Cooking with Extra Virgin Olive Oil

What you find traveling through the olive oil regions of the Mediterranean—where people tend to be the healthiest—is that olive oil is used on virtually everything, at breakfast, at lunch and at dinner. Food tastes better with a good oil on it.

This is a wonderful enhancement to the enjoyment of life. It is also a solid foundation to a healthy diet, conferring three great benefits:

* The more olive oil you enjoy, the fewer heart-unhealthy fats you will consume.

* An olive oil high in polyphenols provides a wide range of direct health benefits.

* Because vegetables and grains taste better with olive oil, more vegetables and grains – key elements in a balanced diet – are eaten. Mediterranean kids need much less coaxing to eat their greens than their American counterparts.

It makes food taste better.

In America we are fortunate to have access to a very wide variety of cuisines. This makes it a particular pleasure to learn about matching olive oil with food. We have all learned something about matching wine with food. Most of us, for example, have seen that white wine tends to go better with fish than red wine does. Occasionally we have the experience of enjoying a specific fish dish that has been matched perfectly with a specific white wine.

It is very similar with olive oil. Some oils are softer and rounder, and are more suited to lighter dishes (like fish!). Some oils are lively and pungent, others robust and self-assertive. Each has a role to play in the enjoyment of food. We invite you to browse some recipes we find perfectly suited to our three different Apollo oils.

 Different foods are made better by different oils.

A few simple ideas for incorporating more olive oil in your diet:

* Use it instead of butter in your frying pan, for example in preparing eggs, grilled cheese sandwiches and quesadillas.

* Try steaming vegetables and tossing them with oil and salt (like a warm salad) before serving.

* Bring it to the table and experiment with drizzles on your dishes — steak, pasta, pizza, and soups, for example.