The best affordable olive oil

The olive oil to buy

I would like to tell you about some olive oil that is so good it is the staple at Elitistreview Towers; we always feel delighted when we have the chance to use it. ‘So good’ is the prime quality that interests the team here, but speaking for myself, I also have an eye for a bargain. Consequently, I am delighted to tell you the olive oil every lover of properly good things should be hunting down in howling packs costs £5.99 per 500ml bottle at Sainsbury.

It is true, that not so many years ago I raved about something much flasher: Ravida. The thing was, back then it was not so flash. Many years after I started buying it as a seventeen year old going to school in Oxford it still cost £12.99 for a 750ml bottle. That is not so bad for a keen lunatic to use for lubricating most delights without squandering all the Severe Disablement Allowance. It was very good, not the nec ultra plus but good and priced accordingly.



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Wine

Dinner

Dinner

The other day I had one of the greatest meals of my life. A dinner marked by profundity of flavour in food and wine. If I may, I will enlighten you about the three core ingredients that made it such a downright enjoyable experience. Of their type, there’s little better easily available. I start with [...]

Food

Jerusalem cookbook

Jerusalem: a cookbook

The other day I had one of the most stunningly awesome meals of my life and it wonderfully affirmed the deep pleasure of being alive. That counts as ‘happy’! The Editor had cooked kofte and a tomato, herb and feta salad from the excellent cookbook Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi ( homepage here ) and Sami [...]

Other

Elitistreview Currents view

Some techie stuff about subscribing to Elitistreview

Much as it pain me to bore you all, dear readers, with boring technical stuff, I’m afraid I’m going to have to enlighten you about a few things if you are to keep mirthfully perusing my august organ. Some of my RSS subscribers will need to re-subscribe, as will some email subscribers, but to soften [...]

Extreme elegance

de Montille Volnay Champans 2002

Continuing my report on when Mr Greg came for lunch I’ll tell you about a couple of stunners. Our main course was a leg of Oxford Sandy and Black pork from Beechcroft Direct whose pigs have provided many of my most profound pork pleasures. Perhaps, my faithful readers, you will be unsurprised to learn I [...]

Delicate and dense

Toast the teddy with Trimbach Riesling Clos St Hune Vendanges Tardives 1989

On Friday we were happy to host at Elitistreview Towers a friend, Mr Greg the plastic surgeon, I’ve know for 26 years – we were at Oundle School together. Apart from my brother, he’s the only chap I was at that school with that I’m still in contact with. His sadly deceased father left Greg a [...]

Beer at the Bishop on the Bridge

wpid-botb-bar-with-davy.jpg

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I can feel hairs growing on bits of me

Domaine Colombier Hermitage 2008

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I hate this wine

Coume del Mas Schistes 2011

In a recent tasting note I said I bloody hate Grenache-based wines – they are normally too heavy, boozy and hard work. Given this, my excellent chum Lance Foyster, a wine merchant I’ve known for 20 years, decided to send me this bottle of 14.5% Grenache. I can only imagine he did this to continue [...]

Syrah-iously better

Crozes-Hermitage Le Rouvre 2007 by Yann Chave

The last bottle of Rhone wine I had was totally repulsive. Since this bottle was handily lying next to the bed I thought I would take advantage of the convenience factor and see if that also was a portent of good fortune. It was! This wine is far better than the crap Courbis Cornas and, [...]