Pizza Today - June 2021 - 14

MAN ON THE STREET

SCOTT WIENER

least, your oil should taste good. It should
taste like olive.
Olives are fruits, so we really need to
think of olive oil as fruit juice. It's best
when fresh and declines with exposure to
heat, light and air. Olive oil goes rancid
after 12 to 18 months, so look for a packing date on your label. Then be sure to store
your supply away from heat and light. You
probably blast through containers of oil
faster than they can spoil, but home cooks
often don't realize that once a package is
opened they need to consume their oil
within a few months.
In pizza, we tend to value a connection
to pizza's Italian origin, but quality olive oil
isn't restricted to the boot. Spain, Greece,
Italy and Tunisia are all huge producers,
but check your bottles and you'll probably see a blended oil even if marketed as
Italian. That's why you really need to go
with taste instead of relying on marketing
language on the label. California has some
excellent oil right now with an industry
some say will echo the state's success with
wine. The southern hemisphere is emerging as a major player, with excellent oils
coming from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay
and Brazil.
I remember judging a pizza competiThat's right. Olive oil is about to get
tion
in Harlem a few years ago that pitted
cool.
50
Margherita
pizzas against each other
Pizzerias have been treating olive oil like
over the course of two days. You'd think
an anonymous commodity for years, but
it would have been hard to discriminate
there's an incredible amount of potential
between one pie and the next, but I clearly
that's only beginning to come to fruition.
remember the moment I encountered the
In the past, all anybody ever cared about
winner. The most obvious difference was
was whether or not the label said extra
the quality olive oil the pizzaiolo used to
virgin, but that's barely an indicator of
finish the pie. Had he used an inferior oil,
anything. As I learned from master olive
the pizza would have been indiscriminable
miller David Garci-Aguirre, the requirements for extra virgin are so broad it's like from its competitors.
As all pizza makers continue to up their
bragging about passing a test when you
fermentation game, their tomato sourcing,
only got a C-.
Have you ever sipped your olive oil? Try and their cheese selection I truly believe
that quality olive oil will emerge as the
it right now. Does it tickle the tongue or
quiet hero of pizza flavor.
does it burn the throat? The latter means
that your oil has gone rancid. At the very

Olive Oil Is About to Get Cool

ave you ever seen a magnum of
olive oil? I hadn't until last week,
when I spotted one in the hands
of a mysterious bearded man in a Brooklyn
pizzeria. This wasn't just any mysterious
bearded man, of which there are a great
many to be found inside Brooklyn pizzerias
... this was Nicholas Coleman. After serving as chief Oleologist at Eataly for several
years, Nick went on to preach olive oil gospel at renowned culinary institutions around
the planet. Now he runs " a bespoke fullservice olive oil procurement center, " which
sources oil from across the globe for large
clients and individual customers. When I
met Nick, he was dropping off a fresh bottle
of olive oil he designed in collaboration with
rapper/TV star Action Bronson.

SCOTT WIENER is the founder of Scott's Pizza Tours in New York City and SliceOutHunger.org Instagram: @scottspizzatours

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Pizza Today June 2021

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