The Contadino, The Cook and The Extra Virgin
How to Launch A Culinary Programme in Three Years or Less
Like so many things around these parts, it all happened over dinner. Or rather a series of them. Chris had taken a place literally across the street from mine for the summer, and he and his lovely Gioanna had taken to coming to dinner a few nights a week, a constant treat as I've never met anyone that knows more about olive oil, a borderline obsession of mine.
Chris teaches Tuscans to prune their own olive trees, although he would never say it that way, as he's not really one to toot his own horn. He's an olive oil consultant, advising clients in a myriad of different counties, Italy included, on everything from grove selection to label selection, a sort of cradle-to-grave authority on just about everything pertaining to olives. But he also pursues food and wine with the same fervour, making him a great dinner guest - that all-too-rare combination of an encyclopaedic knowledge, coupled with a humble generosity in sharing it.

But that summer they continued to come to dinner often. As a rainy June gave way to a brilliant blue July, our dinners began to take on a pattern, the same discussions each week, the same questions posed. It became obvious that both my local friends and the school's culinary students considered extra virgin olive oil a staple of their diets. But too, that there was a massive lag in understanding it at all. As a condiment. As a cooking medium. As a preservative. As a food.

And yet there was a constant interest in learning more on the part of the ever-changing students. Obvious patterns continued to form. The same questions were asked each and every week. Oil quality has always been a big component of our course here in Lecce, but we added additional tastings, lining up the glasses as though it were wine. We sniffed and snorted, sucking the spicy green liquid over our pallets.

Hunched over steaming plates of pasta Chris would take over answering the barrage of questions, how olives were pressed, what extra virgin means, whether or not it's a good idea to buy flavoured oils, and does spending more assure you of better oil? If it's labelled as 'Italian', is it?

And as July ebbed towards August I started to notice that some weeks we talked of little else around the table, and that the question and answer part of my own discussions on oil and oil quality began to leech into our wine discussions, our sausage making, and even while eating gelato on the board walk of our day trip to Otranto.

And something else too became apparent, that my own supply of info couldn't keep up with the demand; it became obvious that I'd always be a cook first, that I'd never approach it as a contadino, as Chris did, as a farmer.

Almost a year later I was working in the school's herb garden when the phone rang: it was Chris. 'We should have dinner soon. How soon? Well, Silvestro,' he said, 'This is a local call', the soft 'c' of his accent decidedly central Italian. They had rented the same place again for the summer, and our dinners would take up again without missing a beat. And again, the discussions always ran long, only this time we knew better what to expect from the students, regarding their interest levels and enthusiasm. Without even really trying to create anything, a routine started to develop, not based on what Chris and I always wanted to teach, but what we are being asked, over and over again.
'The problem with olive oil is that those that write about it tend to write for professional producers as an audience', he said one night. 'There are the hard-science based articles and articles regarding the frequent scandals, but nothing towards really educating the average person'.

'The consumer, the one person that could really change things, has been forgotten about', I said. There was a pause.
'So pardon me for asking this again, but does 'extra- virgin' really mean anything', asked Joe from Auckland.
And there it was. Chris looked at me and I looked at him, deciding which one of us would answer the question this time.
I don't ever remember a toast, nor even a handshake. And there certainly was no paper work but the program was born that night, based on an eagerness to change how the industry works. And we'd do that, not by the adding yet more complicated, impossible-to-enforce laws or creating yet more worthless, nepotistic committees- the bureaucratic mess of the way things tend to be done in my part of Italy, but by teaching Joe from New Zealand what she needs to know to make better decisions as a consumer. Teaching her, and others just like her, we reasoned, was even better than just trying to land positions on quality-control boards, or writing pamphlets or petitioning the world's governments. It all starts with the consumer, and any real change to the industry need bubble up from there. When consumers start to care about who produced an olive oil, where, how and to what level, the giant scandals will end. And, as a personal goal, farmers in Puglia will take back to their fields, producing high quality oils for a fair price. Enriching all of our lives.

Our actual curriculum was to be holistic, systemic and lots and lots of fun. We'd start the day with an olive oil discussion and tasting, and then we'd put the info into instant practice, cooking together the local food (not a lot of butter down in these parts). We'd eat and drink together, creating an atmosphere of question and answer, so that information gain was a constant horizontal flow, rather than a series of dry, pedantic lectures. And we'd walk it all off during late afternoon strolls through the nearby groves, the golden afternoon light turning the gray-green leaves into silver schools of scattering sardines.

The hardest part of it all was the day that we decided to offer the week in June, as opposed to the actual harvest months. I had always wanted to see, say, Joe from Auckland in rubber boots on a tractor, grinning ear-to-ear, harvesting olives and working the fields alongside locals in ways the other 'signoras' back in New Zealand would envy.

Even now I can't think of it without smiling. But it wasn't going to happen, as few think of Italian cookery schools in January. It was heart-breaking at the lack of response, but in creating any course, I suspect, there comes a moment when what the teacher wants and what the student wants separate, the later being the more important of the two. I accepted it eventually, reluctantly.

For now at least. And in a series of emails, over months and now years, here is what you'll actually read in magazines, newspapers, on four different continents, now that the media has really taken notice.

Yesterday while riding my bicycle through the local countryside I was stopped by a farmer who needed a hand pushing a stack of stone blocks under the sagging arm of a massive old olive tree. 'It sure would be a shame to lose an old beauty like this one', he said. It took us a good ten minutes of straining but we did it, the weight of gnarled old branch had been visible lifted. As I climbed back onto my bicycle and continued on I thought about what he had said and about our new olive programme.

I guess it's probably always like this for parents but I've never been so proud of our little school in Lecce.
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