Mediterranean Oil

[Mike Nolan]

Has anyone use the Mediterranean oil blend of canola, olive oil and grapeseed oil?

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[aaronatthedoublef]

I've never seen canola oil in any Mediterranean countries but I'll check with friends there.

Italy is mostly olive oil and from Umbria north they have lots of sunflowers for oil as well.

I'll check. BTW, wasn't there a woman on the old KAF baking circle who lived in Spain? Does anyone know what happened to her?

[BakerAunt]

Aaron--Here's a saved thread, where Sandra Alicante helped Mrs. Cindy with a baking project:

One More a Time, Please, Sandra Alicante!!

Sandra had a site called bakeinspain where she chronicled her baking and taught people how to bake her recipes. Mrs. Cindy was particularly complimentary about her croissants. Sandra needed to back off of the baking for health reasons (I can certainly understand that!) and was not checking in as frequently on the KAF Baking Circle as frequently, even before it closed. However, she was leaving the site up; I don't know if it is still there. She went on to create a new site craftinspain or maybe it was createinspain.

At least several people stopped coming to the Baking Circle because they felt it was too tempting when they were trying to change their diets for various reasons. After I learned about my cholesterol issues, I was determined not to be one of those who disappear from a baking site, but to 1)enjoy vicariously the kind of baking I can no longer do, and 2)explore and experiment with altering some recipes to make them accord with my new way of eating, and to share them with others who may be in the same situation.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks BA. And I get it. I faced my own battle with cholesterol a long time ago. I gave up dairy and whole eggs and exercised five or six days a week and my numbers stayed the same or went up. I was resistant to taking any drugs. When my dad died my doctor, a very smart, nice man who worried a lot about me, said "enough" and put me on statins. It's the only thing I've ever tried that has lowered numbers.

But the things I make weekly I now make with more whole grains and mix in flax seed and chickpea flour (be careful with chickpea flour as it has a strong taste) too. I've cut back on butter and cheese in my recipes as well. And interestingly my kids usually prefer what their mom or I make for them to anything we might buy, even with the whole grains and reduced dairy fat.

[Mike Nolan]

I was wondering about the inclusion of canola oil, which doesn't strike me as particularly Mediterranean. In Europe canola oil is more commonly called rapeseed oil, but I guess that name evokes strong emotions and trips content filters these days.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I know canola is from rapeseeds but I thought it was modified and was not pure rapeseed oil. I'll have to do some research.

And thanks for the pointer to Sandra. I'll need to look more at that.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by aaronatthedoublef.

[Mike Nolan]

You're correct, there is some processing, but modern canola oil is also the product of selective breeding. The seeds are heated, crushed and the oil extracted using hexane as a solvent. The yield is about 44%, the rest of the seed is used for animal feed.

Rapeseed oil is naturally high in erucic acid, which is toxic in high doses, but in the 1960's and 1970's Canadian plant researchers identified varieties of rapeseed that were much lower in erucic and eicosenoic acid and bred them to strengthen that characteristic. (BTW, this is NOT a GMO process, it involves natural selection of genes.) Eicosenoic acid is used in skincare products.

'Canola' is a constructed word, it comes from 'canada' and 'oil'.

Interestingly enough, rapeseed plants are a member of the Brassica family, like cabbages and broccoli. We drove through southern Ontario some years ago and saw large fields of plants with a pretty yellow blossom, we later determined those were rapeseed farms. See rapeseed field

[BakerAunt]

I've used a combination of olive oil and canola oil when I was concerned that the olive oil flavor might be too strong, but I combine it myself. I usually use canola oil in my baking, although Len's buns convinced me that olive oil can work in breads, and it certainly works in my apple cakes. Cass told me that olive oil goes very well with oranges, so I'll try that the next time I make that chocolate orange cake I tried last year.

I use grapeseed oil for browning meat and for my stir-fry. It seems to me that the canola gets an off taste when heated. That is also why I use it to brush my cheese crackers before baking them.

Aaron--I'm sorry that you were not able to lower your cholesterol by diet and exercise alone. Some people just have no choice, but it's good that you made the effort to find out that the drug is necessary for you. I did drop my cholesterol by 25 points after a year, and I think my doctor is waiting to see what the numbers are next time. My rule of thumb is to try to stay below 11g of saturated fat per day, eat oatmeal almost every morning, and incorporate more beans, fruits, and vegetables. Whether that will be enough for me remains to be seen.

[BakerAunt]

I should add that one of my sisters has lectured me on the "evils" of canola oil, but she didn't give me any specifics, and I didn't see issues at sites that I trust.

[Mike Nolan]

I don't do deep fat frying and not much pan frying either. I prefer butter for sauteeing foods.

I switched from canola oil to corn oil last year, but corn oil isn't as neutral a flavor. Recently I bought a bottle that is a combination of canola and soybean oil, so far I like it.

I'm sort of wondering about one thing, though. When you buy 'vegetable oil', they don't really tell you what vegetables it came from. I wonder about whether some of the newer vegetable oil blends are mainly just a marketing gimmick to sell you the same oil at a higher price by making it seem more artisan.

I had an interesting talk with my doctor during my last annual physical. He was looking at my cholesterol numbers (which are good but could be a little lower) and said that cholesterol is largely a genetic issue, some people just have high cholesterol levels. And there's some evidence that that this genetic predisposition doesn't necessarily mean clogged arteries. Monitoring your LDL (the 'bad' cholesterol) is advisable, even for those with genetically high cholesterol levels.

[RiversideLen]

From what I recall, the anti canola oil people say that there are a lot of pesticides with raising it, lots of chemicals used in manufacturing it and it is high in Omega 6 which contributes to inflammation. I'm not sure about the first two things as I have not read or heard about it in mainstream media. But I have heard that you want more Omega 3 than Omega 6. I haven't used it in some time because I don't like the odor when it heats up. I mostly use olive oil, some peanut oil and more recently grapeseed oil, which is also high in Omega 6 but it is neutral in taste and does not have an odor when heated to normal cooking temps.

[Italiancook]

I use olive oil for everything. I put Extra Virgin Olive Oil in pancakes, quick breads, and everything else non-cake that calls for butter or oil. If it calls for butter, I use some butter & sub rest with olive oil. I sautee everything in EVOO, even though it has a lower smoke point than other oils. The exception to this is biscuits, where I stick with butter. I gave up making crepes a few years ago, but I did use butter for them. For cakes and anything delicate, I use light olive oil. I don't own canola oil for reasons Len mentioned.

[Mike Nolan]

I read an interesting statistic the other day that said that 25% of the pesticides used in the USA are used to grow cotton.

A close friend of ours and my brother-in-law are both allergic to olives, so we tend not to cook with it at all. I do have one small bottle of it, I don't remember the last time I used any.

[aaronatthedoublef]

We use olive oil for a lot but it's smokes to easily on high heat. We use some canola, peanut, sesame too. Or sometimes I'll use safflower or sunflower instead of canola.

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