Olive You

Olives still on the tree

Yesterday we participated in an event I've been looking forward to for over a year.  It wasn't a national holiday or even a significant celebration. Rather, we joined some Albanian friends for a day of pressing olive oil.  We had been invited to partake in this late fall Albanian tradition last year but we couldn't make our schedules work to accommodate the pressing.  This year, we arranged our schedules around this event.

I had toured an olive oil factory during their off season so I was familiar with the machines and the process but I still wasn't sure what to expect.  The factory itself was nondescript.  We had actually driven past it before without noticing that it was even there.  Only a small sign nailed to a post at the top of the driveway gave any indication to the sweet oil that was produced at the bottom of the hill.  The first thing I noticed upon entering the factory was that it was very loud.  The sounds emanating from the machinery were deafening so I was pleased to see that the actual workers in the factory were wearing ear protection.  (The same can't be said for the handful of old men who were sitting around a table in the pressing room drinking raki).  Factory is almost a generous term for the building.  In reality it was an immaculate concrete structure with the ubiquitous bar/cafe attached to it.

The process itself hasn't changed much over the centuries but the equipment involved certainly has.  What used to be done completely by hand is now done with electricity driven machinery.  I can only imagine how much time it took to press olive oil the old fashioned way!  Burlap bags of freshly harvested olives were lined up along the walls of the pressing room.  I immediately noticed that some of the olives were green while others were purplish-black. It turns out that both kinds can be used and interchangeably at that.  The darker fruit are actually the ripe olives while the green ones are the unripe ones.  It makes sense.

The first step is for the olives to be sorted to remove any leaves and twigs that are mixed in with the olives.  The process brought me back to my Maine roots reminding of the way wild blueberries are sorted before being turned into blueberry delights.  The bags of olives are dumped into a large hopper that is set into the ground; they are then vacuumed up into the industrial sized sorting machine.

Olives being emptied into the hopper for sorting.

Coming out of the sorter all picked over

After the olives are sorted, they are ready for a hot bath.

Post bath, the olives then move into the actual pressing chamber.  Here they are ground and mashed into a puree to remove all of the tasty oils.

This is what the olives look like as the oil is being pressed out

Next, the extracted oil is filtered and pumped through a series of pipes and vats until it emerges as a beautiful green liquid.  This oil has a bright olive flavor (the same can't be said for many oils) that to my inexperienced palate tasted ready to use.  We were told that we need to let the oil sit in open containers for 24 hours to allow it to breathe.  After that, the oil should be stored in glass bottles in a dark space in order to keep its flavors pure.

What I found the most facinating about the entire process is what happens to the olive remnants after the oils are removed.  The mashed pulp and pits are transferred into a drying room where they are allowed to dry until they resemble dry saw dust.  They are then stored until next year's olive oil pressing when they are used as the fuel that heats the olive bath water.  How cool is that?

The pulp and pit room

Bags (and piles) of dried pulp and pits

This is what $100 of fresh olive oil looks like in Albania.  I can only imagine what this  one-year supply would cost us in the U.S.

We came home with 20 liters of fresh olive oil.  That is a lot of oil for us but for most Albanians, who cook only with with olive oil, it represents a fraction of what is needed to get through a year.  We also brought home 3 kilograms of cured olives. Considering I'm the only one in the Brown house who eats olives, that is a lot of late night snacking for one person.  I declined the offer for fresh, uncured olives though since I cured a batch of my own this past fall.  You can read about that experience here.

All NatYral

Organic food is trendy.  In the U.S. people flock to Whole Foods Market and their local Community Supported Agriculture farms for fresh organically grown meats, dairy products, and produce.  Organic soaps, beauty products and even clothing pack shelves in stores that market themselves as being environmentally friendly.  For true believers, cost is no object when it comes to providing their families with the freshest and most natural products available.

In Albania, as in many developing countries, being organic is and has been a way of life long before it became a trend.  Due in part to tradition, the lack of access to and the inability to afford non-natural fertilizers and pesticides many farmers continue to farm organically.  Most of the Albanian grown produce you find in roadside vegetable stands is organic even if it isn't labeled as such.  If you mention the phrase "organic" to many Albanians they don't understand what you are saying since farming in this country is by default, organic.  As Albania develops and becomes more western, however, there is a growing trend towards the labeling and marketing products as being organic.

Olive oil ready to be exported

Once such example that is on the cutting edge of this trend is the NatYral Farm located on the outskirts of Tirana in Ndroq.  Started in 2006 as local olive oil producer, the farm has expanded to include the export of extra virgin olive oil to other European countries as well as the production and local sale of dairy products.  This past weekend I had the opportunity to tour the farm and olive oil factory.

The olive oil factory set up was impressive.  Olive harvest season is during the late fall so olive oil wasn't being produced during our visit. We were still able to see the large cleaning and processing tanks where olives from four different southern Albanian locations (Elbasan, Fier, Vlora, and Himara) are brought in and pressed into extra virgin olive oil.  At peak operation, the factory has the capacity to process 17.5 tons of olives an hour resulting in 5,000 tons of olive oil each season.  (Imagine what that pile of pits looks like!)  We were also able to go into the underground storage cellar where the freshly pressed oil is stored in temperature controlled tanks before being packaged in tins and shipped off to distributors.

Cows on the farm

Our next stop on the farm was the cow barns.  It was a very hot day and I was dreading our schlep through the barns.  First, as silly as it may sound, cows scare me.  I also dislike the unpleasant conditions that exist on so many farms.  Up until this time, all of the farm animals I have seen in Albania have looked dirty, malnourished, and sad.  (This includes our two neighborhood cows who often cause traffic jams at the end of our street).  Much to my delight, these cows were clean and clearly well fed.  Despite the hot day, the cow barn didn't have that overwhelming stench I associate with farms.   These cows were obviously well cared for.  If there was any doubt to this it was quickly put to rest when we had the opportunity to sample and purchase farm fresh dairy products.  The cheeses and yogurt tasted fresh and the milk tasted like the milk I remembered from my childhood.  For the first time since we arrived in Albania, I added fresh milk to my other dairy purchases.

Organic Albanian products

An extension of NatYral Framing is the recently opened NatYral Restaurant right here in Tirana.  (The restaurant is conveniently located next door to a retail outlet that sells milk, butter and cheeses from the farm).  Operated by Ignazio Campanale, a Italian trained chef who has taught cooking classes at our Embassy, the atmosphere and food at NatYral Restaurant is nothing short of fabulous.  The interior of the restaurant is bright and airy and has an open kitchen- a highly unusual feature in Albanian restaurants. (I figure that any kitchen that is willing to let its patrons watch the food being prepared has nothing to hide).  The food is billed as traditional Italian food made with Albanian products; everything I've eaten there has been fresh, flavorful, plated beautifully and tasted unlike anything else I've had in this country.  The flavor combinations are as complex as Albania is ancient.  The hard part is deciding which menus items to chose.  At a recent lunch Glenn and I ended up placing both of our plates in the middle of the table and sharing.  I was torn between eating slowly to savor the flavors and picking up my pace before the food on the shared plates disappeared.  We liked the restaurant so much that we've already planned to treat our next out of town visitors to a dinner there.

Like most stores and restaurants in Albania, the prices at both the NatYral Farm and NatYral Restaurant are shockingly low by American standards. These prices make it so affordable to eat quality, organic products that it is a shame not to.  It is foods like these that make it so easy to eat well in Albania.