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A Tantalizing Taste of Tuscany
Wednesday December 4, 2002
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The olive oil is here!
Regular readers may recall I was so excited about an olive oil I discovered this summer in Tuscany that I brought a sample home for Rocco and Pat Nicastro to try for themselves.
They were pretty impressed, too, and decided to order what they could for their stores in Ottawa from the tiny Ravagni oil mill located just outside Anghiari.
The Bartolomei family of Campalla has been running this mill since the second half of the 18th century, but the mill itself has existed since 1421.
Well, the good news is, about 10 weeks after I wrote about the oil and Tuscany in September, Ravagni oil has arrived in limited quantity for the first time in North America. You can find it at La Bottega in the ByWard Market, and at Nicastro’s Italian Food Emporium at 1558 Merivale Rd.
At the mill, hand-picked olives are crushed under 18th-centruy granite wheels, then pressed ever-so-gently to release a greenish-gold nectar with the fragrance of olives and a delicate finish of pepper.
There are two grades available: Extra-virgin olive oil, which has been lightly pressed and “cleaned” using a centrifuge, and the more rare “Il Mosto” grade that is made without pressing or centrifuge.
Il Mosto is the oil that naturally comes off after the olives are crushed, before pressing, and is cloudy in appearance.
The mill has its own web site, which you can check at tuscanyoilmill.com. (Or do a Google search using the key-words “Ravagni oil mill.”)
I like to drizzle Ravagni extra-virgin olive oil on a simple salad made by alternating slices of vine-ripened tomatoes with sliced buffalo mozzarella and lush basil leaves, sprinkled with coarse sea salt on a small serving tray – and that’s all. No vinegar, because you don’t want to hide the peppery taste of the oil.
The oil comes in various sizes: A 250-ml bottle costs $17.99; 500-ml is $29.99 and a 1-litre tine is $44.99. The unfiltered Mosto di Olive is $14.99 for 100 ml, $19.99 for 200 ml and $34.99 for 500 ml.
By all means, try it and enjoy. But as I said, it’s definitely not the kind of premium oil you’d want to waste in a vinaigrette.
by Ron Eade for the Ottawa Citizen
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