Ointment and anointment: oil of the Aegean and Mediterranean

 Glossy brochures are tucked inside Sunday newspapers to be delivered through nearly every letterbox in the country, advertising summer sun.

Winter evenings draw in very early -- often it is dark by 4 p.m. -- but the advertisements of different national tourist boards sandwiched between your favorite soap opera and the news can whisk you away to an impeccable beach with water that is as crystal clear as it is deep blue. You can imagine yourself swimming with the brightly colored fish, relaxing in a hammock under a palm tree, exploring the ancient ruins depicted, sampling the delicious local cuisine or dancing the night away under the stars.

Whether the images are of Egypt -- “where it all begins” -- India -- “incredible India” -- Croatia -- “the Mediterranean as it once was” -- or Turkey -- “Turkey welcomes you,” above all, what these advertisements all have in common is that while they cannot exactly make you feel the warmth of the sun on your back, they offer happiness. Smiling children run excitedly alongside contented moms and dads, romantic couples embrace to the setting sun and even lone travelers find friends to share the experience with.

Currently the BBC is running a set of advertisements for its online program iPlayer. The style is a famous “talking-head” that sees personalities share some thoughts about their craft. In one of these, top chef Rick Stein explains how, coming from “cold, northern Europe,” he is irresistibly attracted to the cuisine of the Mediterranean as it “symbolizes sunshine” to him.

Reds, golds and greens on a plate: peppers, oranges, lemons, white cheese, parsley, arugula, dill, rosemary; all of these resonate in our hearts with memories of summer sunshine and lazy holiday days. But, above all, the taste of summer is delivered to wintry meal tables by the humble olive.

Black or green, as they come or pitted and stuffed with pimentos, olives as a fruit or olive oil drizzled over salad leaves or vegetables, olives are the quintessential Mediterranean fare. Whether it be a Spanish tapas bar, a stylish Turkish restaurant or a family-run Italian pizzeria, olives feature in many different forms throughout the menu. The sight, aroma and taste of ciabatta bread to dip in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, eggplant cooked in olive oil or a slice of thin pizza topped with cheese and olives is sufficient to transport the diner to a world bathed in sunshine.

The humble olive has become so synonymous with stylish food that the BBC’s gastronomic magazine is entitled, just simply and without a capital letter, olive. Its tagline says that “olive is the stylish, monthly magazine for food lovers who enjoy cooking, eating out and foodie travel.”

Well, it was about time that the Edible Series of books get round to devoting a volume to this fruit with a feel-good factor. Top Chinese chef Ken Hom extols these small hardback books, with a very plain cover, saying they “contain some of the most delicious nuggets of food and drink history ever.”

Fabrizia Lanza -- herself possessing a deliciously Mediterranean name -- has packed into 100 color-illustrated pages a eulogy to our favorite salty taste.

At this point, I guess I should confess that although I love cooking with olive oil, even after nearly two decades in Turkey, I have never managed to acquire a taste for olives themselves. They are okay when cooked and covered with lashings of tomato or cheese (on top of a pizza, in a fancy bruschetta), but not naked on the end of a cocktail stick. This, of course, delights my friends at the meal table, who quickly recognize this means all the more for them!

Google the olive tree and you quickly discover that not only does this vegetation have a history almost as old as time itself, but that the tree is an international symbol of peace, fruitfulness, beauty and dignity. Lanza expresses this thought as “[the olive] lives in our literature, it is part of our symbolism, it lights our prayers and it enriches our culture and our diet.”

She presents a lively history of the olive, full of amazing facts you could store up just to drop into the conversation at a dinner party at the right moment. For example, “To be born under an olive tree was a mark of divine ancestry” (Artemis and Apollo, Romulus and Remus); the wild olive dates back to 10,000 BC (“an olive stone unearthed in Spain is carbon-dated to 6000 BC”); and it was European Christian missionaries who, unable to do without their olives, took the tree to America (Franciscan friars to California and Spanish missionaries to Mexico, both in the late 1700s).

We all know how the olive branch features in the Biblical story of Noah and his flood, when the dove returns to the ark with a twig of olive in his beak. From the second millennium BC, we have records found near Ararat containing instructions laid down by Babylonian King Prince Hammurabi about trade and commerce in olives. Frescoes in the tomb of Tutankhamen include pictures of vases of olive oil, “luxurious provisions for the soul’s voyage to the other world.”

Less well-known are practices from the Middle Ages, such as the offering of olive oil at the tomb of St. Nicholas in Myra, near Antalya. Poured into his tomb, running over his bones and then out through holes at the bottom of the sarcophagus, it was bottled and sold to the faithful for miraculous healing.

Not unique to Christianity, the olive also features symbolically in Islam. “The Prophet himself recommended that oil be used not only in cooking but also for body care and to cure over 60 illnesses. … According to scholars of an Islamic holy book, the Sunna, after the great flood the olive was the first tree to grow on the emerging land.” Lanza also draws our attention to Sura 24 in the Quran, which speaks of oil from the blessed olive tree as a symbol of Allah’s knowledge and light.

Living for over a thousand years, the olive tree is witness to so much human history. Some of the olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem, where Jesus prayed, may well be the original ones that were witness to him and his disciples walking amongst them. But it takes patience to cultivate an olive grove. Lanza tells us that they don’t reach full productivity for 35 years -- and there is a Turkish saying that reminds us “I plant, my son tends, my grandson will harvest.”

Perhaps this is why the olive is such a part of the ongoing cycle of life, its story intertwined with the land and with generations of family. But, above all, it will remain the queen of the Aegean and Mediterranean coastline. For, as Lanza concludes, “a preference for olive oil … conceals a deeper demand, a deeper desire. Olive oil is not merely a type of fat, it stands for an entire alternative way of life. More than a mere ingredient, the olive offers a complete system of values.”

To enable you to sample these values, she includes a delicious set of mouth-watering recipes. Choose these to transport yourself and your guests into the elusive world whose gateway is the olive. “To prefer olive oil over butter is like preferring mythology over history; it’s a search for a mythic time in some mythic place uncontaminated by the compromises of life in the here and now.”

“Olive: a Global History,” by Fabrizia Lanza, published by Reaktion Books (2011), 9.99 pounds in hardcover ISBN: 978-186189868-5.