From Santorini to your table: domatokeftedes

Once upon a time, in a quiet summer night Santorini, I've tried for the first times "domatokeftedes". I was astonished by this simple but rich taste of  this easy to make, poor, traditional Greek recipe.
This is my favourite version and I would like to share with you:

300 gr of  stale bread

150 gr of tomatoes

a tea spoon of flour

half of a red big onion

a tea spoon of cumin

one table spoon of oregano

salt  and pepper to taste

extra-virgin olive oil

Slice the tomatoes and let them drain for about 1 hour. Then wet the stale bread under running water and let it stand.
In the meanwhile chop finely the onion and mix it in a big bowl with tomatoes, the bread, the flour, add cumin, salt, pepper and oregano. Divide the paste in small pieces

Fry it in a frying pot till domatokeftedes turn to brown, dry them and serve hot or cold.

Olive Oil production estimate in Europe

 The output of olive oil production for the following season in Europe is not expected to be one of the best of last years.

This forecast is largely due to the bad harvest expected in the top producer country, Spain.

Spanish olive oil production is expected to fall to approximately 900.000 tons from 1.900.000 tons of last record-breaking harvest.

Dryness could be considered the main cause of this bad result that will affect more on the scarcity of olive oil currently available in world market and will push the prices high, higher than current price of extra-virgin in Jaén sold for 2,55€ per kilo.

The situation in Italy, second world producer of olive oil, is not better than Spanish one. The extreme weather conditions during last summer and early autumn, with heavy rainfalls in August and September and unusual hot temperatures during October damaged the crops. These conditions determined a high humidity rate that helped the spread of the olive oil fly inducing a quantitative and qualitative decrease of the production, especially  in regions with a huge production like Puglia and Calabria. Second place in world ranking this year is threated by another Southern European country: Greece.

Olive trees seen by Van Gogh

The Hellenic nation is the only player in Europe that is forecast to sharply increase its olive oil production.  After a negative season last year, with about 100,000 tons of output, the expected production for 2014-2015 harvest is of about 270,000.  Peloponnese might have a very good performance in coming season and Crete also is expected to have a good production.

Other countries, like Portugal and Croatia, will have a little drop.

The price of olive oil is currently touching the peak of last years. A kilo of oil is sold between 2,55€ of Jaén and the average Italian price of about 4,10 €. 

Sources

www.bloomberg.com

www.dailymail.co.uk

www.lastampa.it

www.agi.it

www.olioofficina.it

www.internationaloliveoil.org