooking class :( I hope you enjoyed them and even tried cooking a few! I haven't posted new ones for a while before this week because our class went out for lunch at a nice restaurant. We had some delicious courses:
The walls were lines with wine...
First course: Pesto lasagna (remember this course is called Current Trends in Italian Cuisine, so a lot of the dishes are new twists on traditional recipes) with white wine
Second Course: Chicken with a creamy mushroom sauce and potatoes
Dessert: Mimosa cake, so called because the top resembles the Mimosa flower. The layers were a sponge cake, lemon custard, whipped cream, then more crumbled cake on top. This is a special that was made just for us because it must be served right after it is made, so it is not on the menu.
I was really surprised by the size of each dish. They were huge! I couldn't even finish the cake, and I hated to see it go to waste, but I literally could not eat any more :(
I can't wait to try cooking some of these recipes myself!
Caitlin
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