It’s Olive Harvest Season!

It’s olive harvest season and nothing will put more holiday sparkle in your spirit than visiting an olive orchard, picking olives, following them miraculously as then turn into oil, tasting the olio nuovo (new oil) or attending an olive festival! My most memorable olive harvest was in Volpaia in Tuscany, Italy where the sagra (festival) was celebrated with la prova del pane (the bread test) – also called the ritual of the fett’unta (oiled slice). All the neighbors and friends of the community gathered together with their new, freshly-pressed oil; sliced bread was grilled over a fire; the bread slice was rubbed with a clove of garlic and sprinkled with a bit of salt; and, then the bread was proudly drizzled with the new oil.

You may think that this “recipe” sounds like a lot like a basic bruschetta and you are right. Fett’unta and bruschetta are two words for the same dish, although the term, bruschetta is more widely adopted. The difference is that fett’unta (well-known in Florence) puts the emphasis on tasting the olive oil itself while the word bruschetta (well-known in other parts of Central Italy) is intended to emphasize the charring or burning of the bread. Bruschetta typically adds another topping to the olive oil and bread.

Here’s the quick recipe for Bruschetta. Of course, you can “wash” this delicious treat down with a glass or two of Chianti Classico or your favorite Sangiovese.

What you need:
Several cloves of fresh garlic
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Salt
Slices of country style bread

How to Prepare:
Grill the bread (on both sides)
Rub the bread, while it is still warm with a clove of garlic,
Pour extra virgin olive oil on each slice of bread
Sprinkle with salt

Find more recipes in ">The Passionate Olive – 101 Things to do with Olive Oil.

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