• Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Snapchat
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

MsMarmiteLover

  • Food
    • Recipes
    • Vegetarian
    • Vegan
  • Travel
    • France
    • Italy
    • Spain
    • UK
  • Wine
  • Gardens
  • Supperclubs/Events
  • About
    • Published Articles
    • Books
  • Shop
    • Cart

The oil crisis and Sicilian olive oil

November 17, 2015 3 Comments Filed Under: Uncategorized

OLIVE OIL SICILY
OLIVE OIL SICILY
OLIVE OIL SICILY
OLIVE OIL SICILY
OLIVE OIL SICILY

There is a crisis in the olive belt, the Mediterranean fertile crescent that spreads from the Lebanon, via Israel, through Greece, Southern Spain and Portugal, the South of France and Southern Italy, which could destroy olive oil production. The bacteria ‘Xylella fastidious’, which admittedly sounds like a spell from Harry Potter, is spreading rapidly through Italy, starting from Puglia, the largest olive oil producing area, where they are having to chop down trees that are hundreds of years old. The first symptoms started in Europe in 2013, but this year, in 2015, the disease has literally gone viral.

The bug doesn’t just affect olive trees: it ravages citrus groves, vineyards, almond, palm and fruit trees, leaving them dessicated and withered. It has led to the destruction of a million olive trees in Italy so far. There is no cure, only containment, cutting down the infected trees and all those alongside them. The landscape of Southern Europe could be changed for generations, not to mention the economic, cultural destruction. Just as Asia is a rice culture, the Mediterranean is an olive oil culture. This historic product, mentioned in the bible, is essential to the food. 
CARMELO SCALIA, OLIVE OIL SICILY

This past week, I visited Sicily, which as an island off the toe of Italy remains unaffected so far. I went to find out about Pomora, a start-up food business initiated by two British men, Alun Johns and Paul McGuigan, which aims to produce and distribute high quality olive oil. These guys are not your horny-handed sons of the soil but soft-pawed office types hailing from the world of IT and digital marketing. Alun worked for Amazon.co.uk and Paul for online sports merchandisers, their business experience is the detached and laundered world of online. But they wanted to get their hands dirty so together with two farmers – Carmelo Scalia, who lives in Catania, huddling under the rich mineral soil of Mount Etna, and Antonio from Campania, inland – Pomora form an interesting mash-up of the ancient and the sparkling new. Johns and McGuigan were inspired during a trip to Sicily by the quality of the olive oil.

 “You can’t get olive oil like this in the supermarket in the UK,” Alun exclaimed.

 They work in tandem with their olive farmers, ensuring a fair trade, sustainable market for the product, using an ‘adopt a tree’ system. 

OLIVE OIL SICILY

On a clear blue mid-November day, warm enough to wear a summer dress, I visited the Sicilian oil mill owned by Carmelo Scalia. The floor was bustling with farmers and crates of olives. Smallholders drove up with shopping bags of olives in the back of their car while bigger farmers emptied trucks of green and purple olives into crates. One man turned up with just two buckets of olives – the fruit of half a day’s work, enough for perhaps just a couple of litres of olive oil. No matter, the important thing is that it’s your oil, from your trees. Almost every family has their own olive patch. The farmers give 50% of their oil to Carmelo in exchange for using the mill for free.

Two of the rules for labelling olive oil as extra virgin: 1) you must harvest and press the olives within 24 hours; 2) the weather must not be above 27ºC. Today is perfect at 23ºC, dry and sunny after two weeks of rain. Hence the industrious atmosphere with farmers queuing up, huddling in groups, sucking on cigarettes as they wait to get their olives pressed during this fair weather window of opportunity.

The smell as you enter the mill knocks you back off your feet: it’s the classic profile of good olive oil, fruity grassy scents in your nose and the front of your palate followed by the peppery bitterness, the characteric polyphenols as it hits the back of your throat.

The olive oil process:

 The olives are weighed. An average crate is around 200 kilo OLIVE OIL SICILY

1. The olives are weighed. An average crate is around 200 kilos. This year, most of the olives are green with the odd purple one. Last year, due to the wet weather, almost the whole crop was purple, for they had ripened, having been left on the trees till later in the year. Olive oil from purple or black olives has a different flavour profile; it’s smoother, less bitter, fruitier.

2. The olives are put into a huge hopper where most of the leaves are sifted out.
The olives are put into a huge hopper where most of the leaves are sifted out. OLIVE OIL SICILY
 3. The olives are lifted onto a machine which washes them and further separates out any leaves.
The olives are lifted onto a machine which washes them and further separates out any leaves. OLIVE OIL SICILY

4. Then the olives are crushed, spitting out the gravel-like stones, separated out to use as fuel to power the machine. 

5. The olives are ‘malaxed’,  massaged, allowing tiny oil droplets to coalesce into slightly bigger droplets, which makes it easier to extract the oil and increases yields. It looks like a foliate green tapenade swivelling on huge metal screws. In this part of the process, which takes 20 minutes, the olives are covered with a thin gas layer of nitrogen or carbon dioxide to prevent oxidisation. Oxygen is the enemy of good olive oil. This is a delicate operation, for the machine must not heat up the oil or the olives in order to retain the benefits of cold pressing.

6. Then the olives go through two centrifuges. The first, a horizontal centrifuge, dehusks the olives creating pomace as a side product, which is used as a fertiliser. The second centrifuge is faster and vertical, separating oil and water. Some olives are more watery than others, it depends on the variety and on which side of the slope they are grown. How much sun do they get? How ripe are the olives?

7. Lastly, the oil oozes from a tap into bottles or steel churns – thick, syrupy and verdant. The farmers then weigh how much oil they have extracted. From 200 kilos of olives, you get approximately 20 litres of olive oil. Once the oil has been collected at the end of the pressing process, it is put into large storage tanks (with any empty space in the tank filled with nitrogen rather than air to prevent oxidation) and allowed to settle (it’s not filtered). The longer you leave it to stand, the more of the tiny particles drop to the bottom and the clearer the oil becomes. You then bottle from a tap hole slightly above the bottom of the tank.

OLIVE OIL SICILY

Sometimes there are fights between farmers (I saw a bit of a spat between two farmers’ wives) about when their oil starts and the other finishes. But each farmer’s olive batch is carefully labelled, the labels following the process along the machine route and there are gaps between each new farmer’s lot. 

We tasted the latest Pomora batch at the mill; unctuous leaf-green ooze lubricating rough triangles of sourdough with a sprinkling of sea salt.  Like all good olive oils, there is a simultaneous bitterness and butteryness, fullness and astringency. It’s no surprise that olive oil is good for you when the flavour verges on the medicinal. 

If you are interested in getting quarterly deliveries of olive oil, you can sign up for a minimum of £58. This is two quarters, for which you will receive 6 x 250ml of olive oil. You will get the newest olive oil, flavoured olive oil or extra virgin olive oil, depending on the quarters that you choose – olive oil is a seasonal product when it’s this fresh. You can even go and visit your adopted tree. Strikes me that this would make a rather nice Christmas gift for a keen cook.  Check out Pomora here.
OLIVE OIL SICILY

Recent posts

Discovering fairytale Saxony in Germany

January 25, 2023

Fake meat taste test for Veganuary

January 8, 2023

A round-up of my favourite travel destinations of 2022

January 1, 2023

Previous Post: « How to make tacos: the perfect formula
Next Post: 23 foodie gifts for Christmas – Part 1: kitchen equipment »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jessica E

    November 22, 2015 at 9:44 pm

    What a fabulous idea! I've added this to my Christmas wish list…

    Reply
  2. Pasta Bites

    November 24, 2015 at 3:48 pm

    Thankfully this year's harvest is not, generally, as bad as last year's, due to a combination of favourable weather patterns… and indeed, I had a few bottles in my Christmas stocking (sotto l'albero) last year.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. A Christmas shopping wish list says:
    November 30, 2020 at 4:05 am

    […] too spicy for me. I used the lemon flavour on pasta and the rosemary flavour on home-made focaccia. I went to visit their Sicilian grower Carmelo Scalia a few years […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating




Primary Sidebar

MsMarmiteLover aka Kerstin Rodgers.

Chef, photographer, author, journalist, blogger. Pioneer of the supperclub movement.

This is my food and travel blog, with recipes, reviews and travel stories. I also stray into politics, feminism, gardening.

Subscribe to my mailing list

msmarmitelover

Kerstin Rodgers/MsMarmiteLover
Naples at Christmas- discovering piennolo di vesuv Naples at Christmas- discovering piennolo di vesuvio,the Christmas 🍅, which lasts up to a year fresh. It’s given boxed as gifts around Christmas being the only local fresh tomato available. It dresses all the Christmas pizzas and pastas. It’s grown on volcanic Vesuvius soil and sparsely watered. As a result it has thick skins, and a sweet intense flavour. #tomatoes #italy #naples
Not cooking much at the moment due to a thick laye Not cooking much at the moment due to a thick layer of dust over my kitchen. This will be my dining room/photography studio. Done on a whim.#unplanneddemolition
Another picture of my granddaughter Ophelia in a n Another picture of my granddaughter Ophelia in a nest of apricot tulle (found at portobello market). Isn’t she lovely? #granfluencer
Broccoli Stilton soup. This freezing week is defin Broccoli Stilton soup. This freezing week is definitely a week for soups. My friend @jimfrommanc is staying & needs his hot lunch.
Cheese on toast with crushed chilli 🌶️ in Ven Cheese on toast with crushed chilli 🌶️ in Venice the fresh food market sells bouquets of colourful chillies. I’ve still got mine, drying in an enamel jug. #travelandfood
The Christmas tomato or piennolo di vesuvio. Read The Christmas tomato or piennolo di vesuvio. Read all about it: https://msmarmitelover.com/2022/12/christmas-in-naples.html  Got a couple of bunches hanging in my kitchen. #naples #campania #tomatoes🍅 #travelphotography
Opheliagram. This morning I photographed her in an Opheliagram. This morning I photographed her in an Italian outfit I bought in Naples on a William Morris playmat which looks great and is practical for tummy time. So many things are different about parenting now. Parents use apps to track feeding, pooing, weeing etc. You don’t bathe them anymore for the first few weeks because you want to leave the vernix ( the white waxy stuff they are covered in at birth) on their skin as long as possible. Nappies now have a line on them that turns blue if they’ve done a pee. White noise apps to help them sleep. New technology guides new parents. As well as ancient probably prehistoric customs being rediscovered. #granfluencer #grandaughter I’ve tagged in @siennamarla and @jamescalmus as the authors of this baby.
I made two dishes from one pack of white beans las I made two dishes from one pack of white beans last night. Soak, then cook with 2 stock cubes, water & a fan of bay leaves. When soft & cooked, scoop some into a soup bowl with plenty of stock, add white wine, fresh basil and or a scoop of pesto and a squeeze of lemon for soupe au pistou. Garnish with Parmesan. Today I cooked the pot until the liquid had almost disappeared and added a block of feta. I baked this in the oven for 20 to 30 minutes, added @pomoragoodfood new olive oil, salt and pepper for a gigantes plaki (but with smaller beans). Eat more beans!
What to make when you have lots of leftover egg yo What to make when you have lots of leftover egg yolks after making a pavlova? Zabaglione, that classic Italian trattoria dessert made from egg yolks, sugar & tons of masala sweet wine. Whisk it up over a bain-marie or be a bit cheaty & add a teaspoon of cornflour. Strong wrists needed. #italianfood #christmasdesserts #leftovers #cooksmart
The unpackaged vegan meats. My panel of 4 ( from c The unpackaged vegan meats. My panel of 4 ( from carnivore, to recent vegetarian, to long-time vegetarian to never eaten meat (my daughter)) tasted 18. It was quite a bushtucker trial. Carnivores & vegetarians liked very different things. Full report in next weeks @hamandhigh #veganuary #vegan #vegetarian #tastetest #fakemeat #plantbasedmeat
Fake meatathon tasting taking place as my veganuar Fake meatathon tasting taking place as my veganuary column for @hamandhigh So many companies doing this now. As a longtime vegetarian I don’t want anything that tastes too much like meat. But new vegetarians and vegans may want something that tastes close as damnit to meat in order to stave off cravings? Which category are you in? Have you any favourites or dislikes? Is this just another example of ultra-processed food? Let me know in the comments #vegan #vegetarian #meatfree #veganuary
Pasta buselli al cedro. Cedro or citron is a fragr Pasta buselli al cedro. Cedro or citron is a fragrant citrus & one of the founding citrus (along with pomelo and mandarin) that created all the other citrus fruits you know about. Usually candied, it is also used in this unusual neopolitan recipe in which you soak the zest in the pasta water overnight before cooking. Post up on the blog later today. Board a Xmas present from @siennamarla #pasta #naples #cedro #citrus
My london garden ce matin My london garden ce matin
My Sacher Torte (1 word or 2?) with a difference- My Sacher Torte (1 word or 2?) with a difference- bergamot marmalade in the middle. In the @hamandhigh this week. It’s bloody delicious. #chocolatecake #feelaustria #untoldstories #vienna #sachertorte
These are Mela Annurca apples, ‘mel’anurca’ These are Mela Annurca apples, ‘mel’anurca’ in Neapolitan dialect. They are a Christmas apple, in season now. I bought this little model basket of apples in San Gregorio di Armenia street in Naples where every year neopolitans buy something to add to their ‘presepe’ or nativity scene. Often scenes from markets to add to the expensive, anything from 500 euros to 5000 euros nativity crèches. Around Christmas this street is packed (watch out for pickpockets) with locals and tourist picking out their addition to the scene. Melanurca apples are picked in September then laid on the ground to ripen, turning them every day by hand, to ensure all sides transform from a yellow green into a Wicked Witch red. They are very healthy, particularly for your hair, according to scientists at the university of Naples. #naples #neopolitanchristmas #melanurca  #food #travel #sangregorioarmeno #presepenapoletano #nativityscenes
The Christmas tomato 🍅 or piennolo di vesuvio, The Christmas tomato 🍅 or piennolo di vesuvio, a local tomato that is sold around Christmas in Naples. It is grown with very little irrigation and lasts fresh up to a year. Hence it is used for tomato based Christmas dishes. This tomato has a thick skin and is really intense in flavour. It hangs outside grocers, on balconies, in kitchens, having been braided by ladies into bunches of 1.5 kilos. Each costs 15 euros. I went to visit the farmers and the ladies skilfully tying the tomatoes into clusters, using the vines to fasten them, like cherries. Boxed, these are given as gifts. Reel on the way! #naples #christmas #tomatoes #travel #food
Travel: how I pack. I choose one colour as well as Travel: how I pack. I choose one colour as well as black and white and stick to that palette. For Sicily & Naples I’m doing red, white & black. I’ve bought @coti_vision red glasses chain, a red beret & a black one, a pair of red @snagtights & a black pair, a red hair clasp, a red & white pair of shoes (25 euros, leather from Naples), a red & white dress, a black & white striped dress, and so on. Do you roll? Do you flatten & spread? Do you fold? How do you pack? A few days before I leave I leave my suitcase open in my bedroom and every time I think of something I need to take I sling it in there. ( like adaptors) Last thing is wash bag ( I have a hanging one which is useful) and coat (red for this trip). Basically I colour code my life. When I did the Camino everything was blue & yellow, the colours of the Camino. When I went to Ireland I took all my green clothes ( I don’t have many). If I go on a boat trip I pack blue and white. #packing #colourcoding #travel #mysuitcase
Ruota di pesce spada. A glorious oven baked Sicili Ruota di pesce spada. A glorious oven baked Sicilian fish dish, baked on onions, studded with garlic cloves wrapped in mint leaves, then more onions, capers, olives, oregano & rosemary. Use a thick central slice of swordfish (where can I get that in london?). I’m tasting grillo & Nero d’avola wines @tenutorapitala about an hour inland from Palermo. The owner is the last count Bernard de La gatinais. He has 3 daughters. He’s French (Brittany) and Sicilian. He spoke about how difficult it has been for wine growers since lockdown- so many restaurants closed. Now they are grappling with high energy & fuel costs. ##winesofsicilia #siciliaDOC #wine #travel #sicily
I love Venice. I love Maneskin. I love Italy. I lo I love Venice. I love Maneskin. I love Italy. I love boats and water. #biennalearte2022
London cure smoked salmon from @formanandfield wit London cure smoked salmon from @formanandfield with mikawa citrus (cross between mandarin & pomelo) and home pickled green peppercorns on a plate I bought in minori Italy. #londonfood #citrus #sundaylunch
Load More... Follow on Instagram

Archives

Copyright © 2023 msmarmitelover