Olive Oil Quotes

“I like cooking pasta. Maybe it's that I always wanted to be Italian American in some dark part of my soul; maybe I get off on that final squirt of emulsifying extra virgin, just after the basil goes in, I don't know.”
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“Enjoying the view?” I asked, finally, tired of his eyes drilling into the side of my head.
“Enjoying isn’t the right word,” he returned, swirling his amaretto. “It’s more a morbid fascination with your spiral into self-destruction.”
― Abigail C. Edwards, And We All Bled Oil

“He swirled his drink and stared off into the crowd, terribly satisfied. “Have you ever seen a face so weirdly symmetrical? Put our man Luca Catenacci on a poster for…Sicilian cologne. Those genes? With the whole Vitelli-Marzano thing you’ve got going?” He issued a low whistle. “Unstoppable.”
― Abigail C. Edwards, And We All Bled Oil

“I thought about the fruit of ancient tradition, oil like blood, and suddenly I realized that if olive oil was sacred, then this was sacrilegious.”
― Abigail C. Edwards, And We All Bled Oil

“The scent of the spicy squid is almost too much to handle!"
First we start with bite-size chunks of squid sautéed in some olive oil and squid ink...
Once the flavors have fully melded together, in goes a generous splash of white wine to flambé them!
Then some cabbage and onion for sweetness! Tomatoes for a little zing!
And finally... the secret ingredient!
"What the heck? Look at that giant needle!"
"You're not going to use that on the food, are you?!"
We convinced a local restaurant to let us have their huge pile of leftover shrimp heads and seafood shells. By boiling it all down, we infuse all their savory umami goodness and richness into olive oil...
... making a big batch of Hayama's special red olive oil! Using a cooking injector, we inject a dose right into the yolk of a soft-boiled egg, aaand...
PLOOP”
― Yuto Tsukuda, 食戟のソーマ 32 [Shokugeki no Souma 32]

“God uses pressure, pain and difficulties to prepare us for Greater Things. Just like pressure is used to squeeze out oil from the olives, and pressure shapes diamonds, and fire refines gold. Just as the potter uses heat to shape clay into the form and shape He wants it to be, God does the same with us, to bring out our inner treasures and to make us use our potential to the fullest. God is not sending you difficult situations to hurt you; He is doing so to strengthen you, make you grow and to prepare you for your Destiny and Greatness.”
― Jeanette Coron, Destined for Greatness

“Tonio had disappeared again into the kitchen—I heard him banging around some dishes. He had this habit of making a huge dish once or twice a week, then freezing it and eating the same thing for every meal until it was gone. Except for breakfasts, which were usually composed of a cappuccino and heaping spoonfuls of Nutella on saltine crackers. As someone who had a lot of feelings about food, I found it a fairly scandalizing arrangement, but I figured it would be just as upsetting if witnessed by the average person.”
― Abigail C. Edwards, And We All Bled Oil

“Hey, I didn’t realize you had more than one friend. Brava, brava, bravissima.”
“Eat your heart out, Tonio.”
― Abigail C. Edwards, And We All Bled Oil

“Romance, I thought, was a poor replacement for freedom.”
― Abigail C. Edwards, And We All Bled Oil

“No offense,” said Tonio, in a way that suggested he hoped we took full offense, “but you two are the last people I’d accept lifestyle advice from.”
― Abigail C. Edwards, And We All Bled Oil

“Blood and oil. It’s on both our hands.”
― Abigail C. Edwards, And We All Bled Oil

“Spaniards seem not to recognize such a thing as a light diet. They give the same food to sick people as to well ones — always the same rich, greasy cookery, with everything sodden in olive oil.”
― George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia

“The soup was delicious in the way that very simple things can be. There was no seasoning except for salt: a house like this could never afford pepper. But the olive oil in which Velia had fried the onions and garlic, and drizzled over the finished soup, was peppery enough: spiky and throat-catching, it prickled my mouth, balancing the bitter chicory and the bland crusts of bread. And there was dry cheese to grate into it, good salty pecorino with an earthy whiff of the cave where it had been aged. I savored it for a long time, because I had never tasted it before- I'd never tasted any of these things. The oil was different from our Tuscan oil; thicker, somehow, and more flowery; and the cheese tasted the way the air smelled outside in the valley.”
― Philip Kazan, Appetite

“So brisk! I can feel the fresh Mediterranean breeze... gently rustling the leaves of the lemon trees.
I've had semifreddo desserts many times in my life. But this is unlike anything I've tasted before! And I know the taste of true Italian limoncello.
Where on earth did this intense lemony flavor come from?! Is it that fourth layer? What is it?!"
"That layer...
... is lemon curd."
"Lemon curd?"
"Lemon card?"
"It isn't curd like curds of milk. It's a dessert spread made with citrus fruits."
LEMON CURD
A fruit spread originating in Britain, it was intended as an alternative to jams. Egg yolks, sugar, fruit juice and zest are mixed together with a blender and then cooked into a paste and chilled. A centuries-old, traditional dessert, there is even a royal version called Royal Curd.
"That vibrant, citrusy tang of the curd has a fresh, refined aroma. Its smoothness combined with the satiny-soft Genoese cake melts in the mouth! What a light and downy texture. It touches the tongue like a feather! The grainy Biscuit Joconde could never be this soft!"
"He turned it around! The Genoese cake was supposed to be a liability... but he turned it into an advantage by making it part of an elegant, mature taste experience!"
"A British fruit spread, eh? And he put that together right on the spot?"
"I'm shocked he had the ingredients."
"Fruit curds don't need many ingredients. They use egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest... and butter."
"Butter? I thought you barely had a scrap of butter left."
"I substituted the butter with this."
"Olive oil?!"
"Oho! Is that even possible?"
"He must certainly know all about it, having grown up in Italy!"
"I handicapped myself by choosing Genoese for the sponge cake style. It doesn't have nearly the punch the almondy Biscuit Joconde has. So I turned to the citrusy flavor instead.”
― Yuto Tsukuda, 食戟のソーマ 10 [Shokugeki no Souma 10]

“ Kusunoki left both ingredients as is, wrapping the salmon in the bacon and delicately heating both to elegant perfection.
Using the same concept behind the ramen staple seafood-pork broth, melding the umami of both fish and meat together created a powerfully savory flavor.
The olive oil bath he used to prevent even a drop of the fish's juices from escaping was also an excellent touch.
In the end, his dish was the picture of a salmon's savory deliciousness, perfectly recreated on the plate. ”
― Yuto Tsukuda, 食戟のソーマ 19 [Shokugeki no Souma 19]

“We’re cynical because we know the world. If we were optimists, we’d also be idiots.”
― Abigail C. Edwards, And We All Bled Oil

“Innocence and idiocy aren’t the same thing. Sometimes it’s brave. Sometimes it’s just how a person is.”
“So, ‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars’?” I raised an eyebrow; he elaborated. “Oscar Wilde.”
I liked that. “It’s not wrong to look at the stars.” But it also wasn’t some failing of will or fall from grace that kept my eyes fixed to the ground. I’d just been down here in the gutter long enough to know to watch my step.”
― Abigail C. Edwards, And We All Bled Oil

“What would you do for your family?” Savino asks. “How far would you go?”
Because he’s done more. He’s spilled oil and blood for this family, and sometimes I wonder if they aren’t the same thing.”
― Abigail C. Edwards, And We All Bled Oil

“Lorel once told me that fate is a poet, organizing beauty out of chaos. I believed that for a long time—that life happens to a person, buoying them along on its tide whichever way it pleases, instead of bending and shaping itself around my will. And even now I’m not sure that I can entirely discard the idea, because God knows my life has spiraled into gothic prose, and even in the depths of my insanity I could not have thought up the repeating rhythms of horrible motif. Blood as oil, oil as sacred chrism, the suffocating paradox of its sacred and sensual nature, and can oil really run in a person’s blood? Because when I think of one, I think of the other—they are inseparable in my mind. When I think of the times I dipped my fingers in green-gold oil, memory calls forth the image of blood on a warehouse floor, and blood mixed with oil in the creases of my hands.”
― Abigail C. Edwards, And We All Bled Oil

“Massimo’s a grenade,” she said. “You throw it. Then you run.”
― Abigail C. Edwards, And We All Bled Oil

“He had the sleeves rolled up on his bathrobe, and it was a fairly jarring, chaotic picture he painted, yet somehow he made it seem lazily elegant. Like a sculptor shaping a lump of clay with muddy hands, like feeling along the edges of rolled-out pastry dough to check its thickness, or scoring a flour-dusted bâtard—something weirdly bold and confident about it. The seductive art of Nutella, as taught by one Tonio Salone. Unnerving.”
― Abigail C. Edwards, And We All Bled Oil

“You’re a Marzano, that’s enough. You are testament to a union made decades ago, between Vitellis in Brooklyn and Marzanos in Sicily. For over twenty years, we’ve done what we could to keep that tie strong. We’ve made sacrifices.” The fire popped behind him, but he didn’t flinch. “What would you do for your family, Pia?”
― Abigail C. Edwards, And We All Bled Oil

“I thought about olive oil, about the sacred depravity. I thought about how oil meant power, and how Savino Vitelli was testament to that—he was untouchable, ancient, godlike, and olive oil had made him that way, much as it had made Odysseus something more than a mere mortal. It elevated.
And I wondered, if I let it, if olive oil would do the same for me.”
― Abigail C. Edwards, And We All Bled Oil

“Pia, look, I’ve always known something was going on, but you don’t ask these questions—it’s a family thing, alright? I don’t keep up with what my little brother does. It’s just how our family works, it’s like how the Rondolfos down the street do palm-reading stuff in town by the dry-cleaner’s, you know the Rondolfos? Every family has stuff like that, that’s how it is, just go with it because they aren’t hurting anyone. Hey, it isn’t drugs—it could be drugs, but it isn’t.”
― Abigail C. Edwards, And We All Bled Oil

“The smoke was heavy in the frigid air. Bitter in my throat. I leaned against the railing, stared out at the city: crawling traffic, flashing lights, darkness hanging over New York without a promise of sunrise to come. I was reminded of the nights we’d stood on this same balcony, a drink in Massimo’s hand, ice clinking against his teeth. Tonio exhaling long spirals of gray smoke into the neon-tinted night. Rubbing oil out of my palm, smoking one of Tonio’s cigarettes and taking drinks when my cousin offered them. I was reminded of last night when we’d stood in the courtyard outside the ballroom, blood on Massimo’s face and acrid smoke in the air. Ice water dripping from Tonio’s hand. And a shadow in the golden light spilling from the doorway.
I missed Lorel, and Massimo, and the people we’d once been. Though maybe we’d always been the people we were now, just buried beneath layers. Regardless, I thought Mamma and Papa wouldn’t recognize the girl standing here now on a dark New York balcony, smoking one last cigarette, blood and oil in the creases of her hands.”
― Abigail C. Edwards, And We All Bled Oil

“Elena said, "I've been wanting to make olive oil soap but haven't found a bulk supplier I'm happy with yet. I'd love to check out the shop with you!"
"I had no interest in those trendy olive oil lattes before, but if it'll help with the case, I'd be more than happy to give it a try and see if it's worth adding to the menu," Adeena said. "Love a good tax write-off/investigation combo."
"An olive oil cake might be a nice addition. I know citrus pairs well with olive oil, so maybe adding some calamansi to the cake itself and topping it with a calamansi glaze or serving it with calamansi marmalade would---”
― Mia P. Manansala, Guilt and Ginataan

“As with wine, taste, not price, is the best guide to choosing an olive oil.”
― Samin Nosrat, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking

“Our trees are the Casaliva olive variety, a special type of olive unique to our northern region. The Casaliva olives produce a beautifully clear, pale green olive oil with the aroma of almonds and a light, fruity taste with hints of herbs and grass. The oil is rare and highly prized for its delicate flavor and gorgeous hue. In Italy, olive oil is used for everything--- cooking, illnesses, beauty treatments. Most nonnas, Nonna Bruna included, firmly believe that there is almost nothing that cannot be solved or at least improved with the application of a little good-quality olive oil. We all grow up with philosophy. Our veins all run with the precious, pale gold.”
― Rachel Linden, The Secret of Orange Blossom Cake

“It's a recipe for agrumato," he says, sounding surprised.
I roll the unfamiliar name in Italian around on my tongue. "Agrumato? What's that?"
Nicolo's brow is furrowed. "I don't exactly know," he admits. "I've heard Violetta use the word." We turn expectantly to Nonna.
She explains, "It's the term for olive oil that is combined with other things," she says. "When the olives are crushed, sometimes whole fresh fruits, herbs, or vegetables are crushed alongside the olives. It gives the oil the rich flavor of whatever is crushed with it, more so than infusing the oil with other things after it is pressed."
I scan the page with interest. "What does the recipe call for?"
Nicolo reads silently. "It uses Casaliva olives," he says.
"That's the type we grow," I exclaim.
Nonna leans between us and peers at the recipe. "And cedro di Salò citron," she says.
Nicolo and I exchange an astonished glance. "That's the citron we grow on our terraces," he says slowly. "It's extremely rare."
"Violetta's prized citron and our olives," I reply. A recipe that combines the fruits of both our lands. Interesting.”
― Rachel Linden, The Secret of Orange Blossom Cake

“We all helped ourselves to a piece and took a bite. The bittersweet flavor of good chocolate combined with the richness of olive oil and the flakes of sea salt on top overtook my mouth, and for a moment, Adeena and I sounded like we were reenacting that one Meg Ryan scene in When Harry Met Sally.
Over the top? A little. But what can I say? Sometimes a good brownie just hits like that.”
― Mia P. Manansala, Death and Dinuguan