An ode to olive oil (& three loaded dips)

There are 1,386 recipes across all of my cookbooks, upcoming Simple Too included. 891 of them use olive oil. That’s 64.3%. Olive oil is beaten only by salt, which turns up in 1,288. Then comes pepper.

I am an olive oil bore, and I’ll own it.

Good olive oil is the most-loved ingredient in my kitchen, by some distance - the first and last thing I pick up when I cook. I always have two: a really great extra-virgin for finishing off a dish – normally gifts from those who know me well and respect my passions - and an everyday olive oil for more widespread use - a 5-litre can I regularly decant into a bottle sitting on my kitchen counter.

The new oil we’ve made with Citizens of Soil (sourced from Umbria and Tuscany) is of that first kind - the one that gets poured last and generously and makes for a great present for any olive oil bore. (It’s out tomorrow - August 10th - and I’m very proud of it).

Something I have a much more complicated relationship with: internet trends. Trends, by definition, end, and good food really shouldn’t and normally doesn’t. There’s also a chicken-and-egg problem: write something down enough times and you’ve made it a trend, whether or not it deserved to become one.

So, instinctively, I try to push myself away from them. And yet, I don’t know how, they make my way to me, like the loaded olive oil dips that ended up all over my Instagram algorithm - cheese and herbs and spice, all sitting in shallow, glistening pools of good extra virgin. Salty, briny, generous - undeniably, delicious. I tried to be sniffy about it for approximately one scroll... and then another...and then another...before giving in.

(Though I’d argue these dips shouldn’t only be kept for bread. Any of today’s recipes should also be poured over grilled halloumi or a tomato salad or a big grilled fish.)

Could I have possibly ‘found my inspiration…’ where I least wanted to find it?

Capers and nori don’t seem like obvious companions, but together they make something deeply savoury and briny and moreish. It comes together in under ten minutes and works well beyond bread: spoon it over steamed edamame, grilled fish, a tomato salad or oyster mushrooms.

Nori and caper olive oil dip

Apricot and orange make a lot of sense together - one soft and jammy, the other sweetly sharp. Both soften in the hot oil and sweeten as they cool, and the pine nuts and fennel seeds add a savouriness that stops it tipping into sweet.

This works just as well as a dressing as it does a dipping oil: spoon it over burrata, grilled halloumi, roasted fennel or beetroot, or whipped feta on toast. Or serve with plenty of crusty bread alongside. It’ll keep in the fridge for a week.

Serves 6-8
Prep 5 mins
Cook 5 mins

Beyond the wall: the apricot dipping oil and a jammy roasted lemon and fennel seed one that keeps in the fridge for weeks.