Who is lurking on alt.food.wine

I agree, I think it's perfectly acceptable to email off list with an informational topic or a question. This has happened to me also.

And I applaud Diane for posting here, I think better of Canola for it. :)

But I never use rape seed oil for cooking. We use OO for everything except deep frying or wok, then it's peanut. The OO will come from Nyons if possible, where it has a very delicate flavour.

Say Mark, I never did see the joke with the mini-faq... header looks normal to me. What am I missing?

-E

I think it becomes dangerous around 210°C, so if we stay around 180°C you should be fine.

I believe all olive oil is extra virgin these days. I am not sure that exports are allowed on other grades. I keep seeing silly mentions like "cold pressed" on some bottles in America, of course all EVOO is automatically cold pressed.

What is less clear is the origin. Italy for example simply does not have enough trees to match its production of OO. Imports of olives from Turkey and other countries are massive. Think about it - remember the

French production is very small, I believe around 0.15% of the world total, but quality can be excellent and prices are ridiculously high.

It's subtle: check out the X-Mailer header ;-) (Even more interesting is that I supply it as a User-Agent header that gets modified at the server).

Mark Lipton

I roast potatoes with lard or goose fat. However, my DIL is a veggie so last xmas I tried a batch for her using rice bran oil, which has a very high smoke point. They were excellent! Graham

Here's what I show as a header:

Path: uni-berlin.de!fu-berlin.de!newshub.sdsu.edu!elk.ncren.net!news.purdue.edu!not-for-mail From: "AFW FAQ" Newsgroups: alt.food.wine Subject: alt.food.wine mini-FAQ Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2007 04:00:00 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Purdue University Lines: 42 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: wthr409.chem.purdue.edu X-Trace: mailhub227.itcs.purdue.edu 1185595200 13974 128.210.142.29 (28 Jul 2007

I assumed netcat was the name of the robot program. Don't see an X-Mailer?

Clearly this humor is lost on me! ;)

-E

Many olive oils are now available in the US, although many of the better and more unusual ones are not available at many grocery stores. To get some variety of those offered, see

uni-berlin.de!fu-berlin.de!newshub.sdsu.edu!elk.ncren.net!news.purdue.edu!not-for-mail

Sorry, Emery! You're right, sort of. Here's the poop on netcat:

It's a general networking tool, incredibly simple, that I've used for roboposting the FAQs. Since crontab takes only command-line utilities, I couldn't use any of the normal newsreader software for the Mac (maybe tin, rn, or slrn would work if I could port them to Mac OS X) so I kludged a newsposter with the line:

lipton% cat post-FAQ.txt afw-FAQ.txt | nc -w 10 newsserver 119

While I'm nattering on about this nonsense, I'll also mention that one problem with writing the FAQ using Word on a Mac is that the EOL delimiter it uses is a bare and my newsserver software (INN) demands a as line delimiter. To get around that, I initially wrote out the .txt file as a PC-formatted file, which _does_ insert a delimiter, but alas munges the UTF-8 characters as is evident in the latest FAQ posting. To get around this, I've had to relearn sed:

lipton% sed -e 's/\^V^J//n/g'

So the next FAQ posting will actually have the correct renderings of Gewürztraminer and Côtes du Rhône ;-)

Mark "UNIX-dork" Lipton

That's a little harsh. If it were a personalized hand-typed message that was directed at me, that's significantly different from an automated generic message that's directed at anybody within earshot.

Jose

Here is the brand of OO that is sold at Costco, USA, Only one of the three is extra-virgin I've tried all three, but I decided to buy in glass jars, as these are in clear plastic.

I read several years ago about the problems along that line, I believe it was Spain, as well as other countries. Since then I have become a sceptic re OO's.

I've not bought French -- but plenty of Middle East olive oil, but stopped buying it also. Nowadays it's Italy. The big stink a number of years back about Spanish wines, etc. gave me pause for thought. Dee Dee

Apple shock up Microsoft a bit a few weeks back by releasing a version of their new Safari 3 browser for a Windows OS! I downloaded it, and it seems to work fairly well on Microsoft XP. There are a few bugs, as usual, in a new browser. This might come in handy for those who have a Mac at home and a Windows OS at work. Just add Safari 3 to the work Windows OS computer, and you will feel at home. This Safari beats the IE browsers, but I find it no better than Firefox or Opera. The wine faq page views properly on the Safari 3 for Windows browser.

Dee Dee, this is unlikely to be 100% italian, very unlikely.

I would be less worried about Spain re origin, they have so many trees they probably don't need to import olives. There have been some problems with very low end oils, but these would have been sold only in Spain. The top tier is probably the best OO in the world ( Jaen, Baena).

Speaking of dodgy products, have you ear about the Prosecco scandal? I believe it involves 24,000 hectolitres !!!!!!!

Geez, I just learned of prosecco and have a bottle on hand of Prosecco - Santa Margherita di Valdobbiadene and

Is this an old or new story. Can you point me to some interesting reading? I love a good art, wine and food scandal. Dee

Lizzy Tosi, a journalist friend who keeps a blog, has some data here:

Looks like it was all intended for export, and many importers were victims of this fraud (according to the article, the importer in the US was Gallo).

I'm pretty sure I saw Italian "pure olive oil" (a blend of virgin and refined, I think) in local Italian deli (I'm sure that its likely oil was Spanish, Greek, Moroccan, Turkish, etc). So it must be exported, I'll double check next time I'm in.

Betsy used peanut oil for her fried chicken last night. I asked, she said that she does 90% of frying in peanut (I have Fear of Frying and never really do).

Har!

ObWine: Last night Jean opened the 2006 Matua 'Paretai' SB as an aperitif: intensely grassy with grapefruit and decent acidity, but still not as appealing to me as the '06 Babich (and a good deal pricier).

Mark Lipton

There's only one way to be sure an italian EVO oil is made from all-italian olives: the DOP and IGP labeling. If an EVO oil has the DOP or IGP label then it can be made only with local olives. By now there are many DOP oils and only one IGP oil, the "Toscana IGP", which has rules as stringent as the DOP ones have. A decent DOP olive oil which doesn't cost as liquid gold is the "Umbria DOP" from Farchioni, which comes in two versions: the most delicate costs around

Thanks, Vilco. I believe we may have discussed previously the EVOO that I buy from Costco - Kirkland brand, and you gave me your opinion on it, which I recall wasn't too favorable. (I could be remembering incorrectly, but I think some of it had to do with the time of harvest listed on the bottle.) I was re-looking today at the label wondering about the DOP or IGP. All it says is under "Extra Virgin Olive Oil Toscano" is "Protected Geographical Indication." is PGI the same as IGP? Thanks so much for your suggestions. Dee Dee

I'm not Vilco (obviously) but the answer to your question is yes: IGP stands for Indicazione Geografica Protetta, which is enough of a cognate to English that I won't even bother stating the obvious.

Mark Lipton