Learning To Cook With EVOO

I love to cook. It's been a passion of mine since childhood when I would sit at the kitchen counter while my grandmother would effortlessly whip up some crazy-good food for our family dinner. 

As I grew up, I would volunteer to make sandwiches for our school lunch bags (always including a green thing on them, and no, not on the pb&j's!) and shop at the local market with my parents to stock the fridge for the week. They told me how important it was to "shop the box," making an imaginary box around the store and only choosing items from there like fresh produce, meats and breads. It was rare that we ever went up and down aisles to grab bagged or canned goods. On the weekends, my mother would let me plan an entire meal and helped me do all the measuring, stirring and sautéing, frying and baking. Of course, there were more failures than successes back then...but I learned to not take it personally, to toss what tasted awful and eventually got to the point where what I cooked was tasty and healthy too!

It makes sense that I became passionate about food - and I've made a commitment to continue learning about every aspect of the culinary arts! So when a colleague was invited to an event a few months ago at the International Culinary Center all about Extra Virgin Olive Oil, I was intrigued. 

The event was sponsored by the Flavor Your Life campaign, which was created to raise awareness of European Extra Virgin Olive Oil by educating the consumer (me!) on how important traceability, origin of your bottle of EVOO and production is. Everyone gathered at the ICC for a chef demo of delicious recipes, all cooked with EVOO and then had an educational talk with a representative of UNAPROL, the largest Italian association for olive growers which represents over 500,000 olive farms (who knew there were that many?!) One of the more important missions of the campaign is to explain the advantages of adopting a traceability system that allows customers to track the olives used to make a given bottle of olive oil.

Chef Udo of the ICC led the guests through a demo of three recipes, all prepared with EVOO, and made one of my favorite recipes - Risotto Balls (recipe below). Guests were then treated to a very informal lecture which focused on many of the points of the Campaign:

• Olive Oil is a condiment not a food
• Olives are a fruit
• You should be able to trace your EVOO from harvest to bottle
• Olive Oil should not be fruity but should taste bitter
• When looking for EVOO you should look for monocultivars, not blends - the best olives are early harvest, when green
• Good EVOO is like fine wine - you need to spend a little more for a good one.

1. For the filling - Place mozzarella, artichokes, prosciutto, Parmesan & parsley in a food processor; pulse until very finely chopped. Place in small bowl; stir in peas. Set aside.
2. in a large bowl mix together the prepared risotto with 1 lightly beaten egg until well combined. Roll risotto-egg mixture into 14 (1 1/2 inch) balls. Poke a small hole in center of each ball & insert about 1 tsp. of the mozzarella-proscuitto filling mixture into each hole. Firmly re-form each into a ball, making sure to completely seal in the filling.
3. For the coating - Place flour, beaten egg & water mixture & breadcrumbs in 3 separate bowls. Dredge each filled risotto ball in four, shaking off excess. Dip in egg, letting excess drip off, then roll in breadcrumbs & place on a sheet of wax paper.
4. Heat 1 1/2 inches of olive oil in a 4-5 quart heavy pot on medium-high heat until it registers about 360º on a deep frying thermometer. Working in batches (do not crowd the pot!), carefully lower rice balls into oil with a slotted spoon & fry, turning occasionally, until golden brown; about 3-4 minutes per batch. Transfer with a slotted spoon to paper towels to drain. Return oil to 360º between batches.
5. Serve on a small pool of warmed tomato sauce with a sprinkle of chopped parsley.