La Oliva

Prepare for what might be my best post of all time!
       On Friday, we went to La Oliva, a store in Granada that specializes in selling specialty olive oils, wines, cheeses, etc. They also hold taste testings...so guess what we did? As soon as we walked in, the store smelled heavenly so I knew this was a special tertulia (a meeting with an intellectual theme). Our teacher for the day was Francisco Leo, the store owner who had grown up in Cordoba on a olive tree farm. His family had been making olive oils for years, so he took his passion to Granada and opened up this store. He started the visit by explained how olive oil is made--he said "the only factory of olive oil is nature. We just separate the natural oil from the olive." He was obviously very passionate about olives--I knew we were going to get along juuuuust fine.
       Our first introduction to the olive oil was a tasting 3 different types- one from Granada, one from Cordoba, and one from Huelva. It's about to be sound like Goldilocks in this post: The Granada one was very mild and left something to be desired because the flavor was a bit weak.. The Cordoba one was SO strong! It had almost a bitter aftertaste, so I didn't really care for it. The Huelva one was perfect. It had a distinct olive taste without being too overpowering. We tried all these oils with delicious whole wheat rolls that had a soft middle and a crunchy exterior.
       Our next tasting was of gazpacho. Francisco told of the story (or legend) of how gazpacho was created. A woman in a small town in southern Spain was about to prepare lunch for her husband. He had been working in the field all morning, and she knew that under the summer sun, the heat was unbearable. Thus, she wanted to make something filling but also refreshing for her husband. What resulted was what we know as gazpacho. It has garlic, salt, bell peppers (red in this case, but green are more common), tomatoes, vinegar, and the Huelva oil (by popular vote). He blended all these incredibly fresh ingredients and  then put them through a sieve to have a smooth texture. It is served chilled or room temperature. It was a light orangey-red color and we each got a small glass of it. It was amazing--it just tasted so fresh and really had a light salty and olive oil flavor. It would have probably been delicious on a salad because it had such a light flavor, but we drank it and dipped our bread into it.
        Francisco then gave us tostadas (crustini) and sliced cherry tomatoes so that we could rub the open side of the tomato on the tostada. This is a very common tapa/ breakfast food (tostada con tomate) and he also drizzled a bit of olive oil infused with albahaca (basil) on top of the tostada. It was, of course, incredible. I was so excited to taste the infused olive oils because they have such cool flavor accents. Next came a tosada with an avocado and lemon spread. It was incredibly fresh tasting and reminded me of summer because it was so light. After that, we had a wedge of romaine lettuce with a sweet balsamic vinegar and...are you ready for this?...fried garlic infused olive oil. It was, as you can imagine, to die for.  I definitely want to try something like that when I get home with roasted garlic. It had a strong garlicky flavor, but wasn't too overpowering.
       If you thought we were done, you were wrong. Our next course was a tomato slice with a goat cheese wedge, drizzled with basil infused olive oil. Where do I begin? The tomato was great but the goat cheese. Oh my goodness. It was salty and rich and also not too strong. I usually don't like goat cheese at all, but this one was awesome. Next we had a lettuce leaf topped with a cured (in olive oil) slice of pork. SO GOOD. It had the distinct taste of olive oil but also maintained the flavor of the meat.
     And finally, came dessert. For dessert we had La Perla brand dark chocolate gelato...with a drizzle of orange infused olive oil and a dash of coarse salt on top. Now, I usually don't like chocolate ice cream (shocker, I know), but this...this was a deep, dark, rich chocolate that was accented perfectly with the orange olive oil. The salt gave it an extra kick of flavor because it brought out the sweetness of the gelato. It was heaven on earth. Franciso also brought out traditional Semana Santa (Holy Week) pastries that were fried dough pastries. They were good, but we were all so full from everything else that we only tasted them.
       Afterwards, we asked Francisco if we would be able to come back for another tasting, etc. He told us to email him and we could set up a  mini cooking lesson with him and basically spend the day tasting different things and learning recipes. I plan to take him up on that offer, when I do, I'll be sure to let you know! I need to start writing down recipes so that when I go back home, I can replicate dishes!