Extra virgin olive oil

Vinaigrette

The classic vinaigrette contains olive oil and vinegar. The proportion was once quite a definite 2:1, but even that rule is no longer followed. People have become more health conscious, there is a far greater variety of oils and vinegars available, and I think that people are thinking more about what they are doing when they are cooking. Some salads need a lighter touch than others, and garlic is no longer considered necessary in a dressing.

I would say that a classic vinaigrette is still made with virgin olive oil and white wine vinegar, with perhaps just a touch of lemon juice, so my classic vinaigrette is as follows.

3 tablespoons olive oil (virgin)
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 clove garlic or 2 roasted garlic cloves (optional)
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Whisk all ingredients together, and toss over salad just before serving.

If serving more than one dressed salad in a meal, or at a party, try to vary your vinaigrettes, both in the oils used and the vinegars. Apple Cider Vinegar has pretty much replaced the standard white wine vinegar for us, so that’s what we use most of the time.

Remember too, that lemon juice is treated as a vinegar for the purpose of the exercise. Fresh herbs steeped in white wine vinegar and left in a corner of the cupboard just keep getting better and better.

Pate brisee

For years this has been the recipe I reach for whenever a savoury pastry shell is called for. 

Pate brisee (broken pastry) gives a slightly flaky crust without a strong individual taste, which makes it perfect for savoury flans, pies and quiches.  

These quantities make enough for one 25cm diameter quiche, or 20 tartlet moulds, each 5 cm in diameter and 1cm deep

100g chilled butter
225g plain flour
1 egg yolk
3 tablespoons cold water
1 tablespoon oil
Pinch of salt

Cut the chilled butter into small pieces and put the butter into a mixing bowl with the flour and the salt. Using a fork, or two knives, work the butter into the flour until the mixture has the texture of oatmeal.

Beat the egg yolk with the cold water and add the oil. Make a well in the centre of the flour and butter mixture and pour in the oil. Mix with a fork, then use your hands to form the dough into a ball.

If using a food processor, place the flour and salt into the bowl and add butter cut into small pieces. Using the metal blade, process until the mixture has the texture of oatmeal.

Beat egg yolk with the cold water, and add the oil. With the processor switched on, add the egg mixture through the feed tube, processing until the mixture forms a ball around the blade. Switch off immediately.

Wrap the pastry in waxed paper and refrigerate until firm…at least 20 minutes. This mixture will keep for weeks in the freezer.

If recipe specifies that a pastry shell be ‘blind baked’ before filling, follow the instructions in ‘Blind Baking a Pastry Tart Shell’ in this section.

Pear and walnut salad

Red wine vinaigrette
3 corella (or other) ripe pears, skin on, quartered, cored and thinly sliced
150g watercress or rocket, stems removed
1 small red onion, thinly sliced into rings
90g walnuts, preferably Californian, roasted

Red wine vinaigrette

2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/3 lemon, juice only
100ml best red wine vinegar
300ml extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

 Combine garlic, lemon juice and vinegar in a bowl. Whisk in olive oil, then season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Makes about 400ml.

Before you begin – Oils

Oil. Think carefully about which oil to use in a recipe. In 1997, canola oil was considered to be the best oil to use health-wise. Cooking oils all contain saturated fats, mono-unsaturated fats and poly – unsaturated fats in varying proportions. Canola oil (and Grapeseed oil) has the biggest proportion of ‘good’ fats and the lowest proportion of ‘bad’ fats. In addition it also contains Omega 3 fatty acids, usually found in fish. These Omega 3 acids prevent the blood from clotting and are therefore considered very important in preventing heart disease. They are also important in reducing inflammation in some kinds of arthritis, in preventing asthma, in the development of the brain and in maintaining a healthy retina of the eye.

Less than a year later, some experts were saying that olive oil was the healthiest way to cook. To hedge my bets, I tend to cook with both…canola or grapseed oil for general cooking, seafood and Asian food, olive oil for all Mediterranean-style cooking. I still prefer the flavour (or rather the lack of it) of grape seed oil for fish cooking, and because grape seed oil rates fairly highly on the scale of ‘good oils’, I will still use it for cooking fish.

Ironically, however, in 2004 it was announced that vegetable oils, and in particular, canola oil was responsible for causing macular degeneration of the eye and was causing blindness in quite young people. So you can use butter and die of heart disease or use vegetable oil and go blind!

Once upon a time, I used peanut oil almost exclusively, and always for Asian cooking. These days I won’t even have it in the pantry. The incidence of peanut allergies has risen so dramatically over the last few decades that it is just not worth it.

Even the tiniest amount of peanut oil served to a person with a peanut allergy could result in death and I am just not prepared to take that risk.

I still use butter for some cooking. I cannot make a bechamel sauce without it, try as I might. I use butter for cooking liver as butter gives liver a better colour.

Just a word about olive oil. The flavour of olive oil is completely foreign to all Asian countries with the exception of Macau. (Macanese cuisine is a unique blend of Chinese and Portuguese cooking.) Most Asian cuisines use peanut (but see above) or sunflower oil. Canola oil is fine too. In Asian cooking the oil is simply a cooking medium; in Mediterranean cooking the flavour of the olive oil is important. Never use olive oil when preparing an Asian dish.

Olive oil is made by pressing the olives a number of times. The best oil comes from the first pressing. This is called ‘Extra Virgin’, and the oil produced is usually a fairly deep green. The second pressing produces ‘Virgin’ Olive oil, which is slightly lighter in colour. The third produces ‘Classic’ or ‘Classico’, which is usually a fairly deep gold in colour. Then come the final pressings producing ‘Light’ and ‘Extra Light’ Olive Oil. These are generally despised by the true Italian and Provencal cooks, but for our tastes, they are less overpowering than the earlier pressings. All are pure oil and all contain the same amount of fat. It is a flavour choice, not a health choice. Extra virgin olive oil contains the same amount of fat as extra light olive oil.

It is a myth that adding oil to the water when cooking pasta stops the pasta from sticking. All it does is inhibit the ability of the pasta sauce from adhering to the pasta.