10/05/08

Useful hints

Oilhints.
Cold temperatures – your olive oil will go cloudy and even turn lumpy, if left in the cold.
Thankfully, as soon as it is put back into a warm environment, it will revert to its normal state.
Put a lump of this oil into a pan when it is cold; watch it turn back to its usual, familiar glorious olive colour before your eyes.
Light – sunlight is probably the most harmful element for your lovely olive oil.
Direct exposure to strong sunlight will cause oxidation of your olive oil and you might as well just throw it away then, because it will taste awful.
Keep your olive oil in its tin and it will still be fine at the end of a year, or even two, three, yes perhaps four years! That's because the polyphenols remain inherent only in natural olive oil.
The chief buyer of one of the large supermarket chains refused to believe me when I told him that natural, organic olive oil such as ours will keep for such a long time.
(His suppliers keep their organic olive oil in storage tanks topped up with nitrogen gas in order to expel air, and they put a 2 week 'use by' date on their labels)
If olive oil is good and natural, it keeps just fine in a Greek pithari jar with a rock for a lid….four years is my personal experience.
Smoking - when cooking, if this olive oil is heated in the pan to the point of smoking, discard it. Apparently, when exposed to such constant high heat, the oil is transformed
and it adopts carcinogenic properties! Nevertheless, olive oil can attain highest temperatures before reaching smoking point.

Salve - Apart from eating – my personal conviction is that this olive oil has healing properties; my Greek neighbours believe this too.
They say that taking a spoonful or two first thing in the morning will keep you immune from any cancer of the digestive system.
When I smear my olive oil on a cut or graze, I find it heals much more quickly than without it.
Rubbed into rough skin, like your bare heels in summer, or on work-roughed hands, this olive oil makes the skin feel supple and smooth again.
Sore throats lose the pain, toothache can be relieved, there are all sorts of uses for this gift of nature. Learn for yourself.
A doctor in Plymouth who is a regular customer says that he and his family rub this olive oil all over their bodies; so did athletes in ancient Greece! Experimenting will prove interesting…

Olivehints
Salt - As for olives, salt is a necessary ingredient in the curing of olives; they would be inedible otherwise.
Sometimes, the salt content is excessive for certain palates. In this case, take out a quantity of olives from the brine and rinse them in fresh, clean water before eating.
If they are still too salty for your taste, soak some overnight in fresh water and consume within the following few days.
Note: beware leaving the olives soaking in fresh water for too long, as this will render the fruit liable to softening and they will turn mushy too soon.
In short, consume your olives quickly as soon as possible after soaking in fresh water.
Mould - Olives are easy to contaminate, if they have no preservatives or treatments.
The most common reason for the appearance of mould on otherwise good olives is contamination: the reaction of the brine with thieving fingers being the principal cause,
White spots, a thin, dull film on the surface of the brine, even a crusty growth (only after a really long period of neglect) are all indications that someone has come in off the street, seen a tin of Oil in the Raw
Organic olives sitting on your table and has swiped a few of the purple gems. Call your insurers immediately and erect a razor wire fence.
Dip in with a perfectly clean spoon and your olives will stay good for a year or more. No need to discard the fruit mind; as with marmalade, just get rid of the mouldy bits.