Why olive oil is the key to all of it

I. What Sicilian oil tastes like

Sicily’s most significant oil variety is Nocellara del Belice — a large meaty olive from the Belice valley that produces oil intensely green when young, with herbaceous tomato leaf and artichoke notes and a peppery finish that fades after a few months in the bottle.

Nocellara is the right oil for Sicilian cooking: dressing raw vegetables, finishing pasta, the caponata and the parmigiana where the olive oil is not a neutral fat but a flavour contributor. The tomato-leaf character amplifies rather than competes.

The Nocellara is also one of the finest table olives in the world. The dual-use variety: pressed for oil and cured for eating. The olive as ingredient and as object.

II. What Greek oil tastes like

Koroneiki, the dominant Greek variety, produces a smaller yield per tree than Nocellara but a more intensely flavoured oil — higher in polyphenols, more aggressively peppery, with a persistent grassiness.

Greek oil and Sicilian oil side by side are noticeably different. Both are extra virgin. Both are high quality. The Greek is more assertive; the Sicilian more immediately aromatic. Neither is better — they are for different contexts.

III. What Lebanese and Syrian oil tastes like

The varieties of the eastern Mediterranean — Souri in Lebanon and Palestine, Gemlik in Turkey, Kalamata in southern Greece — produce oils that are richer and more buttery, with a rounder profile, less assertive on the pepper and more forward on the fruit.

Lebanese oil suits the eastern Mediterranean table — the hummus, the baba ghanoush, the fattoush — where the oil is constant but not dominant. Matching the oil to the use is not connoisseurship. It is cooking.

IV. The bread

The bread varies more than the oil across the basin. Sicilian pane di casa from semolina, French pain de campagne, Lebanese flatbread, Moroccan khobz. All of them are correct with olive oil.

The oil finds its level in whatever the bread needs — a mild Lebanese oil suits the flatbread’s neutrality; a strong Koroneiki adds dimension to the chewy semolina.

V. The table where multiple traditions are present

I have eaten at tables in Palermo where the olive oil, the bread, and the cheese were Sicilian, the wine was from Pantelleria, and the salad vinegar came from a Tunisian producer by way of a cousin’s market stall. The meal was not confused.

Palermo is a city that has been absorbing and synthesizing influences from every direction for three thousand years. The oil was the constant. Everything else was negotiable.

Recipe — Caponata Siciliana

Lorenzo Russo · Palermo · serves 4 · 45 minutes · room temperature

• Serves 4
• 30 min drain
• 20 min cook
• Better next day

Ingredients

• 1 large eggplant, cut into 2 cm cubes
• 1 cup celery, sliced
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 4 Roma tomatoes, diced (or 400 g canned)
• 3 tbsp capers, rinsed
• 100 g green olives, pitted and halved
• 3 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp sugar
• Generous extra virgin Sicilian olive oil
• Salt

The method

1. Salt eggplant cubes, let drain 30 minutes, rinse and dry.
2. Fry in generous olive oil until golden. Drain.
3. Sauté onion and celery in olive oil until soft. Add tomatoes, cook 10 minutes.
4. Add capers, olives, vinegar, and sugar. Stir to combine. Simmer 5 minutes.
5. Add the fried eggplant. Stir gently. Cool to room temperature.
6. Serve at room temperature with bread. Better the next day. The olive oil should be present throughout — in the frying, in the sauté, and drizzled over the finished dish at the table.

About the contributor

Lorenzo Russo

Lorenzo Russo writes about Mediterranean olive oil and Sicilian cuisine from Palermo, Sicily, Italy. He keeps three bottles open at all times — Sicilian, Greek, and Lebanese.

Editor’s notes — the longer view

A note on the species and the place. The olive is the same species across the basin. What the oil tastes like depends on the variety, the soil, the climate, and what the producer does between harvest and bottling. Same logic as wine.

A note on the pepper. The pepper finish on a fresh Koroneiki is the polyphenols. Mild, buttery oils have fewer. The pepper is a quality marker, not a defect.

A note on the dual use. The Nocellara is both an oil olive and a table olive. The same fruit, pressed or cured, becomes either the cooking ingredient or the snack at the bar. Few crops on earth work this way.

A note on the cousin’s vinegar. The Tunisian vinegar arrived in Palermo through a cousin’s market stall. The salad was not confused. The city has been absorbing influences from every direction for three thousand years.

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