Something good out of olives and lemon but how?

There have been same hustle and bustle among the olive trees in recent weeks and it seems to be continuing still. It is the time of harvesting, the green and dark olives are collected in baskets and sacks to be delivered to oil presses or to oil-producing factories as they maybe should be called nowadays. Croatia is a big producer of olive oil, though trees grow mostly only here on the Adriatic coast and on the islands, as well as on the Istrian peninsula up north. From here you can get some excellent quality oil on a world scale, in fact some Istrian oil just got a new award in some oil quality competition. I heard from somewhere that this year should be qualitatively quite good, only summer drought has left its mark and in some places olives are smaller than usual. There are differences between years in wine and also in oil.

Couple of weeks ago I got the opportunity to visit one small oil producing factory with our landlord, actually just few hundred meters from our home. I got to see how the olives were poured into a small silo from witch they went through the water wash and then to crushing machine that turned those little juicy balls into a thick mass. Finally as a result the greenish oil was separated from this mass and it was slowly running from the metal pipe. 

Olives or crushed pulp, however, were not pressed. Modern technology has slightly altered this ancient process, and nowadays more and more oil is produced by separating oil from a mass with a kind of centrifuge using centrifugal force. So the term cold-pressed olive oil in the label of the bottle in the market may be little misleading. Should it be maybe called cold-swirled, where can I suggest the new term?

Of course, there are also many traditional presses in operation, in witch crushed olives actually release the oil due to compression force. Certainly there are many who think that it is still the one and only way to make olive oil and surely these two methods of production will both continue exist also in the future. The main thing is that nothing is added to the pulp or oil when it is produced and only mechanical actions are been used instead of for example some chemical dissolution. As strange as it sounds, olive oil is one of the world's forged products. The demand for high quality oil exceeds supply and so the temptation to use some cheap tricks is increasing. For example, determining the origin of oil can be challenging, it is a completely different matter where olives have grown and the oil is made compared to where it is bottled. So be careful with the labels if it matters to you.

But lets go back to my visit. The olive growers of the neighborhood bring their olives to the oil mill as soon as possible, as the quality of the olives begins to deteriorate fairly quickly after they are picked. Around here in Podstrana the olive groves are generally quite small and there are no machines used in the harvest. Instead the families spend quality time together while harvesting olives. The amount of that quality time depends on the number of trees, some farmers have them enough to produce oil only for their own use and some have a few more so they can sell the oil also for others. In that case of course there may be a need for some extra workers in addition to those doing it just because of the same family name. But manual work it is. Sometimes the olive grower either don´t want or can not afford to pay for the oil mill. In that case they will leave some of the oil as payment in the spirit of a exchange economy. By selling this oil the mill will then make the money and people like me without our own olives will also be able to get fresh local oil for our kitchens. I also left the place with a five-liter jug.

Due to the high amount of chlorophyll, fresh high quality olive oil is greenish and has a strong scent of cutted grass. There is still a bit sharp, bitter taste that you can feel in the throat. This bitter throat feeling is due to oleocanthal, anti-flammatory antioxidant can be found in big doses in good fresh virgin olive oil. All in all, freshly made olive oil has the highest concentrations of good ingredients that will gradually deteriorate with storage. The green color begins to turn yellow as the chlorophyll becomes carotene and the oil's acids are also getting yellow over time. At the same time, the taste becomes softer and the bitterness disappears. To keep my oil better for longer time I also store it in green glass bottles that protect the oil from light better than the plastic jug I got it in. What a wonderful excuse to enjoy a few bottles of wine ...

Even though our own olive tree still did not give anything to harvest, our citrus tree did so. We have a hybrid tree that is mainly a lemon tree, but it has been associated with one tangerine branch. That part of the tree beared one gigantic mandarin that we ate with a hubby a while ago. It was really tasty, hopefully next year there would be more to pick from that branch.

The rest of the tree, the lemon compartment managed to produce four maturing fruits one of which we lost due to a storm earlier. But the three were spared, and now the first one had matured to be picked up. Yesterday I got that magical moment when I got to snap it off the tree. I have been quite childishly excited about this citrus tree and I have cared it with a lot of love. So it was absolutely wonderful to have the first self-grown yellow fruit in my hand, oozing with its exquisite smell that I just kept on sniffing.

But what would I do with the lemon? How would I use that precious treasure? After thinking about it, I ended up baking lemon buns, which contained a lemon-juice-flavored pudding inside a normal Finnish style bun dough. On top of them, I made the eyes of sugar, butter, grated lemon bark and a hint of fresh rosemary.

I have to say that at least to my taste they were just wonderful. So wonderful that I decided to give them away so I would not end up eating too many. So my landlady's family and my husband's co-workers were also able to enjoy these creations of my kitchen and seemed to be quite happy. Now I have to think about what am I doing with the remaining two lemons after they have matured...