We asked chefs and culinary professionals at our recent Harvest Retreat how they like to use extra virgin olive oil at home. We got some surprising – and creative – responses involving everything from ice cream to oatmeal to fresh vegetables to baked potatoes.

Here are some of them:

Put a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil in the bottom of a bowl. Top it with a nice scoop of good French vanilla ice cream.  Sprinkle a bit of coarse sea salt – the coarser the better – on top of the ice cream. Accompany it with a light wafer or cookie. You’ll “die” /be in heaven when you taste it! Robert Jaye, owner of Malibu Olive Co., Malibu, Calif.

I’ll pick green, red, jalapeno and banana peppers from my garden. I’ll slice all four and sauté them in extra virgin olive oil until tender. I’ll add a sliced pepperoncini from a jar along with a tablespoon or two of the juice near the end of cooking. You put that over a grilled pork chop. We call it sweet and sour pork. You get the sweetness of the fresh peppers and the olive oil and the sour of the pepperoncini and its juice. Ed Brylczyk, corporate chef, Dole & Bailey Inc., a Woburn, Mass.-based food company and distributor

I like steel-cut oats with extra virgin olive oil and some freshly grated Parmesan cheese. The cheese melts into the warm oats. I have it for breakfast. It’s also a good side dish.” Liz Tagami, president of Tagami International, an Ashland, Ore.-based firm which serves as a representative and consultant forspecialty food and wine companies.

I take a baked potato, put it in a bowl, mash it up, and douse it with extra virgin olive oil. I then top that with coarse sea salt, chopped chives, and freshly ground pepper. As you eat, add more extra virgin olive oil as needed. Robert Jaye, Malibu Olive Co.

I like to use extra virgin olive oil for everything at home, including sautéing. I do a quick sauté of zucchini in extra virgin olive oil. Add a diced tomato after extracting the tomato’s juice. Add chopped fresh basil to finish and maybe a shave or two of Parmesan. Ed Brylczyk, Dole & Bailey

I use it in place of butter. I roast in it. I poach in it, including salmon and shrimp. I use it for grilling to baste the meat – and a drizzle to finish the meat. Jeff Anderson, chef director of culinary innovation at Safeway Inc.

Even if the only thing you do with EVOO is drink it out of the bottle, we’d love to know about it.

Bon appétit,

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

Here’s another batch of suggestions for grilled dishes, sides and dessert you could make for a Labor Day picnic or other feast.

All use extra virgin olive oil. And, once again, we’ve tried to give you a wide selection – grilled meats and vegetables, as well as a sumptuous olive oil ice cream you could serve on its own or alongside a fruit pie. Let us know what you think.

1. Grilled skirt steak with chimichurri sauce
2. Grilled pork medallions and peaches
3. Asian-style grilling marinade
4. Chef Cindy Pawlcyn’s grilled goat cheese-stuffed peppers
5. Marinated baby mozzarella balls with cherry tomatoes
6. “Sunny” potato salad
7. David Lebovitz’s olive oil ice cream

Finally, here are more tips for grilling with EVOO, including celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse’s suggestion for squeezing lemons, limes and oranges over grilled dishes.

Enjoy your Labor Day meal!

Bon appétit,

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

My wife and I will probably head to a local park for a picnic to celebrate the upcoming Labor Day holiday.

Knowing that many of you will be hosting or attending Labor Day picnics, we thought it would be helpful to offer several options for grilled dishes and sides – and let’s not forget dessert – that you could prepare using extra virgin olive oil.

We’ve compiled loads of recipes and tips. I’m going to break them into two blogs. You can pick and choose.

The following seven dishes run the gamut – from meats and vegetables to watermelon salad and olive oil brownies. They’d provide a fresh twist for any Labor Day meal:

1. Steven Raichlen’s spit-roasted baby back ribs
2. “Only marinade you will ever need” for grilled meats, seafood and veggies
3. Steven Raichlen’s grilled sweet pepper salad
4. Watermelon salad dressed with EVOO
5. Green beans and fresh thyme salad
6. Chef Paul Bartolotta’s marinated carrots scented with mint
7. Olive oil chocolate brownies

You can also check out tips we’ve offered for grilling with EVOO, including using it as a basting liquid for chicken, Cornish hens or veggies.

I’ll post our second batch of Labor Day suggestions next Tuesday.

Bon appétit,

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

I’ve been doing a lot of grilling this summer at home.  We’ve grilled everything from salmon and chicken to flank steak, filet mignon and, of course, burgers.

The summer grilling season is in full swing with the approach of Labor Day. So we wanted to offer more grilling-related tips involving extra virgin olive oil.

We sought advice from grilling guru Steven Raichlen and Chef Patrick Dahms, as well as Food & Wine magazine. Here are five great ways to use EVOO to enhance your next turn at the grill:

1. “Put it (EVOO) in a spray bottle and use it for misting foods as they grill,” Raichlen told us. The  misted oil creates a nice glaze.

2. Celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse likes to squeeze lemons, limes and oranges over grilled meat, seafood and vegetables and then finish the dish with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, according to Food & Wine.

3. Raichlen – author of the best-selling Barbecue! Bible (Workman Publishing Co., 2008) – suggests tying together a bunch of fresh rosemary or thyme to make a brush for basting foods with EVOO as they grill. He does that for the spit-roasted baby back ribs pictured here, as well as a grilled leg of lamb we featured earlier this summer on our chefs blog.

4. Alternatively, Houston Chef Robert Del Grande told Food & Wine he likes to tie sprigs of fresh herbs directly on to a brush. It’s a trick his grandmother taught him.

5. Chef Patrick Dahms – executive chef at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel’s signature restaurant, Vela - gave us a delicious tip for grilled peaches. “Combine them with caramelized garlic and a touch of olive oil (to create) a nice chutney to go with your grilled pork chops.  In the end, it’s the olive oil that you fold into the chutney that makes the flavors pop!”

And while I admit I’m a salesman who advocates using plenty of EVOO, I also believe in safe grilling. In particular, you want to avoid flare-ups.

So I’ll leave you with this advice from Steven Raichlen:  “You never want to have something dripping with olive oil when you put it on the grill.”

Bon appétit,

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

We dreamed up a simple but delicious dish several years ago that combines three favorite ingredients: goat cheese, rosemary and extra virgin olive oil.

This freshly made goat cheese spread is a popular request around the house on special occasions, such as Father’s Day and Mother’s Day. But you can serve it any time. The goat cheese is excellent spread on a slice of crusty artisan bread. You can then top the bread with freshly grilled vegetables such as zucchini and sweet peppers.

To make the spread, let a 4-ounce log of goat cheese come to room temperature in a small bowl.  Using a fork, mix in 2 tablespoons or more of extra virgin olive oil. Add anywhere from half a teaspoon to 2 teaspoons of chopped fresh rosemary, and some freshly cracked pepper to taste. (For a change of pace, add some fresh lemon zest.) You then drizzle the mixed goat cheese with additional EVOO.

The feast pictured here – featuring the goat cheese spread, grilled vegetables and a freshly made artisan loaf – was prepared for Father’s Day and served on the deck. We used our Miller’s Blend extra virgin olive oil.

The stunning Italian round loaf featured in the photo is a Genzano Country Bread. It was created from Daniel Leader’s great bread making book, Local Breads.

You can find plenty of other delicious recipes using extra virgin olive oil on our Web site.

Bon appétit,

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

Summer has arrived. The sun is blazing and temperatures are rising here in California and across the nation. So many of us are starting to fire up our grills for outdoor cooking. I use my gas grill all the time, rain or shine. I do even more grilling in the summer, especially with the approach of the Fourth of July.

That’s gotten me to focus on the countless way you can use extra virgin olive oil with grilled foods. Use it as a chief ingredient in a marinade, for example. Or drizzle it over grilled vegetables like the eggplant pictured here. We drizzled them with our Arbosana extra virgin olive oil.

Here are more tips for using EVOO when grilling:

1.    Drizzled over grilled fish such as halibut or red snapper.
2.    Sprinkled over grilled slices of artisan bread.
3.    As a basting liquid for grilled Cornish hens or chicken.
4.    Combined with chopped garlic and freshly cracked pepper, then brushed on slices of eggplant placed on the grill (as pictured above).
5.    In a vinaigrette for tossing vegetables such as grilled zucchini and slices of fresh tomato and chopped parsley or basil.

We’ll have more tips to come and great grilling recipes. In the meantime, let us know your ideas.

Bon appétit,

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

Sam Fromartz is a top bread maker in the nation’s capital these days. I know this because Sam, a writer, food blogger and home baker, recently won a contest pitting him against professional bakers in Washington D.C. In a blind tasting, a panel of notable judges picked Sam’s sourdough baguettes as the winner.

Sam also shares our enthusiasm for extra virgin olive oil. He sent us this wonderfully simple tip for enjoying extra virgin olive oil:

“Get really good fleur de sel.  Get a good artisan bread. Cut a slice and drizzle it with extra virgin olive oil, then sprinkle  the salt on top. Coarse sea salt is best, crumbled with your fingers. This is superb, especially on freshly baked bread.”

I know Sam would want you to make the bread yourself. But you also can buy a good crusty loaf. (He passed along the recipe for the amazing sourdough bread pictured here.  We snapped this photo before diving into it for lunch last weekend, following his advice on topping it with salt and our Arbosana EVOO. The bread recipe, by the way, is courtesy of Wild Yeast blog and we plan to send our photo to its YeastSpotting section.)

Sam inspired us to offer more tips for using extra virgin olive oil:

1.    Drizzled on freshly sliced tomatoes and other vegetables.
2.    Poured on baked potatoes.
3.    Drizzled over popcorn.
4.    Combined with fresh asparagus that are then roasted in the oven and later sprinkled with salt, pepper and grated Parmesan
5.    And this from cookbook author Dorie Greenspan via Twitter – “Bowl of sugar snaps w evoo+mint+salt. Uber basic but good.”

Bon appétit,

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

My stepbrother in Baltimore inspired me to write about extra virgin olive oil and breakfast. Tom grew up outside Detroit, near where I lived with my parents, my sister and brother many years ago.

Fast-forward a few decades. These days Tom enjoys a bowl of oatmeal with brown sugar in the morning. He’s a good cook. And Tom loves to experiment in the kitchen. On a whim, he recently drizzled extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) over his oatmeal and brown sugar. He loved it!

Here are other healthy ways to enjoy extra virgin olive oil with your breakfast:

1. Use it to fry eggs. (You also can top the eggs with a Spanish-inspired Romesco sauce.)
2. Use it to scramble eggs.
3. Drizzle it on toast – instead of using butter.
4. Drizzle it on an omelet that’s been cooked in olive oil.
5. Mix it into pancakes or waffles as a substitute for butter. (Cookbook author Fran Gage, whose recipes we’ve featured, suggests substituting three-quarters of the amount of butter called for in a waffle or pancake recipe with olive oil. So a recipe calling for a stick of butter, or 8 TB, would use 6 TB of olive oil.)

Tell us your ideas.

Bon appétit,

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

Here at California Olive Ranch we keep running across more ways to enjoy fresh extra virgin olive oil. Our latest “Top 5 List” follows:

1. Drizzled over a pizza pulled hot from the oven
2. Drizzled into soup
3. Drizzled over grilled fish
4. Drizzled over toasted or broiled country bread that’s been rubbed with a raw garlic clove. Finish with freshly cracked pepper.
5. Tossed with fresh greens, a little lemon juice and some coarse sea salt

Thanks to our friend Joanne in Colorado for e-mailing us the photo of her crusty home-made pizza, topped with roasted tomato sauce and caramelized onions. She’s finishing it with one of our extra virgin olive oils (EVOO).

And, of course, we’d love to hear from you about ways you use extra virgin olive oil. Feel free to post them in a comment below.

Bon appétit,

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

We love dipping crusty baguette slices into extra virgin olive oil. Here are several more ways we like to use extra virgin olive oil to boost the flavor of some of our favorite foods:

1. Tossed with pasta and freshly cracked pepper
2. Mixed into a vinaigrette
3. Poured into a small bowl with coarse sea salt and freshly cracked pepper for dipping fresh vegetables
4. Drizzled over roasted vegetables such as asparagus, carrots, beets or winter squash
5. Drizzled over fresh mozzarella

We’ve also found good books that offer plenty of ideas.

Try Zingerman’s Guide to Good Eating, by Ari Weinzweig; and Olive Oil: From Tree to Table, by Peggy Knickerbocker.

Stay tuned for more quick tips.

Bon appétit,

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