Slick oil (+recipes)

Paul Jobin. Photo / Supplied.

Making the most of your extra virgin olive oil.

The best thing about an olive oil tasting? No double vision from over-indulging and under-using the spitton that you get at a wine-tasting.

Tasters are instead given a small glass containing a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil. We covered the top of the glass with our hand and rolled the oil around, letting it coat the inside surface, and warming it to body temperature. The glass was then lifted to the nose to analyse the aroma. Then came the tasting - a sip before rolling the oil around the mouth for five seconds, then spitting it out.

When it comes to buying olive oil, you should know that extra virgin refers to oil from the first press of the olives, either mechanically or by centrifugation, without heat or chemicals to help in the extraction, and it must have less than 1 per cent acidity.

Pure olive oil comes from the second pressing of leftover olive mash, sometimes with a chemical extraction. This is good general purpose oil with the word "pure", indicating it has not been mixed with any other oil. Pure olive oil is suitable for frying and grilling.

At First Drop, in Northland, olive picking takes place during Queens Birthday weekend. Pickers, saddled with a front-loading net tickle the olives off the tree. I save the lucino variety for my Parmesan-infused First Drop olive oil that is nurtured in holding tanks with my special mixture at Hihi Olive Estate.

The ideal temperature for storing olive oil is 14C in tinted glass, porcelain or a stainless drum (fusti) away from light. It can be stored in the refrigerator to prolong shelf life. If it congeals, it will return to its normal liquid state at room temperature.

On a side note - in the late 1800s, Logan Campbell imported 5000 olive tree seedlings from South Australia and planted them in what is now Cornwall Park.

His olive venture was eventually abandoned as the flavour of the oil did not match the Italian oils Campbell was familiar with. Cornwall Park, long since gifted to the people of Auckland City, still has some magnificent trees left from the original planting.