"Fresh" Is the New Word in Olive Oil

Chile has emerged as the promised land for premium extra-virgin olive oil, the kind of unconventional gift that leaves a lasting impression on your palate and finesse on your dinner table. Green and wet as droplets of morning dew, olive oil from Chile boasts a tree-to-bottle experience right in the orchard. A bit poetic perhaps, but the tiny country is counting on its miraculous climate and feral "terroir" to hoist its sparkling olive oil onto the world market. Where to start? At Todd English's restaurant "Olives" in New York City. On a clear night in June in New York City, 30 journalists and eager foodies sat at one long table to sample the inspired food of Chef English, but more importantly to learn why Chile has landed as prize winner in international competitions -- titles previously held by the more familiar domains of Italy, Israel, and even the U.S. The ring leader in the effort is Hugo Regojo, a Spaniard no less, who turned down a coveted life in the Foreign Service to become a farmer. He has joined the ranks of other pioneers, modern Chilean "Olivareros," to cultivate the riches of Chile's Central Valley.

Olive oil is a sacred food (or ingredient) and so I pay close attention to it. I also happen to love it. At home I use only two kinds of oil and they are both olive oils. A regular blended oil from a good producer, and extra-virgin olive oil -- from Italy, California, Israel, Greece, Spain, or sometimes France, when I can find it. Yet I am intrigued with the new offering from Chile with its golden-greenish hue, notes of almonds and artichokes, and its fresh "alive" quality. Many years ago I tasted a similar "freshness" at the Antinori estate in Italy. They had just developed the technology to "freeze" their exquisite oil almost immediately after extracting. At room temperature, the olive oil tasted almost "molecular" -- an exaggeration of itself. It was nice to get reacquainted with that decisive palate memory many years later.

Olive oil was first mentioned in the Hebrew bible in the 13th century B.C. -- and there is evidence that it has been around a lot longer than that -- as far back as 4000 B.C. As we now know, it is extremely healthy -- high in antioxidants, and monounsaturated fats -- particularly oleic acid -- and cancer-fighting polyphenols. But buyer beware. There are too many flawed olive oils on the market that suffer from rancidity and fustiness -- a word used by olive oil experts to define the "off" flavor caused by anaerobic fermentation of the olives before they are milled. Rancidity, on the other hand, is the result of a secondary oxidation process resulting in a strong smell of paint or varnish.

Chile is selling its premium extra-virgin olive oil to chefs in great restaurants and it is slowly appearing on supermarket shelves. Since the olives are harvested, cold-pressed, and bottled right at the orchard with every bottle you know you're getting just their olives -- and so it has integrity. You are not getting a blend of olives from all over the world, like I discovered in the brand I was using! The climate in Chile is perfect -- cold rainy winters and hot, dry summers let olives reach their optimum maturity -- revealing the great taste and perfume of the fruit (remember olives are fruits). It is also one of the few countries which is free from the dreaded olive fruit fly (bacteria) which severely affects the quality of the oil.

I use olive oil for everything and I bake with it all the time. In my book Eat Fresh Food, my daughter and I invented a lovely Italian-style chocolate chip cookie made with olive oil, as well as tender muffins and a delicious zucchini-banana bread. (You can find these recipes on my blog)

Using olive oil in new ways has always fascinated me. I was the first to invent olive oil ice cream in the mid-80s for the International Olive Oil Council. (Pastry chef Meredith Kurtzman makes it at Otto.) I was the first to freeze olive oil to use instead of butter to emulsify sauces and make them healthier. And I often make a quirky recipe from Colman Andrews (adapted from his book Cooking from the Riviera) for hot polenta topped with fresh orange segments and drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil. And that night at Olives, I had a mini martini laced with olive oil from Chile -- and it was very good, indeed.

Poisoned by a Pine Nut Tart

So there I was last week, developing Thanksgiving recipes for a major food magazine -- yes, they work that far ahead -- and nibbling on some pine nuts that I'd bought to make an open-face apple and pine nut crostata laced with Calvados. The first attempt wasn't exactly what I wanted but I kept nibbling at the tart until it was gone.

Two days later, after nailing the rest of the Thanksgiving meal -- a cider-glazed turkey, a puree of celery root, apples and carrots with sage buttered crumbs, and a stuffing made from rice, leeks, and herbs de Provence -- I'd had enough of my own cooking and took a friend to lunch to celebrate. The wine I drank tasted awfully bitter: Metallic and off-putting. Later that night I was invited to dinner at a friend's house in the neighborhood. It was hard to be polite about the meal because everything I ate tasted like I was sucking on cast iron.

I called my herbalist and my nutritionist, neither of whom had the faintest notion about what might be causing this odd eruption of bitterness in my mouth.

A frantic rummaging around the web unearthed a bewildering number of causes: from pregnancy, to mercury poisoning, to faulty fillings, but the one that began to make sense was pine nuts. Lots of people were blaming pine nuts they'd purchased from Costco and Trader Joe's but mine came from an upscale Park Slope gourmet food store. Fingers started pointing straight to China -- and why not? -- if they can poison our toothpaste, why not our pine nuts, too.

The condition is called "dysgeusia" or "metallogeusia" and not everyone is affected. The FDA says it is not an allergy but instead is an adverse reaction to something in the nuts. Its cause is still somewhat of a mystery. Lots of pine nuts have been shipped from China because they're plentiful and cheaper, but starting about ten years ago one particular variety of white pine nut grown there -- pinus armandii -- has been infiltrating packages of the good stuff. Pinus armandii is not classified as edible by the Food and Agriculture Organization, and is called "unfit for human consumption" by food safety experts at the European Commission. Strictly speaking, they're poisonous but don't cause permanent harm, which is why you still find them on food market shelves. These nuts, if you trouble to look, are much shorter than the more expensive ones from Italy that we once exclusively consumed; they should be avoided.

"Pine nut mouth" usually develops a day or two after eating the nuts and that's exactly what happened to me! Almost 48 hours after the last bite of my apple and pine nut tart came the ill-tasting wine and then several days of hideous heavy metal tastes in my mouth. Its cause is still the subject of some controversy, but toxicologists are pretty sure about the source. Its effects can linger from a couple of days to a couple of weeks and it is sure to put you off your feed. You can't "cure" it because it isn't a disease. Various bloggers report that taking activated charcoal tablets, which cost like the dickens at my health food store, lessens the symptoms (maybe), as does drinking aloe vera juice (perhaps not). I've heard that Pepcid works for some people as does sucking on those sour kids candies that I was tempted to buy.

I started to feel like Dr. Jekyll, experimenting with all sorts of foods. Lemon juice lit up the inside of my mouth, roast turkey tasted like fuel oil, and a button mushroom almost sent me to the hospital. I took a Benadryl instead. Strangely, the things I could almost tolerate were triple-strength black coffee (Bustelo) and ice cold tap water which tasted surprisingly good.

One blogging scientist explained that you can't alter the bitterness in your mouth because the actual reaction is registered in your brain.

I suspect that storing pine nuts too long in my freezer exacerbated this miserable experience. But about a decade ago when the price of pine nuts began to soar, so did the number of complaints about this poisoning. The Sherlock Holmes moment comes when you discover that the offensive Pinus armandii happen to grow only in China. Great pine nuts are harvested in the United States, Europe and Turkey, so if you find a jar in your food market with no country of origin on the label, or if the nuts come from more than one country, you might want to put them back on the shelf.

Four days have passed and I'm almost back to normal. Gratitude never tasted so good.

Chopra and Vongerichten Talk Delicious

The other night at the miraculously curated abc home furnishings store, near New York's Union Square, there was an unorthodox kind of culinary happening. Deepak and Jean-Georges, two men famous enough that we're all on a first-name basis with them, created a four-star recipe for the launch of Vongerichten's newest book, Home Cooking with Jean-Georges:  My Favorite Simple Recipes (Clarkson Potter.) The ingredients? Dozens of food world habitués (Bittman, Danny Meyer, the top magazine food editors), an ultra-chic sampling from both men's fan clubs, fabulous farm-to-table hors d'oeuvres supplied by this year's best new restaurant -- none other than abckitchen (located on store's first floor); generous bar-to-glass offerings of lemon-thyme vodka martinis and champagne; a film crew; a thoughtfully-decorated "organic tv studio," candles, cushions, and the collegial collaboration of Deepak and JGV, all supervised by the formidable Paulette Cole -- owner, visionary and astute aesthete of the abc collective.

Not unlike sitting in front of a couple of jazz musicians who riff and make the air between them meaningful, DC and JGV, made their own kind of music with humor and candor at the intersection of commerce and education. Commerce?  We were there to buy JGV's new book (it's really lovely and one of his most accessible). Education? That's what Chopra sells -- a beneficent sharing of healthy mindfulness  -- his own brand of "magic seasoning." It's clear that they both love food and that they share so much of its majesty. Deepak expressing his algorithm about the five senses, the six tastes, and the seven colors, while Jean-Georges talked about his love of umami and the tastes of Asia where he spent his formative years learning to be a chef -- Hong Kong, Tokyo, Bangkok. When JGV returned to New York in 1986 following his stints in Asia, he headed not for the farmer's market ("there was hardly anything to buy way back then," he mused), but to Chinatown for a healthy dose of fresh produce and "exotic" ingredients. Whereas these may have become staples in many of our pantries, we have come to know and respect them largely due to Jean-Georges' wildly inventive, brilliantly hued, inclusion of Asian verve into French classicism.

Deepak's wildly informed medical prowess has him inserting dozens of heart-mind-body connections to the joys of eating. "The same neuropeptides that are found in our brain are also found in our stomachs." "The mood we are in when we eat greatly affects the metabolism of our food in both positive and negative ways."  "Prana, or life energy, is so closely tied to the health of the food we eat -- so make it organic, sustainable," -- all underscoring the dynamic  relationship of food and health.

For 25 years now, I've called Jean-Georges the "pilot light" of creativity -- for in the culinary kingdom of great talent and artistry, it is quite remarkable to soar to the top -- and then stay there -- with every new endeavor. He was the original "juice man;" he replaced heavy sauces and stocks with vibrant vegetable extractions. He's a zealot, and his exquisitely light style of cooking sparked a culinary revolution in America. For a stint, he was "in the weeds" -- as his ever-changing world of taste laid in the wild -- little-known leaves, weeds, and flowers like Queen Anne's lace, chicory root, and pigweed -- more poetically called lamb's quarters.  And now, he's a farm-to-table guy, just like Chopra who uttered the word locavore last night, like a prayer.

These guys have a lot in common. Deepak has written over 65 books; Jean-Georges has 27 restaurants with more on the way. They are both pioneers and at the forefront of important cultural and sociological movements. They are both involved in aspects of their craft that extend way beyond the limits imposed by anyone else. They are free-thinkers and seem to agree with other great thinkers that: "food is medicine" and "you are what you eat." They may also both believe in a spirituality of food. I know I do.

And at the end, they both agreed, "It is always about delicious."