Here’s a look at the healthful and culinary properties of monos.

Olive oil is among the foods high in monounsaturated fats. Avocados, nuts such as almonds, hazelnuts, and pecans, and seeds such as pumpkin and sesame seeds also contain high concentrations.

Monos and polys are “good,” says the Harvard School of Public Health, because they can improve your cholesterol, ease inflammation, stabilize heart rhythms, and “play a number of other beneficial roles.”

Despite those similarities, monos and polys aren’t identical twins. They have a different chemical makeup, for example — a fact that carries implications in the kitchen such as when frying with oils like extra virgin olive oil.

Monounsaturated fats have one double-bonded carbon in the molecule. By contrast, polyunsaturated fats — found in sunflower, corn, soybean, and flaxseed oils — have more than one double-bonded carbon. That chemical structure makes sunflower, corn, soybean, and flaxseed oils less stable during cooking, according to experts.

“The greater the number of double bonds in the fat’s fatty acids, the less stable the oil is. It’s more easily broken down by heat, light, and so on,” says Kathy McManus, director of the department of nutrition at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

The “smoke point” at which a good EVOO begins to break down is about 410 degrees Fahrenheit, making it suitable for sautéing, roasting, frying and even deep frying.

Monounsaturated fats also carry certain health-promoting properties, according to health experts.

They can lower the level of bad cholesterol in your blood and lower your risk of heart disease and stroke, according to the American Heart Association.

The group also says monounsaturated fats “provide nutrients to help develop and maintain your body’s cells,” adding that these fats are “typically high in vitamin E, an antioxidant vitamin most Americans need more of.”

Another interesting note: Health experts say you can consume monounsaturated fats in higher quantities than polyunsaturated fats. “You can have them in higher amounts,” Walter Willett, chair of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health, says of monounsatured fats.

Willett tells us people can get up to 30% of their calories from monos — a level he says is on par with the traditional Greek diet. He adds that people should get no more than 10% of their calories from polyunsaturated fats, noting that animal studies have found a high intake of polys can promote tumor growth.

The key here, says Willett, is balance. “You don’t want all of one or all of the other.”

The Cleveland Clinic notes that while polyunsaturated fats can lower both your total and bad LDL cholesterol, they “have the potential to also lower HDL (good cholesterol) levels when consumed in large amounts. That is why they should be consumed to no more than 10% of total calories each day.”

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

Tests conducted at two respected laboratories revealed that 69% of the imported oils labeled extra virgin failed to meet taste, smell and chemical standards established by the International Olive Council (IOC) and the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. Only one of the 10 California-made olive oils labeled extra virgin failed to meet the standards.

The defective oils included many leading and private label brands. They were bought at supermarkets and big box retailers in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sacramento.

“The oils that failed our tests had defects such as rancidity and many of these oils did not taste good,” said Dan Flynn, executive director of the Olive Center at the University of California, Davis. “Before this study, we had anecdotal reports of poor quality olive oil being sold as extra virgin but now we have empirical proof.”

Full disclosure: California Olive Ranch helped fund the study. But we had no influence on the methodology, brand selection, or outcome.

The study was conducted jointly by the UC Davis Olive Oil Chemistry Laboratory and the Australian Oils Research Laboratory, a government research center and certified IOC testing laboratory.

Our Everyday California Fresh EVOO was among the brands tested. The study confirmed our Fresh EVOO complied fully with the IOC and USDA’s standards for extra virgin olive oil, as well as stricter standards established by the California Olive Oil Council (COOC).

All three sets of standards stipulate that olive oil labeled extra virgin can’t have any “defects.” The imported oils that failed to meet the international standards were found to be too old, of poor quality, and adulterated with cheaper, refined olive oil. The defective California oil didn’t pass taste and aroma standards created by the IOC and USDA.

For the study, researchers bought 52 samples of 14 readily available imported brands and 5 California brands of olive oil sold under extra virgin olive oil labels.

The oils were divided and analyzed by the California and Australian researchers. They tested the oils for their taste, aroma and chemical makeup.

We like to tell people our oil is significantly better and fresher than mass-produced oils imported into the United States from overseas.

For starters, the olives are grown in California’s unique “terroir” and pressed at our state-of-the-art mills here. Our oil doesn’t sit on a cargo ship for several weeks, journeying across the ocean.

Working closely with our skilled “ranchers,” we’re very careful about choosing the optimal time to harvest the olives in the fall. Our employees then get the olives from tree to mill quickly.

How? We plant our trees using a system known as “super high-density plantings.” It allows us to grow the trees in hedge rows of 570 to 670 trees per acre, versus traditional plantings of 100 to 150 per acre.

That way, employees driving our harvesting machines can harvest the trees more rapidly – and deliver the olives within hours to our mills, where they’re crushed into EVOO. It’s this speed which prevents the olive from decomposing before we extract the oil.

Part of the reason bogus EVOO can be sold in this country is because there are no federal standards governing quality. The USDA recently adopted standards meant to ensure the bottle of extra virgin olive oil you buy at the store is genuine and not some fake EVOO.

The new federal standards, however, are voluntary. They go into effect this fall.

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

Strickland is an executive chef for Vi, the upscale senior living center chain formerly known as Classic Residence by Hyatt. Strickland heads the kitchen at the Vi in Highlands Ranch, Colo.

Poaching in EVOO “gives the fish a silky texture,” says Strickland. “The fruity flavor of the olive oil permeates the fish but does not overwhelm it.”

But what happens to the fish if you increase the temperature of the EVOO too quickly during the poaching process?

“You lose some of that silky texture and it become firmer,” says Strickland, a certified dietary manager who must always be attentive to the dietary needs of his senior clientele.

Strickland agreed to share his recipe for olive oil-poached halibut, which he serves with Yukon Gold potatoes and lemon-grilled asparagus.

In a small pan, Strickland covers the halibut with EVOO. Before turning on the heat, he lets the halibut marinate for at least 20 minutes in the oil. You can add aromatics to the oil, if you want.

After seasoning the halibut with salt pepper, Strickland returns the fish to the pan and slowly raises the temperature of the oil until it reaches 175 degrees Fahrenheit.

Poach the fish at that temperature until it is “soft,” usually about 20-25 minutes, says Strickland. Carefully remove the halibut from the oil and pat it dry for serving.

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

Each dish has its own special feature: from the use of smoked EVOO to the use of the “sous-vide” cooking technique, in which the meat is put in an air-tight bag and cooked at a low temperature – often in hot water that’s well below boiling.

Trey Foshee’s Arbequina Poached Chicken “Saltimbocca”

Trey Foshee, chef-owner of the La Jolla restaurant, Georges at the Cove, places the individual chicken breasts in sous-vide packets, along with a healthy dollop of our Arbequina EVOO. He then places the packets in a steam oven and cooks them at 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Afterward, he tops each breast with chopped prosciutto that was dried and crisped in the oven for a couple of hours. I’ve had this dish, pictured above, and the chicken is incredibly succulent.

Patrick Dahms’ Olive-Oil Poached Tuna Crudo

Patrick Dahms – executive chef at the  Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel’s signature restaurant, Vela – prepares an olive oil-poached tuna accompanied by cannellini beans and a lemon salad. The extra virgin olive oil is heated to 165 degrees and left to sit for 15 minutes. The tuna is then poached in the EVOO for four to five minutes, until the inside is rare to medium rare. It’s a stunning dish, as you can see from the photo.

Seamus Mullen’s Sardines Lightly Poached in Smoked Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Seamus Mullen — who co-owns and heads the kitchen at two widely acclaimed Spanish restaurants in New York — demonstrated this dish at a culinary conference last year. He first smokes the EVOO over apple wood chips in a covered grill.  He later poaches the sardines by first heating the smoked EVOO to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The sardines are poached in the oil until they are just cooked through, about three minutes.

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

Here’s a look at our practices:

Reduced Water Use

We use half the water per acre that other orchard crops require. How? We use drip irrigation to water our trees. That means less water is lost to evaporation. Also, the “super high density (SHD) system” we use to plant our trees means we use less water, because our trees are planted closer together than trees in traditional olive groves.

Reduced Waste

One hundred percent of our olive harvest waste is recycled.

Here’s how we handle the byproducts of our extra virgin olive oil:

• The waste water is filtered and then used on our ranches for irrigation
• The leftover olive fruit and pits, or pomace, are sold to cattle stockyards as cattle feed.

We also recycle all our tree trimmings. They’re mulched back into the soil on our ranches.

As a result, no waste is ever sent to a landfill.

Efficient Farming and Reduced Fertilizer Use

Very little of our land is “wasted.”

Our SHD growing process allows us to use the land more efficiently. We plant our semi-dwarf olive trees 575 to 670 trees per acre. That’s well below the traditional method of 100 to 150 trees per acre.

In addition to high yields per acre, the SHD method of olive cultivation requires much less fertilizer. Similarly, we “stress” our trees – much like vineyard operators do for wine grapes – to boost our oil output. That, too, means we can apply less fertilizer.

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

Ford is a seafood guru, having previously worked as the executive chef for Bon Appétit Management Co. at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. He said fish is perfect for poaching in a high-quality extra virgin olive oil.

“Fish is mild and it’s fairly neutral in its flavor. So it’s going to take on the flavor characteristics of the olive oil,” says Ford, a leader in the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program which promotes the use of sustainable seafood.

Asked to name good candidates for EVOO poaching, Ford suggested lobster, halibut, salmon, California Albacore tuna, and Pacific white sea bass. His rule of thumb: “If you’ve poached it in butter, you can poach it in olive oil.” (You can also check out this recipe for poaching octopus from New York Times food writer Mark Bittman.)

To begin, Ford suggests heating the olive oil to about 200 degrees Fahrenheit, “give or take.”

“You really don’t want your oil too hot,” he said. He also suggests letting the fish “warm up” at room temperature for about an hour beforehand. That way, the temperature of the oil won’t drop sharply when you add the fish. The fish should be entirely submerged in the oil.

When is the fish done? “When it’s firm,” Ford said.

The chef then gave us a rundown on a poaching method he particularly likes. Ford adds sprigs of thyme, aromatics such as garlic, and lemon peels to the oil. He puts a covered cooking vessel, such as a pot or a large pan, in a 200 degree oven and allows the oil to heat to that level.

Ford then adds the fish, cooking it until the flesh is firm to the touch. The pot should be covered while it’s in the oven.

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

The U.S. Department of Agriculture last week issued new standards that will govern the different grades of olive oil sold in this country, including extra virgin. The new standards, which run more than 20 pages, were 5-1/2 years in the making. They replace outdated ones in place since 1948.

The USDA said the standards will “provide consumers more assurance of the quality of olive oil that they purchase.”

The California Olive Oil Council, the trade group which sought the overhaul, called it “an historic achievement for consumers, retailers and the entire California olive oil industry.”

We certainly hope so.

The new U.S. standards for EVOO take effect Oct. 24. They’ll match the international standard set by the International Olive Council (IOC).  There’s been no such EVOO standard here up to now.

That has meant olive oil producers overseas could unload “extra virgin olive oil” in this country that in fact did not meet IOC standards. This was particularly the case with certain “supermarket” oils.

A wonderful article in The New Yorker recounted how U.S. marshals in 2006 seized 61,000  liters (16,000 gallons) of what was purportedly EVOO and 26,000 liters (6,900 gallons) of a lower-grade olive oil from a New Jersey warehouse.

Some of the oil, in fact, “consisted almost entirely of soybean oil,” according to the article.

“My experience over a period of some fifty years suggests that we can always expect adulteration and mislabeling of olive-oil products in the absence of surveillance by official sources,” David Firestone, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration chemist who was the agency’s olive-oil specialist from the mid-sixties to 1999, told The New Yorker.

Let’s hope the new standards change that situation.

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

I’ve fielded such questions upwards of 200 times over the past couple of years. I hear them from customers, chefs, friends — even family members.

Basically, filtering involves putting the oil through a thick layer of cotton to trap any tiny particles of olive fruit that may be in the oil.

We don’t filter our EVOO. We remove those fruit particles with the help of Mother Nature, namely gravity.

Here’s how. Initially, we wash the olives before we crush them. After crushing, the resulting olive paste is sent to high-speed centrifuges where the oil is separated from fruit particles and water.

As a general rule, the remaining fruit particles – similar to pulp in orange juice – can really enhance the taste and flavor of the EVOO. The fruit particles contribute to what makes our limited-release Olio Nuovo EVOO taste so fantastic. But over time those same fruit particles will eventually ferment.

That’s why our Olio Nuovo is dated on the bottle to be consumed quickly.

By contrast, we need to remove the remaining fruit particles in our other oils that require a longer shelf life. Larger producers from Europe do this by filtering the oil. We don’t typically do that.

We pump the oil into large storage tanks housed inside a temperature-controlled room. (The exception is our Olio Nuovo, which we bottle immediately.) Inside the tank, the oil is allowed to settle for two to three months so Mother Nature can “suck” any remaining fruit particles to the bottom. This process is called “racking.”

During racking we move the oil from tank to tank about every month to remove the sediment and clean the tank. The racking process typically is completed in late January, which allows our new oil to ship by Feb. 1st or so.

The most noticeable difference between an unfiltered and a filtered EVOO is appearance. The unfiltered oil may appear a bit cloudy, owing to residual fruit particles that weren’t removed through gravity in the settlement tank. Once an oil has been fully racked, however, the lower concentration of remaining fruit particles no longer has an adverse effect on the oil’s lifespan or quality.

Which tastes better – an unfiltered oil, or a filtered one? Some people say filtering has little effect on taste. Others argue the residual fruit particles in an unfiltered EVOO generate added flavor.

Like many things, it’s probably more a matter of personal taste.

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

A high-quality EVOO is quite resistant to heat. The “smoke point” at which a good EVOO begins to break down is about 410 degrees Fahrenheit, making it suitable for sautéing, roasting, frying and even deep frying.

Food science professors from the University of Bologna in Italy recently published an article entitled “The scientific truth on cooking with extra virgin olive oil.” The article goes into the chemistry of EVOO and concludes that “using extra virgin olive oils to cook is an excellent choice, both for the taste and for health” — provided you use a “high-quality, fresh” EVOO.

Here why EVOO’s chemistry makes it an excellent choice for cooking.

Olive oil is high in healthful monounsaturated fats. Chemically speaking, these are fats that have one double-bonded carbon in the molecule. By contrast, polyunsaturated fats — found in sunflower, corn, soybean, and flaxseed oils — have more than one double-bonded carbon. That makes these oils less stable, according to experts.

“The greater the number of double bonds in the fat’s fatty acids, the less stable the oil is. It’s more easily broken down by heat, light, and so on,” says Kathy McManus, director of the department of nutrition at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Nutritionist Connie Guttersen also notes the antioxidants that come from the tocopherols and the polyphenolics in EVOO “contribute to the stability of the oil” as well as its “health promoting qualities.”

“Scientific studies suggest that a significant amount of the polyphenolics are heat stable and transferred to the food you are cooking,” including when you’re frying, adds Guttersen, an adjunct faculty member at the Culinary Institute of America’s campus in Napa Valley and author of The  Sonoma Diet (Meredith Books, 2005).

Polyphenols, by the way, are the chemical substances found in plants that may reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer. They’re natural antioxidants that fight against oxidation, and the oil’s breakdown.

And because it’s unrefined, says McManus, “extra virgin olive oil has the most polyphenols.”

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

© 2009 Oldways Preservation & Exchange Trust www.oldwayspt.org

The new version, pictured here, combines the original pyramid with the latest health and scientific studies.

Here are the key changes, according to Oldways, the Boston food think tank that was among the groups behind the launch of the original pyramid:

1. All plant foods – fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, legumes, seeds, olives, and olive oil – were combined in a single group and placed at the base. The change was meant to signal these foods “should be the basis of most meals.”
2. The recommended consumption of fish and shellfish was increased to two times a week, “indicating their multiple contributions to brain and reproductive organ health.”
3. Herbs and spices were added to reflect “increased evidence of their health-promoting properties” and their role in making foods taste better.

The pyramid also emphasizes the importance of physical activity and how you should enjoy meals in the company of family and friends.

The Mediterranean diet first came under the spotlight in 1993. That’s when Oldways, the Harvard School of Public Health, and the European Office of the World Health Organization unveiled the “classic” Mediterranean diet and the original pyramid. (The Harvard School of Public Health has issued its own “Healthy Eating Pyramid,” which I featured in a blog last week.)

Kathy McManus, director of the department of nutrition at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, noted the “center of the plate” in the Mediterranean diet revolves around plant-based foods. She was speaking at a recent healthy eating and living conference we attended in northern California,  co-sponsored by the Culinary Institute of America and the Osher Research Center at Harvard Medical School.

McManus  gave a rundown of the diet’s overall healthful properties:

• Low consumption of red meat
• Daily use of olive oil
• Regular consumption of fish
• “Abundant intake” of plant foods, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains and nuts
• And wine in moderation

McManus noted “moderation is key” when it comes to eating healthful foods. “Savor it and enjoy it,” she said. “But don’t abuse it by piling up the plate.”

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch