Why We Make Our Dressings with Extra Virgin Olive Oil
A good dressing is a simple thing. Oil, something sharp, a little seasoning and whatever else takes your fancy. A spoonful of mustard perhaps. A squeeze of lemon. Garlic crushed beneath the flat of a knife. A handful of herbs from the garden.
When there are so few ingredients, each one has to earn its place. Especially the oil.
That is why our dressings are made with Extra Virgin Olive Oil. No seed oils. Just an oil we know, understand and, most importantly, genuinely love the taste of.
Why extra virgin olive oil?
Extra Virgin Olive Oil brings something of its own to the bowl. It can be grassy and peppery, soft and buttery, or fresh with the scent of green leaves and crushed herbs. There might be a little bitterness, a warmth at the back of the throat, the unmistakable taste of the fruit from which it came.
Put it into a dressing and it does more than simply carry the other flavours. It becomes part of them.
That matters to us. We have spent more than thirty years working with olives and olive oil, tasting them, cooking with them and pouring them rather generously over supper. Using Extra Virgin Olive Oil as the foundation of our dressings feels entirely natural.
It has enough character to stand up to vinegar, citrus, mustard, garlic and herbs, while bringing richness and body of its own.
So, what is an olive oil dressing?
An olive oil dressing brings together good olive oil with acidity, seasoning and other flavours to make something that clings rather pleasingly to whatever you pour it over.
The combinations can take you in all sorts of directions. Mustard brings bite. Lemon brings freshness. Garlic gives warmth. Herbs add fragrance. Fruit can bring sweetness and acidity.
The oil matters because there is nowhere for it to hide. It makes up a good part of what you are eating. We think a dressing should therefore start with an oil that tastes good before anything else has been added to it.
Getting the balance right is the important bit. Happily, we've done that part for you.
Six dressings, six rather different directions
Starting with extra virgin olive oil gives us a foundation, but it certainly doesn't mean all the bottles taste alike.
Our Mustard & Herb Dressing is perhaps the classic of the bunch. Dijon, garlic and Provençal herbs make the sort of vinaigrette that is useful to have permanently within reach. Toss it through crisp leaves, spoon it over warm potatoes or use it to marinate chicken or lamb before they meet the grill.
Lemon & Dill is brighter and fresher. The sort of bottle we reach for with fish, new potatoes, cucumber, green beans and the first really good tomatoes of summer. Lemon brings the sharpness, dill the fragrance and extra virgin olive oil holds the whole thing together.
Shallot & Orange moves in a softer, sweeter direction. Particularly good with bitter leaves, roasted roots, duck or a plate involving a generous piece of cheese. Orange has a lovely habit of waking up earthy flavours, especially when there is something savoury alongside it.
Then there is Beetroot & Thyme, darker, earthier and rather good with the sort of food that appears as the evenings draw in. Roast vegetables, lentils, goat's cheese and warm grains all take kindly to it. It works equally well as a marinade when you want something with a little more depth.
Raspberry & Mint is the fruitier one. Bright, sharp and fragrant, with enough acidity to cut through richer ingredients. Lovely with leaves and soft cheese, but equally at home with something warm from the grill.
And Chilli & Ginger brings the heat. Warming rather than merely hot, with ginger giving it freshness as well as spice. Try it over grilled meat, roast vegetables or anything coming off the barbecue that could do with a lively finish.
Six quite different bottles, but the same principle running through every one: start with good Extra Virgin Olive Oil and build the flavour from there.
What about seed oils?
Many ready made dressings use oils such as rapeseed or sunflower oil. There are perfectly practical reasons for doing so. They tend to have a neutral flavour and can be relatively inexpensive.
We have chosen a different route.
Our dressings are made with Extra Virgin Olive Oil and contain no seed oils. Not because we want to turn a bottle of salad dressing into a nutritional argument, but because we think EVOO makes a better tasting dressing and is more in keeping with the way we like to cook and eat.
It is an ingredient we would happily pour over a sliced tomato with a pinch of salt, spoon onto a plate of warm vegetables or leave at the bottom of the bowl to be mopped up with a piece of bread.
It seems only sensible to make our dressings with it too.
Keep them out of the fridge
One particularly useful thing about our dressings is that they don't need refrigerating, even after opening. In fact, they are happier left out of the fridge.
Extra Virgin Olive Oil naturally becomes cloudy and can start to solidify when it gets cold. There is nothing wrong with it when this happens and it will return to normal as it warms, but your dressing will be much easier to pour if you simply keep the bottle somewhere cool and away from direct sunlight.
It also means the dressing is always there when you need it. No waiting for a bottle of chilled olive oil to come back to life while supper gets cold.
Not just for salad
Calling them salad dressings rather undersells them.
A good olive oil dressing is one of those useful bottles that starts in the cupboard and gradually finds its way into almost everything you cook.
Spoon it over a bowl of warm new potatoes so they soak up the dressing as they cool. Pour a little over roast courgettes or squash. Dress beans and lentils while they are still warm. Use it with chicken straight from the grill, a lamb chop or a piece of simply cooked fish.
A spoonful stirred through grains can rescue yesterday's leftovers. A generous splash over roasted vegetables can be the difference between something worthy and something you actually want to eat.
And yes, occasionally put it on a salad.
And then there are the hot sauces
The same thinking runs through our fermented hot sauces.
They are not quite your average hot sauce. We start with naturally fermented chillies for their deep flavour before blending them into sauces with extra virgin olive oil. The fermentation brings acidity, depth and complexity. The EVOO rounds things out, giving the sauces a richness and texture you don't often find in a conventional bottle of hot sauce.
And, just like our dressings, there are no seed oils.
The result is something much more than a source of heat. Something to spoon generously alongside grilled chicken or lamb, over roasted vegetables, into a bowl of beans or onto whatever happens to be coming off the barbecue.
They still bring the chilli, of course. They just bring rather more besides.
Explore our Fermented Hot Chilli Sauces
The Olives Et Al way
Our food has always started with flavour rather than fashion. We like ingredients that taste of something and products that earn their place in the cupboard.
Good extra virgin olive oil. Proper ingredients. No seed oils.
And, ideally, a little bread left on the table to deal with whatever remains at the bottom of the bowl.
