Butter beans, wild arugula, grilled focaccia,
Rare Wine Co. novello olive oil
DiConciliis Antece 2005
North Atlantic line-caught cod,
roast asparagus and kumquats,
tarragon beurre blanc
Peillot Altesse 2008
Chocolate banana cream pie
Banyuls Rimage L’Abbe Rous 2002
This week I hope to beguile you with the exceptionally fresh and vibrant olive oil from Selvapiana, imported by the Rare Wine Company, with which I am pairing butter beans and a wine that is paradoxically ancient and avant-garde: an oxidative fiano from Campania.
Below is a little story about how my first taste of fresh olive oil changed my life for the better during a trip to Italy in the beastly hot summer of 2003.
The heat would hit you like a hammer. Yet we were travelling in Tuscany, dammit, and, armed with a dog-eared, borrowed copy of Slow Food’s Osteria d’Italia, we were determined to eat and drink well, regardless of our core body temperature. The day we visited San Gimignano, the air was thick with muzzy heat and so clotted with tourists that you could hardly breathe (the Bartolo di Fredi frescoes made it all worthwhile). On another dog day afternoon, we toured the nearby countryside with our hosts, ostensibly to visit a pieve or two. However, the heat was so intense that it we quickly sought refuge in the shady courtyard of a modest restaurant not far from Panzano. There, I had a transcendental food experience, not one involving a luxurious ingredient like truffles or foie gras, but rather, as our hosts put it simply, “beans on toast.”
Granted, these were the locally prized zolfino beans, splashed with astonishingly fresh, bright green olive oil. Was the olive oil a condiment for the beans, or were the beans merely a vehicle for the oil? At that moment, I realized that I had never before understood olive oil all that well. Most of the olive oil we get here in the States is well over a year old, and while the oil remains fresh and sweet, the magic is lost. In the States, we tend not to see olive oil as a fresh product, but in Italy, olive oil that is under 6 months old is sometimes labeled “novello” or “olio nuovo,” to be consumed at once—before the magic is gone. If you would like to taste just how good olive oil can be, please stop by on Monday for our own version of beans on toast.