Virgin Olive Oil: Everything you should know about Olive Oil

Viktoria Hassouna

Virgin Olive Oil

Everything You Should Know About Olive Oil

Secrets, Tips and Tricks from a Centuries Old Tradition in Tunisia

With Tunisian Recipes!

Books on Demand

You may find additional information about the Ksar-Ezzit organic olive grove on the Internet at: www.ksar-ezzit.com

Legal Disclaimer

The contents of this volume have been carefully researched and developed. However, neither the author nor the publisher assumes liable for the information in this volume.

Photos: Viktoria Hassouna; except for illustration 26: California Olive Ranch; Illustrations 5 and 44: Mohamed Melek Hassouna; Illustrations 47 and 48; Bavarian Ministry of Health, Nutrition and Consumer Protection. (LGL)

The use of the text and illustrations, or excerpts thereof, without the express permission of the editor is a violation of copyright law and punishable by law. This applies equally to duplications, translations, microfilms and for processing by electronic systems.

For my husband, Lassaad, who inspired me, and my children, Mohamed Melek and Rayan, in gratitude for their patience.

Contents

Preface

History and Tradition

Where does the Olive Tree come from?

Greek Mythology, the Bible and the Koran

Data and Facts

Quality

The Olive Tree

The Olives

The Harvest

Caring for the Olive Trees

Oil Production

Classifications

Extra Virgin Olive Oil (huile d ´olive vierge extra)

Virgin Olive Oil (huile d´olive vierge)

Refined Olive Oil (huile d ´olive rafinée)

Olive Oil (huile d´olive)

Olive-pomace Oil (huile de grignons d´olive)

Organic Olive Oil

Labelling

Organoleptic Testing – Sensory Analysis

Classification based upon the Results of Organoleptic Testing

How can I recognize good Olive Oil?

Home Made Virgin Olive Oil

Storage and Storage Life

Much More than just a Food

Cholesterol and Fatty Acids

LDL and HDL

Secondary Plant Substances

Vitamins and Minerals

Phenolic Compounds

Antioxidants

Flavourings and Aromatics

Hydrocarbons

Sterols

Extra Virgin Olive Oil – Essential for Life

The Latest Craze:

Counting Fat Calories and Consuming a Low-fat Diet!

The Mediterranean Diet

Olive Leaves and their Healing Effects

The Tunisian Way to love Virgin Olive Oil!

Olive Oil in Medicine and Cosmetics

Olive Oil Recipes for Health

Olive Oil Recipes for Beauty

Olive Oil Tips and Tricks

Cooking with Olive Oil

Recipes

Seasoned Oils, Aromatic Olive Oil

Curing Olives

Frying with Olive Oil

Preface

When I came to T UNISIA for the first time, I was instantly captivated by the majesty of its olive trees. How many thousand times have I yearned to sit under their shelter and feel their calm stillness? I simply could not satisfy my longings. With its olive green canopy, shining silver from below, the olive tree is emblematic of the Mediterranean landscape. Its magical beauty draws everyone who beholds it under its spell. Today, after living here for nearly twenty years, we have established a livelihood for ourselves and built our lives. Two children provide diversion, and the opportunities have become sadly few and far between when I can quietly enjoy the peacefulness of my olive trees. Yet I have not had to forsake my old love. For even in our private garden, we cannot bear to banish a single one of these old friends. And thus, every morning, the sun awakens me as its rays shine through their endless crowns…

My husband awakened a passion in me for this tree, for its fruit and its delicious and healthy oil. He was my teacher and I was able to benefit greatly from his knowledge. He has worked since childhood as a member of the third generation of his family in the olive oil business and now looks back upon 30 years of professional experience. His father, Djedidi Hassouna, was a pioneer in this industry, like my husband, with a clear vision for the future. In 1975 he installed the first modern oil press in TUNISIA, known as the continuous olive oil processing line. The first Flexitank in TUNISIA was installed in the Hassouna family oil mill and filled with extra virgin olive oil in 1996, and prepared for export.

Now my husband and I are ready for the next stage, as we now have realized a long-held dream and are managing our newly acquired 400-Hectare olive grove using strict organic farming practices. But that is not all! We believe that the future of our »Ksar Ezzit« olive grove lies in the past. So we have banned all modern vehicles, including lorries and tractors and automobiles, which must be left in a designated parking area outside the plantation. There, people who are interested in visiting the grove step into a horse-drawn carriage that is waiting for them. On our farm, horses, donkeys and camels manage the work that would otherwise be performed by tractors. No gasoline fumes spoil the clear mountain air; no motor oil pollutes the precious red earth. Here the olive trees prosper in harmony with nature. Our antique oil mill with granite blocks and a hydraulic press along with our modern oil mill with a continuous olive oil processing line guarantee the rapid and gentle preparation of the olives and make possible a transparent production process starting from harvest all the way to manufacturing the virgin olive oil. In this way, we can oversee and guarantee the organic origin of our oil down to the very last olive. In our museum devoted to the development of olive oil cultivation in TUNISIA, the guests can discover and compare how virgin olive oil was cultivated in different epochs and how it is produced today with the help of the most modern technology.

My husband has also been the source of inspiration for this book. Unfortunately, most European consumers are completely unaware that extra virgin olive oil is produced in TUNISIA and indeed, the very finest. There is no book, either in German, French or English that describes TUNISIA as an olive oil producing country in any depth or detail. Virgin olive oil from TUNISIA is virtually unknown to European consumers.

One cause for this is certainly the great failure in worldwide marketing on the part of the Tunisian authorities. In addition, since the launch of the Tunisian olive oil industry onto the international market in 1995, few brands have appeared that export extra virgin olive oil in bottles. Instead, 97 percent of Tunisian olive oil is exported in larger quantities (containers, Flexitanks or drums) and few international resellers risk labelling the place of origin of their products as TUNISIA. In addition, the sales strategies of Italian olive oil associations have been extraordinarily successful, so that most consumers immediately think of Italy when thinking about high quality olive oil. Even the newcomer olive oil products from California receive high praise, though from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective they play an insignificant role on the world market. American producers and suppliers cannot meet ever-increasing demand in their own country with California olive oil alone. They thus import olive oil by the ton each month from TUNISIA and from other traditional olive oil producing Mediterranean nations. The USA produces incomparably smaller quantities of olive oil, with 15 800 hectares in olive cultivation, than TUNISIA, which has 1 680 000 hectares. After the European Union, TUNISIA is the second largest olive oil exporting nation in the world.

In addition, as rated by professionals, virgin olive oil from TUNISIA ranks together with oil from Greece as the very finest virgin olive oil in the world. For this reason, Italian producers and wholesalers import it in large quantities as a means of improving the quality of their own olive oil by means of so-called »blending«.

I believe that the time has come for people who want to do something beneficial for their health and want to bring good taste into their kitchen to have a realiable source of information. With this book, let me awaken your curiosity about sun-drenched extra virgin olive oil from TUNISIA…

Viktoria Hassouna, TUNISIA, in June 2010

Because the designation «olive oil» is used not only to refer to the natural olive product but also − as described in detail in the chapter, «Classifications», − to refer to a blend of virgin and refined olive oils, I will consistently use the somewhat inconvenient but correct term, virgin olive oil. Many merchants have told me that due to this ambiguity in the language, clients encounter annoying misunderstandings. Anyone who is not aware of the distinction and reaches for «olive oil» in the store will inevitably be disappointed.

History and Tradition

Where does the Olive Tree come from?

From antiquity until the present day, for the past 6000 years, the olive tree has helped to shape the countries around the Mediterranean Sea. Its products have been used in everyday life in the most varied ways: table olives and olive oil as sources of nutrition and olive oil as a preservative for many foods. In addition, it was perfect for the care of floors (especially marble), leather and weaponry, and indispensable as lamp oil. Olive leaves and virgin olive oil were used as medication and also as a form of incense. Olive oil was an offering to the Gods and a funerary object as an accompaniment for the last great voyage of the dead.

The millennia-old olive tree has its origins in Asia Minor, in the eastern Mediterranean region. There, the remains of a wild olive tree have been discovered, which bore only the tiniest fruit but is considered to be the ancestor of the currently ubiquitous cultivated plant. This primitive variety grew in the enormous forests of Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Greece. A few of these thorny wild trees still grow there today as they did long ago. In Italy, fossilized olive leaves have been found that date back 6 million years. In North Africa as well, traces of olive trees have been unearthed that come from the Palaeolithic, or Old Stone Age. In France, or more precisely in Languedoc and Provence, discoveries have been made that are twenty thousand years old. Among other sites, the Aegean islands of Santorini and Nisyros are the sources of fossilized olive tree leaves that can be dated back fifty to sixty thousand years. According to palaeobotanists, these represent the leaves of wild olive trees.

In the ruins of Sbeitla, TUNISIA, the remains of a Roman oil mill bear witness to ancient times when the Romans produced olive oil at this site. The oil was placed on special boats in Sousse, from where it could be transported to Rome.

We still do not know precisely when and how the cultivated olive tree— the true olive tree, Olea europaea L. as it was christened by the renowned Swedish botanist, Carl von Linné (Linnaeus) (1707-1778)— arrived in the lands around the Mediterranean Sea. Even today, scholars disagree about the details of its dissemination and cultivation. There is general agreement, however, that the olive tree we know today stems from the plant Olea chrysophylla. At some time, thousands of years ago, the inhabitants of the Mediterranean region were no longer content to have only the haphazard, occasional wild fruit at their disposal for their nourishment. Perhaps, they were already manufacturing oil as well. Research has shown that 6000 years ago, people in the area that is now known as Syria and Palestine were already harvesting the fruit of the olive tree, whose oil was being used at the very least as a fuel for lamps and for skin care. Over time, the inhabitants of the Eastern Mediterranean began to wonder how they might organise the «production» of this fruit and most likely the production of its oil as well. They planted olive groves, and they began to improve the quality of the wild olive trees by means of different grafting techniques. After a long and fastidious cultivation process, the olive tree that we know today came into being. On the Greek island of Crete, we can still find the earliest traces of systematic cultivation of olive trees. But presumably these represented grafted trees that were brought to Greece from Asia Minor in the form of cuttings to be planted there.

The olive tree has its origins in the Eastern Mediterranean region. From there, it was disseminated around the Mediterranean area. This entire region offers an ideal climate for the growth of olive trees.

Ever since the 16th century BC, the Phoenicians propagated olive trees across the Greek islands, and between the 14th and 12th century BC across the entire Hellenic peninsula, where its cultivation became more and more widespread. But the planting of olive trees is an exhausting task, and agricultural techniques were still primitive at the time, so for a long time local olive production remained insufficient to meet demand in