Nine years ago my wife and I gave up our jobs in media and became olive farmers. We quickly realized that it was difficult to make a living out of good quality olive oil because there is a lot of confusion about what’s good and what’s bad. This situation is encouraged by the big olive oil producers (three out of every four bottles of Italian extra virgin olive oil sold in the United States are not actually legitimate). So, we started a program where you can adopt an olive tree and get the oil delivered straight from your tree. It’s completely transparent and it supports the actual farmer who makes the oil. You can even come to Italy and hug your tree.
Through our work we’ve tasted and cooked with some of the best olive oils in the world. As a result we’ve amassed a collection of the very best olive oil recipes. The only problem is that our treasure trove is currently languishing in my pile of olive oil-stained, disintegrating notebooks and scraps of urgently-ripped-out paper. So this year we’ve given ourselves the mission to shape them up into a state where we’d be proud to share them with you—in the form of the world’s most beautiful olive oil recipe book.
Unless you are a celebrity chef it’s hard to get recipe books published these days. So we turned to Kickstarter. We believe that there is a big community of foodies out there who really want to know the difference between extra virgin olive oil and the dodgy supermarket stuff, and we hope to help them on their journey with our recipe book.
The book will include over 100 recipes from olive oil producing regions all over the world— from Italy to Morocco, Greece to California. The recipes, which include both modern takes on classic recipes and new inventions, are—above all—simple and delicious. This is not a book of complicated show-off recipes that take hours of preparation and a team of ten to make. They are beautiful, unpretentious recipes that have been tried and tested in family homes, often over several generations. If you’d like to be a part of bringing a book of simple, yet delicious olive oil recipes to the world, consider supporting our Kickstarter campaign.
This project is part of GOOD’s Saturday series Push for Good—our guide to crowdfunding creative progress.
This month, we’re challenging the GOOD community to host a dinner party and cook a meal that contains fewer ingredients than the number of people on the guest list. Throughout March, we’ll share ideas and resources for being more conscious about our food and food systems. Join the conversation at good.is/food and on Twitter at #chewonit.
