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OIL & WINE
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The Italian region of Tuscany looks like a fairy-tale picture book. The rolling hills are textured with vineyards and olive groves in between the old stone villas and ancient towns. The area of Tuscany called Chianti is very famous for wine and I was fortunate to tour one of Chianti’s most notable wineries, Castello di Fonterutoli. Filippo Mazzei met me there, and took me on an incredible tour of his family business, which has been making Chianti Classico and other famous wines in this place since 1435! While I was very interested to see their incredible winery, Filippo took me on another tour to their family’s olive groves and pressing facility. I had never seen the process of making olive oil and on this day, I got to experience harvesting the fruit from the trees and then witness the journey that the olives take through the pressing and filtration system and eventually to the bottle. It was very interesting to see and taste the similarities between growing, harvesting, pressing and blending olives to that of grapes for wine. The two processes are very close. Back at my restaurant Le Bernardin, you will experience one of our olive oil tastings. Because the flavor of olive oil is dictated by the weather, the season, and the blending process, oils taste slightly different from year to year and really, bottle to bottle. Even though we may find a particular brand of oil that we love, it doesn’t mean that it will taste the same the next time. Every once-in-awhile, the sous chefs and I get together to do a tasting. We take into account what we are serving the oil with, then we taste the oils alone and next with the ingredients that the oil is served with. This process is sometimes surprising—it’s a bit like pairing wine with food. Again, the similarities between the relationship of food to wine and food to olive oil is profound. Finally at my home kitchen, I will show you how to make a simple chicken paillard. This recipe combines perfectly cooked chicken breast with some of the flavors that are classic to the Mediterranean like tomatoes, raisins and of course, olive oil.  
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