Oil Sticks or Something

 Laura Calder is probably one of my favourite cookbook authors- her lemon pasta sauce is fantastic, and she has this honey and herbes de Provence chicken that is life changing. 

But there's this one recipe of hers I've thought about for probably a decade now. The only reason I can come up with for why it's in a cookbook is that she needed to fill up space in the appetizer section.   

I can't remember the exact name.  Probably it's in french anyway but it was something like Herbed Oil Branches or another equally ridiculous-yet-intriguing handle.

Anyway, here's the recipe, more or less:

You get some fancy olive oils and put them in little bowls.  Then you cut up tiny branches of rosemary or thyme or another woody herb, and you instruct your guests to dip the herbs in the oils and suck them clean.

Now I know what you're thinking because I am also thinking this, but no, I'm serious, it's an actual recipe. 

Okay so let me just get this off my chest.

The FIRST problem with this idea is explaining it to your company.  People in Canada are not super into sharing food Quite This Intimately with other guests.  I mean, we get a little nervous around fondue.  People eat from their 'own' sides off a plate of nachos.  This is going to be a tough sell, is what I'm saying. 

The SECOND problem is gravity.  You dip something in oil, and then you lift it out of the oil, see what happens next is the oil drips off! It drips off on tablecloths and cloth napkins and the other herb fronds and everyone's pants and hands and chins and...this becomes the exploding spaghetti with red sauce on a first date problem only with warm oil.

The THIRD problem is of course that woody herbs are strongly scented and flavoured so if the point is to sample a selection of olive oils, y'aint gonna taste much over, say, a big ole branch of rosemary.  Why not bread? What's wrong with a nice baguette???

FOURTHLY  have you seen how much fancy olive oil costs?? This could, no word of a lie, EASILY become a $100+ appetizer.   Easy.

And finally, DOUBLE DIPPING is going to tear its ugly head pretty early in the game no matter how civilized you believe your friends to be.  And it is probably better to just assume it's happening from the start.