"olives" news and stories

I look at the no-knead bread recipe, created by Jim Lahey of the Sullivan Street Bakery and printed by the New York Times in the fall of 2006, as one of those recipes that will be with us for all time to come. People went crazy for it when it first came out and folks all over the world continue play with it, innovating new ways to make beautiful, flavorful, bakery-quality bread in their very own ovens. In January, Cook's Illustrated devoted an entire issue to no-knead bread, doing their level best to make an already-good recipe even better.

Today's image, from Timothy Gerdes, is a loaf of nearly no-knead bread with olives, rosemary and parmesan made from the Cook's Illustrated version of the recipe. Looks delicious Timothy, thanks for adding it to the Slashfood Flickr pool.

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Europeans are crazy about labeling where a product is from. In some cases, wine for instance, it is more common for the product to be named after its originating region than it is to be named after what's actually in it. From now on, olive oil will have more specific labeling requirements as well.

The Coldiretti farmers union pressed the Italian government to pass a new law to include information on the label about where the olives were actually picked and pressed. They were upset about olive oils which claimed to be Italian but used olives from other country's around the Mediterranean. The new labeling information must also include what percentage of different olives were used in each product.

A consumer group called Codacons has endorsed the new law. They say that it helps to protect the consumer from fraud and poor quality olive oil. I say the more information on a label the better. Just make it clear and easy to read. Just because I want to know as much about the product I'm buying as possible doesn't mean I want to spend all day doing it.

[Via ColdMud]

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Last night, my mom called me just as I was sitting down to eat some dinner. She asked me what I was having and I rattled off the food sitting in front of me, "a big salad, a pear and some olives." Sounding shocked, she said, "But I thought you didn't like olives!" I confessed that I crossed over to the olive loving side several years ago and have no intention of going back. She was so pleased to discover that I could now be counted among the olive loving crowd, as she has never met an olive that she didn't like and had been afraid I had inherited my father's dislike of the cured fruit.

These days, my favorite olives for straight eating are these Cerignola olives that I buy at DiBruno Bros. (their huge, gorgeous store is only a block from my apartment, which is both wonderful and extremely dangerous). I have also gone through phases where I prefer the tiny, salty Nicoise olives or the painfully sharp pitted Calamata olives.

So which camp are you in? Do you love or hate olives? If you love them, what's your favorite variety? Have you ever tried home curing olives?

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Last Friday, students at CalTech put away their high tech pursuits and joined forces to harvest all the olives that grow on the school's 130 olive trees. This is the second year they've been picking the olives and the first year that they school went all out to throw a campus-wide harvest festival, complete with three-course family style Italian meal.

It got started last year when the university president spotted two students picking some of the olives. He promised them a home cooked meal if they could devise a way of making oil from the olives. They came up with a mechanism and the campus interest grew. The rest, as they say, is history. For those of you live in the area and want to try out some of the CalTech olive oil, it will be available in their bookstore in about three weeks.

[via Metafilter]

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After pointing you to Wendy's new Design A Burger contest, I figured I'd point you to this site, since many of you eat pizza and not burgers.

It's the Random Pizza Generator, and it automatically chooses your crust, the types of cheese and all of your toppings for you. It's sort of like that idea Kramer had on Seinfeld, only you won't burn your fingers. The webmaster doesn't suggest you actually make the pizza you get, but if you do, take a picture of it and he'll post it.

The one I got was Smoked Gouda, Provolone, Cauliflowers, Salsa, Wurstel, and Spam. For the record, I am never making that.