Olive Oils

I often have the experience of dining in a fine restaurant where those at the table are presented with what in the restaurant business is known as "bread service," a small basket more often than not of locally made bread full of the best flavors and textures. Often a small dish of butter tucked inside the basket comes with the bread. These days it's not unusual for this to be locally made and organic. The butter is often pretty bland, not having much flavor and doing little to enhance the bread.

Butter on bread is okay, but often it just adds some grease without any real flavor. The alternative? Olive oil. There's more flavor and we know from multiple research studies how good this is for you--eating fats higher in olive oil with monounsaturated fat vs. the saturated fats in butter. One of my favorite chefs, Michael Tuohy, regularly serves olive oil with his meals. His menus even have an olive oil tasting as one of the appetizers.

Olive oil is created by pressing tree-ripened olives. You'll often see a lot of different terms on the label. Cold pressed uses only pressure to extract the oil. After that designation the olive oil is graded based on the level of acidity.

• Extra virgin olive oil has 1 percent acid. This is the first pressing of the olives and is the best quality, having the freshest, fruitiest flavor.
• Virgin olive oil also comes from the first pressing but has about 3 percent acid.
• Oils labeled fino are a blend of extra virgin and virgin oil.
• Light olive oil has passed through a fine filter to remove much of the sediment (this doesn't mean that the oil is lower in calories).
• Those labeled olive oil or pure olive oil are a combination of refined virgin and extra virgin oils.

Choosing an olive oil can be a daunting challenge because there are so many varieties. Paolo Villoresi is the publisher of Italian Cooking and Living. This fantastic Web site is chock-full of information including everything from recipes to equipment and technique. Mr. Villoresi has an abiding love for olive oil and there's terrific information on olive oil at his Web site: http://www.italiancookingandliving.com/

Much of the oil that comes into the United States is from Spain or Greece and these have great flavors as well.

So what should you choose? I purchase inexpensive oils for cooking--the kinds you can find in almost any grocery store. I want the benefit of the monounsaturated fat but I don't see any reason to purchase really expensive oils when the flavor will often be diminished with cooking. For salads and such, however, I keep on hand higher-quality extra virgin olive oils that are really fruity and full of flavor. They can bring so much to fresh dishes.

We're not at the point of asking waiters what type of oils are available with the bread service but maybe a little closer.
Timothy S. Harlan, M.D. AKA Dr. Gourmet
LiveStrong Advisory Board Member

http://www.drgourmet.com