Tasting olive oil on Zoom unexpectedly turned into a moist and richer apple cake

There are eight olive trees in the park opposite my son's school. Five are only two meters high, have lollipop trunks, and the branches stick out from their hands like fingers, or they have Einstein's hair on their heads. The other three are bigger. According to my inaccurate internal ruler, four or five meters, but only one branch is wide enough for children to sit or hang, which means that from time to time a child falls like a coconut. When they do, they rarely complain because they know they really shouldn't be there, although the nuns and gardeners who oversee the park never seem to be particularly upset.

I always admire their location. They hang from knotty branches, their heads are in narrow, tough leaves, one side is green, and the bottom is silver. This is especially true in autumn, where there are olives; a leaf-level seat, watch the green turn yellow, turn purple with white spots, then purple, and then reach black. They are indeed watching and often fill their pockets with treasure or ammunition. I have seen children who dare to bite each other and then spit in fright.

The olive tree, Olea europaea, can live for centuries and seems to be immortal. Margaret Visser pointed out in her article on olives about dinner, “If an olive tree is burned or felled, the roots will survive and can spontaneously emanate from the ovules in the underground roots. Suction cups, which means that new shoots will emerge miraculously. From the burned tree stump.” About 3,550 kilometers away from Rome, on a ridge east of the Old City of Jerusalem, called the Mount of Olives, there are eight trees there, and it is said that they have been there since the time of Christ. There is a garden at the foot of the mountain called Gethsemane Garden, which is derived from the oil press in Aramaic. The oil press turns a small berry or stone fruit, whose flesh is inedible and terribly bitter, into one of the most delicious oils on earth.

I have a good teacher on the olive issue. He is called Johnny Madge, and Johnny Madge has hundreds of good teachers all over the world in the form of olive oil producers. A world closed and open due to a global pandemic. At first, I resisted the idea of ​​sitting at my desk and sucking olive oil from my teeth on Zoom. Not only does this seem to be a far cry from my idea of ​​tasting olive oil, it is also frustrating. I was so wrong.

It turns out that the table lamp is a wonderful lamp in which you can sniff and suck the contents of the olive oil mini bar sent by Johnny, while Zoom is a surprisingly intimate and successful way to learn how to taste and What to look for (tomato vines, green bananas, artichokes, grass, almonds), how to find defects, the meaning of virginity and the true degree of cold pressing, about romance and reality, cost and how to best choose. There are too many to put in a column. That's why I haven't tried it. I ended up with the three words I always wanted to write: To be continued...

There is a recipe, of course. The apple and olive oil cake is made by the outstanding teacher and Tuscan chef Giulia Scarpaleggia. I will introduce her in detail next week, so please treat it as an olive oil homework.

4 apples ½ lemon juice 180 g soft brown sugar or caster sugar, plus 2 tablespoons of apple juice 4 eggs 120 ml extra virgin olive oil 150 g ricotta cheese 240 g flour 1 pinch of salt 8 g baking powder 2 tablespoons apricot jam

Heat the oven to 180C (160C fan)/350F/gas 4 and prepare a 26 cm round cake tin, which can be coated with butter, then sprinkled with flour, or spread with parchment paper.

Peel, core and quarter the apple, then cut each quarter into 2 mm thick slices. Put these in a bowl, then add lemon juice and two tablespoons of sugar.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs, then add olive oil, ricotta cheese, sugar, flour, salt and baking powder. Stir the apple slices into a batter, then scrape everything into the prepared jar.

Core and slice the remaining apples, then decorate the surface of the cake with the slices, arrange them into concentric circles, and work from the outside to the inside.

Bake in the middle of the oven for 45 minutes, or until the top is golden brown, the cake hardens, and the bunch of spaghetti inserted in the center is clean. Let it cool for 30 minutes and then remove it from the jar. Heat the apricot jam until it has a runny nose, then coat the cake with paint, cool and serve while it is hot or at room temperature.