Q:

How to cook in olive oil

There are plenty of recipes regarding how to cook fish, and other foods, in olive oil. 
This puzzles me because olive oil has a very low smoking point.  So I'll burn it if I cook fish at 350 degrees.  If I set the temp to 200 degrees, the fish will cook for ages and will basically boil in it's own juices. 
So how do seasoned cooks deal with this?  How do you cook in olive oil? 

A:

Lorel's analysis is correct.   But let me add that olive oil is merely the fashionable oil at the moment.   Most people don't know that it has a low smoking point, and think they're using The Best if they're using it for everything, even if they buy special non-olive-tasting olive abominations.   Recipes are not necessarily produced by well-trained chefs, much less ones with serious backgrounds in nutrition or chemistry. 
So in summary, it's perfectly OK to use olive oil to saute your fish.   But if you were to want to fry the same fish, that's a different proposition.   Frying anything requires much higher temperatures, and you should feel free to substitute any suitable oil for that, no matter what the recipe says.   Peanut is the classic, safflower is just as good, just off the top of my head (beware of many charts floating around, which seem to differ greatly with the source)

