Olive Oil & Parmasan Cheese Recommendations

Quasar

As an Italian, I can heartily recommend EV olive oil, which is the most stable for cooking. The best qualities are of course rather expensive, but
either Berio or Carapelli are good choices.

Parmesan cheese? The only two worth buying are Parmigiano Reggiano - the top and most expensive, but divine - or Grana Padano, the second best.

Please remember that you don't need a lot of oil in cooking, nor a lot of grated cheese to flavour up a dish. This is a mistake that many make. The parmesan is suppose to accompany the dish's taste, not overwhelm it.

spiddy100

Lidl's olive oil *says* extra virgin on the bottle, I don't know an awful lot about olive oil but I find it too bitter for using in salads etc, but it's nice for cooking with and cheaper than the normal stuff elsewhere

HappyIdiotTalk

Quasar wrote:

As an Italian, I can heartily recommend EV olive oil, which is the most stable for cooking. The best qualities are of course rather expensive, but
either Berio or Carapelli are good choices.

Parmesan cheese? The only two worth buying are Parmigiano Reggiano - the top and most expensive, but divine - or Grana Padano, the second best.

Please remember that you don't need a lot of oil in cooking, nor a lot of grated cheese to flavour up a dish. This is a mistake that many make. The parmesan is suppose to accompany the dish's taste, not overwhelm it.

Carapelli is the one my Italian in-laws use. They've said that the one they use isn't available over here. You can get Carapelli, but not the variant they have which is quite special apparently.

Well if you can use EV for cooking too, I may as well use that. I'm really surprised though, I've even heard chefs on the telly say that EV isn't robust enough for cooking, maybe they're talking about the really expensive delicate one's?

Back in November I bought £35 worth of this at the Good Food show (but they let me have it for £25):
http://www.savoria.co.uk/sess/utn;jsessionid=1545b49c6ebff83/shopdata/index.shopscript

It lasted up until about Christmas week.

jrrowleyws

EV olive oil burns like crazy if you try to fry with it and I find its too thick to even drizzle over veg if baking in the oven. Then again im not the biggest fan of olive oil. Sainsburys often have BOGOF or a similar offer, keep an eye out and stock up!

A bottle a week :O

HappyIdiotTalk

jrrowleyws wrote:

EV olive oil burns like crazy if you try to fry with it and I find its too thick to even drizzle over veg if baking in the oven. Then again im not the biggest fan of olive oil. Sainsburys often have BOGOF or a similar offer, keep an eye out and stock up!

A bottle a week :O

Yes thinking about it, a bottle probably is a lot, even if its the smallish one. I've taken Quasar's notes on board and will try and use less of it.

Lucie_2

I've just checked my parmesan, which is £9.59 per kilo from Costco. It's very good quality & excellent price, as IIRC I used to pay about £14/15 per kilo for it from the supermarket.
I also only use EV olive oil for salad dressings etc & "bog standard" olive oil for general cooking. My general rule is to buy it when it's on offer in the supermarket. Yesterday I paid £1.88 for 500ml in Morrisons.