Do you love olive oil as much as the Cypriots do?

Olive oil is an essential ingredient of every meal in Cyprus.

From bowls of olives in your plate of appetizers to lashings of the golden liquid in almost every Cyprus recipe, cooking with olive oil forms a key part of the Cypriot Mediterranean diet.

We love the taste of olives and their oil, especially the cold pressed variety and we were SO pleased when we dicovered the local pressing factory...the locals secret source of cheap amber nectar and the best place to see exactly how to make extra virgin olive oil!

• From October to January, locals bring their olives for pressing.
• The fruits are weighed and put into a giant hopper.
• They then go through a state of the art machine which separates the skins and stones to extract the juice.
• Then the oil is passed through several filters and pressed again, producing a gorgeous green liquid - cold pressed extra virgin olive oil.
• The oil is slightly cloudy at first but becomes clear once the oil has settled.

Whilst you wait, you can grab a coffee and sample some bread dipped into freshly pressed olive oil. Cloudy or not, it tastes wonderful!

Some of the locals have lots of olive trees so they sell the oil produced to local shops and the public. But you can use the factory even if you only have one olive tree - just expect the locals to laugh a little when you turn up!

Take the B7 road from Polis to Paphos. When you reach Goudi, approximately 5 km from Polis, look for a used car dealership on the right. The factory is behind the car dealership.

You can buy cheap extra virgin olive oil at the factory in 4 litre or 20 litre containers. Prices are from CYPŁ8-10 for the 4 litre container. The more you buy, the cheaper it is!
The 20 litre container is great value if you like to marinate your own olives or you do a lot of cooking with olive oil eg. making olive bread (a Cypriot speciality).

And talking of marinating olives, how do you turn a freshly picked olive into a succulent edible one? (If you have ever tried to eat an olive straight from the tree, you will know what I mean - it's VERY bitter and VERY hard!)

• Make a slit in each olive or crack each one open carefully with a wooden mallet.
• Put the olives in a large bowl and cover with water.
• Change the water daily for two weeks to extract the bitterness and make the olives "sweet".
• After 14 days, drain the olives and place in a solution of brine made with 100g salt/1 litre water for every kilo of olives - leave for 2 days.
• Drain again and place in a solution of vinegar and water made with 1 part water to 4 parts vinegar.
• Finally, drain the olives again and store them in olive oil and herbs of your choice OR a mix of 3 parts brine (made as above) to 1 part vinegar covered with a layer of oil.

NB: The local Cypriots tend to use other methods of "sweetening" olives, mainly using LARGE quantities of salt. We even know one local who cures their olives just by covering them with salt for a week!

If you have tried olives in Cyprus and hated them, this could be the reason why!

But if you use the method above, you will end up with wonderful sweet olives and you can add all sorts of herb combinations to create your own special marinated olives.

• rosemary, dried chillies, garlic, black pepper and olive oil
• Or fennel seeds, rosemary, crushed coriander seeds, garlic and olive oil

Tip: Be careful if you add lemon juice to your marinade - this is best done only for olives you are going to consume quickly as the lemon juice gradually colours the olives and makes them go mouldy if left in the marinade too long.

Finally, when you visit the olive oil factory, don't forget to buy enough oil to make some fantastic flavoured oils too.

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