`More than Music in Lucca this Summer - Olive Oil Times
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More than Music in Lucca this Summer

By Luciana Squadrilli
Jul. 6, 2015 10:56 UTC

The beau­ti­ful his­tor­i­cal city of Lucca is one of Italy’s archi­tec­tural jew­els, with its charm­ing cen­ter sur­rounded by ancient walls, and a renowned artis­tic and gas­tro­nomic des­ti­na­tion. This month, the city’s famous Lucca Summer Festival fea­tures Bob Dylan and Elton John among oth­ers.

In the beau­ti­ful Loggiato Pretorio, a Renaissance arcade in the very heart of the city, Fausto Borella, the cre­ator of the annual Extra Lucca event, decided to repli­cate it dur­ing the sum­mer with a two-week pro­gram full of oil tast­ings, meet­ings, pre­sen­ta­tions and more.

Every day from July 1 to 15, locals and vis­i­tors have the chance to dis­cover and taste a num­ber of excel­lent olive oils from all over Italy and to learn how to tell the dif­fer­ence between them through com­par­a­tive tast­ings.

Twice a day, at 12 PM and 5 PM, the region’s famous oils are paired with some of the best local and Italian food prod­ucts such as breads, fresh pas­tas, piz­zas, legumes and meats.

Fausto Borella

Each Wednesday a cook­ing demon­stra­tion will show peo­ple how to appre­ci­ate extra vir­gin olive oil at its best.

On July 1, the celebrity chef Giorgio Barchiesi, known as Giorgione, a pop­u­lar rep­re­sen­ta­tive of tra­di­tional Italian cui­sine, pre­pared a selec­tion of veg­e­tar­ian sal­ads sea­soned with high-qual­ity olive oils, while on the 8th the Tuscan butcher Michelangelo Masoni will present high-qual­ity meats com­bined with olive oils and a spe­cial sausage cre­ated for the occa­sion.

On the 15th, it will be up to the local chefs’ asso­ci­a­tion Enjoy Lucca (led by Samuele Cosentino, Giuliano and Corrado Pacini and Lorenzo Stefanini) to close the event prepar­ing tra­di­tional Tuscan foods paired with extra vir­gin olive oils.

Another sta­ple of Italy’s cook­ing tra­di­tion at the Extra Lucca Summer Edition are the ​“sfog­line,” the ladies rolling out fresh pasta by hand just every Italian house­wife used to.

Sweet teeth will be sat­is­fied, too: local pas­try chef Sara Bianchi pre­pares deli­cious cook­ies made with Dievole’s fan­tas­tic extra vir­gin olive oil instead of but­ter, while the renowned ice cream par­lor from Pisa, ​‘De Coltelli, pro­poses a tasty olive oil ice cream made with the excel­lent oils by Fattoria di Fubbiano and TuttoTonda, both awarded with a ​“Crown” in the Maestrod’olio 2015 guide edited by Borella.

The Extra Lucca Summer Edition, accord­ing to its orga­niz­ers, is also a tem­po­rary store for real food where peo­ple can buy good, guar­an­teed extra vir­gin olive oils made by Italy’s best pro­duc­ers. ​“It has been an incred­i­ble suc­cess, we already had to reorder the prod­ucts twice,” Borella said. ​“It’s very sim­ple: we let peo­ple taste a ​“com­mer­cial” olive oil first, then seven or eight qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oils, and that’s it. The go back home with at least a cou­ple of bot­tles each.”


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