Cooking with Olive Oil
Here’s a collection of recipes and tips from California chefs and olive oil professionals compiled to help you feature the fresh flavors of the season's freshest olive oils now and ways to use up last year's supply quickly (since olive oil never improves with age).
Interested in trying extra virgin olive oil in recipes that don't call for it? Here's a handy conversion guide.
The extraordinary character of OLIO NUOVO doesn't last (it's not meant to), so you should use it up quickly! We asked a group of food professionals for their favorite ways to enjoy it. Click the picture at right to see how Chez Panisse Chef Amy Dencler, Zuni Café Chef Nate Norris, ENZO olive oil producer Vincent Ricchiuti, Authentico author Rolando Beremundi, and olive oil educator Robert Klugman enjoy their olio nuovo supplies within weeks of getting them from the mill. Click here for these 6 Easy Ways to Enjoy Your Olio Nuovo.
The New Sherry and Olive Oil Pound Cake
For this guide's 2024 update, beloved cookbook author Alice Medrich updated her favorite olive oil pound cake, first created for Pure Dessert (Artisan, 2007), to feature the 1-to-1 Gluten Free Baking Flour by Renewal Mill, an award-winning ingredient company that fights global food loss by upcycling byproducts from food manufacturing into premium ingredients such as this gluten-free baking flour blend. For olive oil choices, she says, “a robust, even peppery EVOO like the Tres Osos Robust Extra Virgin Olive Oil used here perfectly balances this cake’s sweetness and notes of citrus and sherry. Gild the lily (or not) by drizzling with a unique citrus olive oil glaze. The Bondolio California Mandarin Olive Oil added a beautifully vibrant flavor.
Reem Assil’s MUHAMMARA (Roasted Red Pepper Walnut Spread)
Throughout her cookbook Arabiyya: Recipes from the Life of an Arab in Diaspora, Chef Reem Assil, founder of Reem’s California, demonstrates the centrality of olive oil in Arabic cuisines. Edible East Bay suggests using a fruity arbequina from Olivina or Séka Hills for this recipe, or you could go bold with an olio nuovo. Visit Reem’s California at 2901 Mission Street, San Francisco (or order online) for this spread as well as the bakery’s excellent pita bread.
Recipe and photo reprinted with permission from Arabiyya: Recipes from the Life of an Arab in Diaspora by Reem Assil, copyright © 2022. Published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Photographs copyright © 2022 by Alanna Hal
Apple Pie with an Olive Oil Crust
This recipe is by Stephanie Rosenbaum Klassen, who created it to showcase the Arbequina Blend Organic California EVOO made by Gold Ridge Organic Farms, which is an ideal choice for a pie crust. It's a simple recipe that will help you conquer any fear of pie-making, and it will also help when you are serving guests who want an all-plant-based dessert. The recipe is perfect for an apple pie (or any fruit pie) as well as for a quiche, savory tart, or pot pie. When making a savory pie, you can try adding some fresh or dried thyme and cracked black pepper to the dough.
Viola Buitoni’s Acciughe Marinate (Marinated anchovies)
Chef instructor and food writer Viola Buitoni shares the food language and culture of her native Italy through classes and immersive off-the-beaten-path food tours. For this recipe (which comes from Buitoni’s cookbook, Italy by Ingredient) the author suggests a fruity extra virgin olive oil. We enjoyed it with Luretík’s Sicily, a blend of Nocellara del Belice and Cerasuola varieties. Used with permission from Italy by Ingredient by Viola Buitoni, copyright © 2023, Rizzoli Books. Photographs copyright © 2023 by Molly DeCoudre
ACRE Kitchen & Bar’s Olive Oil Martini
Extra virgin olive oil is on the menu at ACRE Kitchen & Bar where they have their own private label EVOO made by Scarlata Farms and feature its luscious flavors in their pizzas and the house martini. 5655 College Ave, Oakland | acrekitchenandbar.com
Dress up this beautiful salad with your best extra virgin olive oil. Olivaia’s Olio Nuovo or their Block X Heirloom OLA would be ideal. Recipe and photo by Judy Doherty
This Ricotta Dip with Pesto & Pistachios by photographer Judy Doherty is one of the easiest ways we know to serve and appreciate olio nuovo and new harvest olive oils.
Ricotta Dip with Pesto & Pistachios
Award-winning cookbook writer Amelia Saltsman talks about the importance of olive oil throughout Jewish history in the story that introduces her recipe for Sweet and Savory Cheese Pancakes.
Photo by Judy Doherty
Michele Belotti, chef/owner of Belotti Ristorante Bottega in Oakland, California, always features his favorite olive oils on his menu. He first created this Porcini Vellutata recipe for a Séka Hills tasting event, but you can try it at home. You just need to go find some porcini and olio nuovo!
Photo by Judy Doherty
During the colder days of the harvest season at Bondolio Olive Farm in Winters, Bond family members enjoy their new oil and also use up last year's supply by making their special Bondolio Bean Soup.
Photo by Judy Doherty
Extra Virgin Olive Oil Celebration Cake
This recipe, a tribute to the olive harvest, was created by renowned cookbook author Alice Medrich for the birthday of a very dear friend. Light-as-a-feather, extra virgin olive oil sponge layers are brushed with even more olive oil, then filled with bright kumquat conserve and olive oil buttercream. Judicious sprinklings of salt along the way and a final coat of chocolate make this one of Medrich's all-time favorite celebration cakes.
Hallmarks of Spring Risotto with Asparagus, Snap Peas, and Fava Beans is a great way to feature the best flavors of spring with your most delicious 2024 extra virgin olive oil. We include lots of suggestions of producers and varietal oils and blends to choose for this dish.
Janell Pekkain, olive oil sommelier and co-founder of Olive This Olive That and Prmry likes to grill all year round, and this Crispy Grilled Chicken Breast with Lemon & Thyme really shows off the potential olive oil offers to grilling. "The extra virgin olive oil added at the end keeps this chicken super moist and delicious," she says.
When we made this splendid salad of chestnuts, Brussels sprouts, and kale for Thanksgiving 2022, we discovered it was the perfect medium for showing off our freshest new-harvest olive oil and olio nuovo. We used Olivaia’s OLA.
This Heirloom Almond Apple Cake recipe comes from Gold Ridge Organic Farms in Sebastopol, where farmer Brook Hazan grows apples, citrus, and olives on 88 idyllic acres. This is a great place to experience an expert, multi-faceted olive oil TASTING right beside some gorgeous old olive trees like those in our gallery of orchards. On the Gold Ridge patio, you’ll also meet a unique citrus hybrid called the mandarin kumquat. The farm co-presses those fruits with olives in its mill, and the delicious oil can add its spark to salads or to this cake recipe.
Chef Dominica Rice-Cisneros highlights olio nuovo and other extra virgin olive oils at her restaurant, Bombera in Oakland. She created this recipe for Baked Yams with Toasted Almonds Salsa Macha as a special way to celebrate the harvest this season.
Yes! You can use olive oil instead of butter in baking, and you can also fry with it! Here’s our conversion chart and frying information to help you get in the swing.
Baking is a good way to use up last year’s supply of extra virgin olive oil to make room in your cupboard for the current-harvest oils. Try this Extra Virgin Olive Oil Cake recipe created by Alice Medrich, author of many beloved baking cookbooks and a strong believer in the virtues of extra virgin olive oil in baking.
Photo by Judy Doherty
To show off your new-harvest olive oil in spring, when green garlic arrives at your farmers’ market, make Edible Monterey Bay’s Celery Root and Leek Soup with Green Garlic Gremolata from Persephone restaurant in Aptos, California. Chef Cori Goudge-Ayer used a new extra virgin olive oil from Wild Poppies, a Santa Cruz–producer covered in our Spring 2021 story, Olive Oil. Synergies
Photo by Chris Schmauch
Olive Oil Old Fashioned Doughnuts
Edible Vancouver Island published this recipe along with their Summer 2022 story about the Olive Farm on Salt Springs Island, BC, which could be Canada’s only commercial producer of extra virgin olive oil. The recipe is an example of a traditional sweet snack made with olive oil that would be appreciated by olive pickers and millers working during the cold months of the fall and winter olive harvest season. Find the recipe here.
A winter ritual in Italy's Piemonte region, Bagna Cauda (literally, hot bath) is a medieval peasant tradition celebrating a historic trade arrangement, the marriage of Spanish anchovies and extra virgin olive oil.
Follow Edible Shasta-Butte contributor Stephen David Caldes on his epic discovery on mixing a variety of olive oil cocktails. Cheers!
This recipe by photography Judy Doherty is a good way to use up last season's extra virgin olive oil to make way for the new-harvest oils in your cupboard.
If you have some delicious tomatoes in your kitchen, pair them up with your best extra virgin olive oil in this recipe by photographer Judy Doherty.
