Olive Oil

Consumers discouraged by a barrage of news reports that make it seem almost every food they love is bad for them -- milk, coffee, eggs, butter, burritos, and kung pao chicken, just to name a few on recent hit lists -- can rejoice in a bit of good news.Olive oil is good for you. It's especially good for women, a new report says, because "alone among fat types," olive oil appears to reduce the risk of getting breast cancer. The assessment is based on a study of women in Greece, where olive oil is widely used in cooking.

What did you eat on your vacation in Italy? This is what friends and colleagues asked me upon my return from six days in Umbria. The short answer is: great, simple food that was both regional and seasonal. Umbria, the land-locked region just east of Tuscany, is known for its hearty, rustic cuisine, much of it based on game and pork. Accordingly, I ate grilled quail, a ragu of wild boar, and plenty of porchetta, a whole or half pig (minus the limbs and head) seasoned with garlic and rosemary and then roasted.

When a close friend, the head of a renowned academic institution, called to tell us that he had decided to retire from his post to pursue a new career, we could hear both sadness and excitement in his voice. He had served happily in his job for well over a decade, and although enthusiastic about his new undertaking, the decision had been bittersweet. My husband and I picked up on this right away and invited him and his wife, both bon vivants, to come for an overnight visit that we promised would be filled with laughter, wine and food.

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Whether you order chicken spiedini at an Italian mom-and-pop ristorante or the Olive Garden, chances are good the benefits of grilling lean chunks of meat over an open flame will be overshadowed by the dish's overall fat content. The culprit? Typically the skewered, breaded kebabs are served drowning in a puddle of olive oil. For instance, one recipe on cdkitchen.com calls for 1/2 cup olive oil. Another on recipezaar.com lists 2 tablespoons olive oil and 2 tablespoons butter. This Grilled Chicken Spiedini adds more zesty lemon and spicy pepperoncini, a mixture that balances flavor with a more modest tablespoon of olive oil. Shopping tip: Look for pickled pepperoncini in the condiment aisle with salad dressings, pickles and peppers.

Everyone wants to prepare delicious food today -- but in simple dishes that can be made with a few ingredients.Evidence of this trend surfaced several years ago when cookbooks that highlighted recipes with modest ingredient lists started to appear. One such book that caught my eye was Rozanne Gold's "Recipes 1-2-3" (Viking, 1996), a collection of dishes with only three ingredients. I was so fascinated by this concept that I began walking down grocery aisles challenging myself to devise inventions with a trio of ingredients.

Inviting friends in for drinks and hors d'oeuvres can be one of the most relaxed ways to entertain -- but not when the menu holds the host hostage in the kitchen. That won't happen if you plan simple-to-make-and-serve dishes you prepare entirely or partially ahead.If you're not serving guests dinner afterward, plan to have the hors d'oeuvres hearty and plentiful enough to cushion the effects of any alcohol you pour, and offer soft drinks or mineral water as well. Present an appealing variety of dishes, counting on four to six hors d'oeuvres per guest.

When you think of a meatless pasta dinner, no doubt you have visions of a jar of tomato sauce or a little olive oil and Parmesan cheese. Here are three more interesting and unusual -- but very simple -- meatless dinners with protein and nutrients galore (and not an ounce of red sauce).Serve this creamy, rich Greek Pasta With Feta with a like-minded salad made from romaine lettuce, fresh snips of dill, tomato and thinly sliced onion. You can buy feta cheese already crumbled in most grocery stores, or, to make crumbling easy, place a chunk of it in the freezer for a couple of minutes before you handle it before crumbling.

The English translation on the menu said "ox tail." The Spanish version read "rabos de toro."My Spanish vocabulary is small. But I was pretty sure what "toro" meant. That mound of brown meat sitting on my plate at Restaurante Tio Pepe was bull.Sure enough, when Jose Garcia Marin, proprietor of the Red Horse Restaurant in Cordoba, Spain, told me the tale of the tail, there was little doubt what I was eating.Garcia visited Baltimore recently as part of a weeklong celebration of the food of the Andalusian region in southwestern Spain.

Risotto is often thought of as winter comfort food because of its warm, soft consistency, but this recipe for Summer Risotto confirms that it's just as comforting during the summer.Summer Risotto is loaded with fresh summer produce, including spinach, red peppers and asparagus.It's also flavored with the so-called forbidden foods of a low-fat diet: butter, cheese and olive oil. There is room in a low-fat diet for rich ingredients, but they must be used in smaller amounts.For example, traditional recipes for risotto start with 2 tablespoons or more of butter.

Savor a taste of Italy in only minutes with fish fillets topped with fresh tomato slices and melted parmesan cheese. Penne pasta tossed with fresh spinach completes this colorful dinner. Buy whatever white fish looks best at the market or use flash-frozen fillets, which I've found have a fresh flavor. Measure the thickness of the fish and cook 10 minutes per inch. Wine suggestion: I'd sip a nice Italian chianti. spinach penne pasta Cook: 10 minutes Makes: 2 servings 1/4 pound penne pasta 4 cups washed, ready-to-eat spinach 2 teaspoons olive oil salt and freshly ground pepper Bring 3 to 4 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot. Cook pasta 10 minutes or according to package instructions.

Late-season tomatoes are a difficult sell. They are not gorgeous. Spotty, misshapen, with fissures on their skin, they would be described, if they were children, as having faces that only their mothers could love. Yet in this, the shank of their season, they draw attention from me and the fruit flies. The fruit flies circle the tomatoes that sit on a kitchen counter, looking for soft spots. Only days before, the tomatoes had been on the vine, catching a last bit of sunshine before biting cold and fading daylight shut down production.

Instead of inviting friends for dinner, I sometimes ask them to come for wine and simple appetizers. For me, this is one of the easiest ways to entertain, especially when I'm busy. I prepare one or two nibbles, open a bottle of wine, set out glasses and napkins, and that's it. Several weeks ago, after learning that a dear friend from the Midwest was coming to visit her daughter who was expecting twins (and who happens to live only a few miles from us), I had planned such a get-together.

A person who broke into an East Baltimore company and opened a valve to a tanker holding nearly 6,000 gallons of olive oil caused a spill that marred the harbor's waters and could take days to clean, authorities said yesterday. Baltimore police and state environmental officials believe someone broke into Pompeian Olive Oil Co. in the 4200 block of Pulaski Highway and opened the valve. It's unclear what the intruder's motives were, authorities said. The extra-virgin oil ran from the plastic-lined steel container into a storm drain, flowing for two miles into the harbor near Boston Avenue and Linwood streets in Canton.

Events OLIVE OIL CLASS : Learn why cooks use extra-virgin olive oil, how Italian brands compare with oils from other parts of the world and how to cook, drizzle and flavor with olive oil from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. Sunday at Williams-Sonoma in Cross Keys, 70 Village Square. Free. Call 410-435-6020 or visit williams-sonoma.com. BACK TO SCHOOL : Whole Foods Market offers a sampling of back-to-school products featuring breakfast options, lunchbox favorites, after-school snacks and easy dinners.

Milton Klein, a retired businessman and former owner of Pompeian Inc., the Baltimore olive oil company, died Wednesday of heart failure at his Pikesville condominium. He was 93. Mr. Klein was born and raised in the Bronx, N.Y. He attended City College of New York. In the 1930s, Mr. Klein moved to Baltimore, where he joined his father selling food products and later expanded to include the importation of olives and Milrose fruit juices. The business became known as Round the Clock Fruit Juice Drinks, and after father and son established partnerships with farming interests in New York and Michigan, they became food brokers.

Should you decide to forgo the bread in this shrimp-salad sandwich, you'll be just as satisfied with this recipe as a main-course salad. I know this because I've become addicted to the salad since I first happened on the combination of sweet shrimp, spicy sausage and soft bitter greens about two months ago. The sandwich idea came about recently, after my friend began to reminiscence about France's Provence region and our first introduction to the delicious...

With warm weather comes delicious fresh wild salmon. Sockeye is in season from mid-May to September, but any variety, wild or farmed, will work in this simple recipe with Mexican flavorings. The salmon can be grilled or broiled, depending on the weather. It's paired with a zesty pineapple salsa. If you like, you can add more zip to the dish with a seafood rub for the fish. Place the salmon skin-side down. When it's done, it should lift easily from the skin. Switch the herb in the salsa (to cilantro or basil, for instance)

Cooking for weekend company can turn into a marathon if you're not careful. I know from experience: In the past, I used to spend an inordinate amount of time in front of my stove turning out complicated meals for overnight guests. Not any more! I still love to do the cooking, but now I plan simple menus that leave me free to catch up with our out-of-town visitors. That's exactly what I did this past Saturday when close friends arrived for an overnight stay. Dinner was the big event of the visit, and I went all out to make it stylish, but I didn't pour hours into its preparation.

Passover by Design Picture-Perfect Kosher by Design Recipes for the Holiday Hip Kosher 175 Easy-to-Prepare Recipes for Today's Kosher Cooks By Ronnie Fein Da Capo Press / 2008 / $16.95 I should point out immediately that this book is not "hip" by any modern culinary standard. But when it comes to Jewish cooking, maybe. Ronnie Fein argues that kosher is not just for Jews anymore. Among those seeking kosher recipes these days, she says, are Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses, vegetarians, vegans, the health-conscious and the animal-welfare crowd.