Scorp: Have an Oily Dinner

Scorp. It’s a verb. It’s a noun. It’s an excessive act of overeating, and Tuscans do it with extra-virgins.

The word has been Anglicized from the seemingly unpronounceable scorpacciata (skor-pah-CHA-tah)--a focused binge that concentrates on specific foods that are frequently regional--and/or seasonal, such as spring strawberries, cherries, or asparagus, tomato or truffle season.

Or extra-virgin olive oil. One of the most serious scorps takes place each winter in Tuscany, when freshly pressed, almost phosphorescent green, aggressively peppery olive oil is abundantly poured over practically everything at the table. The Tuscans top bread-thickened soups with a C-shaped drizzle, drown beans, dress potatoes and black cabbage, and dip raw winter vegetables into pungent, green extra-virgins. Don’t wear silk--there is bound to be some splattering.

The flavors will calm down in a couple of months, to the relief of delicate palates (including famed cookbook authors Marcella and Victor Hazan, who feel this oil is a pain in the throat), but most Tuscans love to scorp on olio nuovo , new oil--the local, just-pressed, powerfully flavorful extra-virgin olive oil.

Just-pressed olive oil is a special condiment--don’t think of it as a regular oil. It’s used raw, straight from the bottle at the table, and it is definitely not for cooking or frying.

On farms outside Florence, after the grapes have been picked and wine has been made but before winter arrives, green olives ripen and turn red, then purple and finally black. Pickers on ladders use wooden combs to pull fruit from the branches of olive trees bred specifically for oil. Parachutes are spread under the trees to catch the olives, a mixture of immature green, partially ripe speckled red and fully developed purple-black fruit. This blend of olives and ripeness contributes to the complexity of central Italy’s extra-virgin olive oils. (Olives from lake regions with milder climates or from warmer coastal areas have more time to mature and produce a sweeter, fatter, riper, yellower oil.)

The harvested olives are quickly transported in low crates, barrels or burlap bags to an oil mill. Speed and delicacy are required, since a massed pile of bumped-around olives may start to heat up, ferment and acidify, ruining the oil before it’s even processed.

At traditional mills, olives are washed, most leaves are removed and the fruit is ground under a granite wheel. The paste produced is piped onto round woven disks, piled up like a stack of records and lightly pressed. The pits facilitate drainage. The juice that streams off the mats is collected and centrifuged, separating the lighter oil from the vegetal water.

This is virgin olive oil, made from first-time, lightly pressed (no excessive methods used for greater extraction) olives, with maximum acidity of 2%. If the acidity is below 1%, it can be called extra-virgin, but most quality extra-virgins have far less. The stuff known as pure olive oil is extracted with chemical solvents, then refined, deodorized, de-acidified and blended with virgin for flavor and color.

A new law promises to divide Italy into delineated olive oil zones that will be identified on labels, a guarantee of quality similar to the DOC wine laws. But since 94% of the olive oil bottled in Italy isn’t extra-virgin, virgin or even made from Italian olives, the powers behind olive oil aren’t going to be in a hurry to instantly qualify the finest product.

Faced with a shelf of olive oil bottles of different sizes and shapes, oils of different colors and a wide range of prices, how can the consumer choose a quality extra-virgin? Just look for three little words on the label of any extra-virgin: prodotto e imbottigliato (produced and bottled). Those words guarantee that the oil is made from a producer’s own olives.

And it’s important they appear together. The word imbottigliato by itself means that olives or already-pressed oil can come from a neighboring grove, Southern Italy, Spain, Greece or even North Africa. It can still be first-rate, blended by a master, but you’re taking a chance that it might not be Tuscan. And green Tuscan oil is required for the following recipes.

Ideally, it should be freshly pressed in November or December and purchased before the end of February. The stuff is just catching on in the United States and is now--or soon will be--available in quality food stores such as Santa Monica’s Broadway Deli.

If you can’t find it near home, beg a friend visiting Tuscany to bring some back. Or start harassing the nearest wine merchant who carries Tuscan wines to get some fresh olive oil with the new vintages. If Beaujolais Nouveau can speed to the United States, so can olio nuovo. Insist. Scorping out with extra-virgin olive oil is worth it.

Please note that all recipes use newly pressed extra-virgin olive oil uncooked--heat diminishes flavor. When oil is used as a condiment, not a cooking medium, it is added at the last moment, before serving, and never heated. And bear in mind that all the following recipes, while they won’t be quite as exciting, can be prepared with any first-rate extra-virgin Tuscan olive oil, even if it’s not freshly pressed.

Millers of olive oil barely have time to eat during the crush. They prepare an easy-to-execute garlic bread snack on a heater/stove while working at the cold, damp, oily, aired mill. Bread is lightly toasted, rubbed with garlic and dipped in newly pressed olive oil, resulting in the dish known as Fett’ Unta, a contraction of the words fetta (slice) and unta (oiled). The recipe is surely the world’s greatest--it’s fast, easy and tasty, needs no special equipment or skills and calls for only five ingredients, including salt and pepper. It’s meatless and milk - less, and the olives don’t suffer. Traditionalists will need a wood fire, although a charcoal gas grill, broiler or toaster oven will do fine. Unsalted, rustic Tuscan bread, white or whole-wheat, is the first choice to pair with fresh olive oil. Almost any basic, water-based, butterless, country-style bread will do; one friend favors rye. Day-old bread is preferred. One slice per person isn’t enough for a good scorp, but it’s a beginning.

FETT’ UNTA (Tuscan Garlic Bread) 4 (1-inch-thick) slices rustic bread 4 cloves unpeeled garlic About 3/4 cup freshly pressed extra-virgin olive oil Salt Freshly ground pepper

Toast, grill or broil bread slices until lightly browned on both sides. Rub 1 clove unpeeled garlic over surface of each slice. (Garlic haters should eliminate this step; garlic fans should press hard.) Liberally pour oil over garlicked bread or totally immerse bread in oil. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve immediately. Makes 4 servings.

Note: Garlic grates itself on hardened toast, peels disintegrate and fingers don’t smell garlicky.

Each serving contains about: 463 calories; 278 mg sodium; 42 grams fat; 20 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams protein; 0.12 gram fiber.

Cavolo con le Fette is an austere, easy-to-assemble first-course soup. Tuscan black cabbage is boiled until tender and served atop a piece of toasted, garlicked bread, then moistened with black cabbage broth and garnished with newly pressed extra-virgin olive oil. Tuscan black cabbage is rarely seen outside Tuscany, but home gardeners can grow the real thing, called lacinato kale; seeds are available by mail from Shepherd’s Garden Seeds, (408) 335-6910. Regular kale can be substituted for Tuscan black cabbage, and although red, Savoy or regular cabbage may not be the choice of Tuscan purists, use them if they’re the freshest around. The vegetable and broth can be prepared in advance and reheated before serving.

CAVOLO CON LE FETTE (Cabbage and Slices) 8 ounces kale, Tuscan cabbage (lacinato kale) or cabbage 4 (1-inch) slices rustic bread 4 cloves unpeeled garlic 1/2 to 3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil Salt Freshly ground pepper

Remove tough central ribs and/or core of kale or cabbage leaves. Tear into pieces or coarsely chop. Cook in 6 cups salted, boiling water until kale is tender and water is flavored with kale, 15 to 20 minutes. (Tough kale or Tuscan cabbage will need twice as much water and time. Tuscans overcook vegetables. Use large pan of water and boil kale at least 1 hour.) Reserve 2 cups broth and drain cabbage.

Lightly toast bread. Rub each slice with 1 clove unpeeled garlic and place in 4 soup bowls. Layer cabbage on toast and ladle over 1/2 cup broth per bowl. Top each with 2 to 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Makes 4 servings.

Note: You can make a more substantial dish by pureeing half of cooked cabbage with its broth and topping toast with broth-puree, cabbage, olive oil, salt and pepper to taste.

Each serving contains about: 372 calories; 302 mg sodium; 28 grams fat; 26 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams protein; 0.97 gram fiber.

This dish can be cooked in an ordinary bean pot, but tradition-bound Tuscans use a glass wine flask placed in a fireplace near embers, or a bulbous red-clay bean pot with a tapered neck that is placed over a low flame on a stove. The white beans, soft and starchy, are then drowned in freshly pressed extra-virgin olive oil. In a reversal of traditional roles, the condiment costs more than the food it adorns. If you’ve got phenomenal oil, it would be a shame to use canned beans, but quick-soak, pressure-cooker or anti-flatulence cooking methods may substitute for the slow, low-heat, Tuscan bean-pot technique.

FAGIOLI AFFOGATI (Drowned Beans) 2 cups white beans Fresh sage leaves Salt 1 clove garlic, peeled Freshly ground pepper 2 cups extra-virgin olive oil

Soak beans in 3 quarts water overnight in clay or ceramic bean pot.

Drain beans and return to pan along with 3 quarts fresh cold water. Add sage leaves, 1 teaspoon salt and garlic. Place pan over minimum heat (lower heat is better) and cook until tender, about 2 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally with wooden spoon.

Drain beans and place in serving dish. Season to taste with salt and pepper and cover with freshly pressed olive oil. If using calmed-down oil, reduce amount to 1 cup. Makes 16 side-dish servings or about 8 main-dish servings.

Each serving contains about: 323 calories; 23 mg sodium; 27 grams fat; 15 grams carbohydrates; 6 grams protein; 1.54 grams fiber.

Is Zuppa Lombarda named for Bernardino Zendrini, a Lombard who drained the Tuscan Maremma swamps? Or is it just a regional remedy when hunger bays on an almost-empty cupboard? Whatever its origins, this mono-vegetable soup rivals Cabbage and Slices for austerity, substituting beans for cabbage. White beans are thought to be the best possible food to taste the flavors of extra-virgin olive oil, even better than bread or potatoes, although purists will sniff and slurp without starch.

ZUPPA LOMBARDA (Lombard--But Really Tuscan--Bean Soup) 4 cups cooked white beans 2 cups bean-cooking broth Salt Freshly ground pepper 4 (1-inch) bread slices 4 cloves garlic, unpeeled 1/2 to 3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Gently heat cooked beans and broth in saucepan until heated through. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Lightly toast bread and rub each slice with 1 clove unpeeled garlic. Place in 4 soup bowls. Ladle beans and broth over toast. Top each with 2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil. Makes 4 servings.

Each serving contains about: 587 calories; 277 mg sodium; 1 mg cholesterol; 29 grams fat; 64 grams carbohydrates; 21 grams protein; 4.57 grams fiber.