I found this nifty little diddy from Chef Jose Andres on a Youtube vid on the EnthusioChefs channel. It’s a great place to find some inspiration. This was called caramelized olive oil.
You can watch it here:
It seems simple enough but there isn’t much to go on in the description besides:
…caramelized olive is passed through a ring mold filled with isomalt, encapsulating the olive oil in a glass candy coating.
To be honest, in typical manly fashion, I didn’t actually read the “About” section before doing it, so I guess I found another way to skin the same cat.
How I made mine is with plane castor sugar, heated up to melting point, dipped in a washer, and then poured in cool olive into the washer. What I found is that the sugar needs to be heated very gently or it will burn and go bitter. Also, I made the rookie mistake of adding lemon zest to the sugar solution, which just burn. In a later attempt I added the lemon zest to the olive oil instead and it worked great.
It takes a bit of experimentation to get the right sugar temperature, too hot and the sugar won’t adhere to the washer, too cool and the droplet won’t form completely. My rough judgement is that it worked best at 105º C.
As you would guess the better the olive oil the better. I opted for an Olyvenbosch olive oil that nabbed a Silver at the SA Olive Awards this year.
So long as you melt your sugar really slowly and use good olive oil, this is a definite winner. Something I see myself making a lot more in the future.