[Narrator] Like all the cooks and chefs we met in Puglia,
Domenico Ammaji is not afraid to use plenty of olive oil in his cooking.
You could argue that extra virgin olive oil is, far and away, the most important product here....
The foundation for Puglia's cuisine, as well as the backbone of Puglia's economy.
Alessandro Leone and Antonella Tomborrino
are olive oil researchers working in Pugliese universities.
[Alessandro Leone speaking Italian]
[Translator speaking] Puglia has 370,000 hectares of olive groves
and sixty million trees.
15 million of those trees are what we call "olive secolare,"
olive trees that are hundreds of years old.
These particular trees on Alessandro Leone's farm
are still producing abundant quantities of rich, golden extra virgin olive oil....
[Alessandro Leone speaking Italian]
[Translator speaking] Trees like this literally built the economy of Puglia.
This one tree will produce 250 kilos of olives,
probably 50 liters of extra virgin olive oil from a single tree.
The harvest is about to begin here and the olives are starting to turn black,
but not entirely....
Farmers look for olives that aren't fully ripe,
that are full of tasty healthy polyphenols that will give the oil great flavor.
[Antonella Tomborrino speaking Italian]
[Translator speaking] In Puglia, we don't use anything but extra virgin.
It gives special flavors to our cuisine.
Traditional dishes find their maximum flavors and aromas
only using Pugliese extra virgin olive oil.
For cooking, or for a condiment, we don't distinguish — we use it all.
Even sweets are fried in olive oil.
These "Carteddate" — little crispy baskets of fried sweet dough
are a Christmas specialty.
Rossella Speranza, another olive oil expert from Puglia,
explains why this is so.
[Rossella Speranza speaking] For centuries, you will be cooking just with olive oil — with extra virgin olive oil.
We have many sweets, like, you know the Carteddate sweets for Christmas, you know?
And these are fried in new, very fresh extra virgin olive oil,
because Christmas is in December.
So people fry this great sweet, very traditional, in extra virgin olive oil.
Extra virgin olive oil is obtained mechanically by squeezing the olive.
Once you get this olive oil from the mill,
this is what we call virgin olive oil.
In order to be labeled as extra virgin,
the olive oil has to pass the test.
One is to go through a test in laboratory,
certified laboratory.... Let's say, that this olive oil respect all those parameters,
in terms of acidity, antioxidant, and so on.
But, this is not enough!
Since 1991, there is a European law,
that say, it has to be tested by a group of olive oil professional tasters.
That say, this olive oil is no defect, so it can be labeled like as extra virgin olive oil....
The Olive Oil Council — The International Olive Oil Council does a great job because
they train many people.
[Interviewer] So, it has to be mechanically pressed....
It has to be certified in a laboratory that has
a low content of free oleic fatty acid,
and then it has to pass a taste panel before it can be sent to market as extra virgin.
[Rossella Speranza speaking] Exactly. But let's remember, that if you don't — Again, if you don't store well this extra virgin olive oil....
After two months, expert may find some defects, and this is not extra virgin anymore!
[Interviewer] Right. This is something I think is very important for consumers to understand and very difficult to understand....
That a product can leave the producer in a perfect condition....
And two months later, it is no longer what it says it is on the label....
It's not a bad oil, it's just an oil that doesn't have a lot of flavor left.
So, this would be a good oil to use for frying, for instance, because....
[Rossella Speranza speaking] Definitely, definitely. In our home, we will keep olive oil, you know, also in the tin....
The second, third year, because we usually use the new one. Okay?
But for frying, we can use the olive oil of the second, third year.
[Interviewer] I taste quite a bit of bitterness in this oil.
[Rossella Speranza speaking] You know, very often, that kind of characteristic....
Like, you know, bitterness and so on, it depends on how ripe the olive was.
[Interviewer] You mean, the less — the more green it is, the more bitter it is.
So, these olives that we see growing here are probably very fruity and flavorful because they're very black.
I think this is.... I don't know exactly this this variety,
but when they are all black, they are very ripe.
Okay? When the olive, like, in the same tree, you can find olive that have the two colors,
"En viață." That part of the olive which is not ripe yet gives you more flavor,
more antioxidant that kind of green grass, fresh grass aroma that we tasted.
So, definitely the period in which you pick the olives is crucial for the quality of olive oil.
[Narrator] Puglia's cooks and chefs are not afraid to use this miracle product.
Whether as a garnish, as Pepe Zullo shows us, with his shaved fennel salad.
As an integral part of a dish as the chef at Tuccino uses it,
oiling sea bass with potatoes.
Or even for deep fat frying.
These Lampascioni — wild hyacinth bulbs —
have been cut to look like flowers and deep fried until golden....
[magical music playing]
And fresh black olives, uncured, straight from the tree, make a surprising antipasto.
Chef Pietro Zito roasts olives and then mashes them with oil
and serves them peasant style with a hunk of bread.
[Narrator translating from Italian....] You don't eat olives one by one. You mash them up like the Contadina — the peasant farmers.
That's the way they eat olives.