Olives and super chili peppers, oh my!

Whoops...... I'm back!

Bought these puppies at Trader Joe's this morning. Can't be anything bad about them, right!?

I love that they have an Ode to Olives [pdf] on their site. 




As an aside, Flickr's new photo page really blows.

So also, I've been growing some plants on my balcony. Some have been more successful than others. A few months ago, my poor super chili (yes that's the name of the variety) fell off the balcony onto the ground below, but I was able to save it. I've been harvesting a few peppers off of it (they're REALLY spicy), but just in the last week, the thing decided to explode with flowers. If you look at the original version, you can see that there are literally a hundred soon-to-be peppers. I've been chopping them and freezing them so I have chili peppers ready whenever I want.

Olive Tapenade

I can't believe this is my first post about olive tapenade. It's one of my favorites that I almost always have in the fridge because it lasts for ages. Maybe mine is not a "real" tapenade because I don't use capers or anchovies, but it is delicious to me. Culinary hero Alton Brown said in his olive tv show that it is important for your tapenade to have different olives with different textures. No problem for me, as I usually have between 5-10 varieties in my fridge at any one time.

The basics, besides olives of course, are fresh lemon juice, dried red chili flakes, fresh parsley, and lots and lots of extra virgin olive oil. Sometimes, if I've tried a variety of olive as an experiment, and I don't like it, I'll use them in tapenade. That works quite well.

No olives out of cans here. In today's batch, I used what I had in the fridge, which consists of 7 olives from 4 countries, including: manzanillla from Spain, kalamata from Greece (which I don't think any tapenade should be made without), four from Italy (Gaeta from Lazio, Barenese from Puglia, Taggiasche from Liguria, Castelvetrano from Sicily), and Old Mission from California.

Oh yeah baby:

I love the way it comes out from the food processor. Before I got one, I used to do it in my little magic bullet, and while it worked and still tasted good, it kind of really pureed it into a paste. The food processor just chops it all, so you're left with little chunks of different kinds of olives. Perfect.

And, the best way to eat it. On a really good piece of toasted bread (this is an organic whole wheat miche from Trader Joe's, which comes as a huge half-loaf that I slice up and freeze to retain freshness. It rocks.). Not toooooooo many things in the world are better.

An Apulian Feast (and more from the Farmer's Market)

First things first, I went (of course) to the Farmers Market today. Saw Julie Bowen buying stuff with her family, that was cool, she seemed really nice and I wouldn't have known she was a celebrity if I hadn't recognized her. I really wanted to tell her how much I worship Modern Family, but I digress... For $24 I got a ton of cherries, tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber, grapefruit, snap peas, a red cabbage, and a couple of white nectarines. You know, if they made perfume that smelled like white nectarine, I'd totally buy it. I also tried some sirloin tip steak from the grass fed beef guy. It looks pretty good!

Anyway... a while back I was reading A Year in the World: Journeys of A Passionate Traveler, by Frances Mayes (of Under the Tuscan Sun fame). I am not sure how she brought it up but she mentioned a cookbook all of recipes from the Apulia (Puglia) region of Italy. It so happens that I am hopefully planning to try to hit that region on my next trip. Mayes mentions a dish of fried artichokes layered with tomato sauce and cheese, so I said UH WHAT! Luckily, the LA Public Library system had the book and I requested it: Flavors of Puglia. It has some amazing recipes in it, but this "Carciofi Parmigiana" recipe stuck out to me, as did a few with olives (no surprise there).

So for the artichokes, first you clean and soak them in lemon water, then make a batter of flour, water, and olive oil. Kind of like tempura I guess. Then you fry them.

Til "golden and crisp" - looks like it to me!! (and honestly, they were good just like this.)

but no, not done: one layer of artichokes, mozzarella, sauce, and parmigiano:

then another layer and it's ready for the oven:

And while it's baking, I started the sauteed olives. I used fresh tomatoes instead of canned, but otherwise it's just garlic, olives, tomatoes, a pinch of oregano, and some parsley. The olives i used were a combination of Apulian Peranzana olives and Ligurian taggiasche olives:

Then the big moment when the parmesan comes out of the oven. OH YEAH BABY!

And the finished meal. Apulia, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Castelvetrano Olives

I had these amazing olives in Italy from Florence's Mercato Centrale. They were called "Dolce" (sweet) and from Sicily. So mild and crisp and tasty and a kind of strange color of bright green, I knew I had to find out what they were! Last week or so I discovered that they are Castelvetrano olives... and it seemed like the only place to find them was to order from an Italian deli in NYC or something.

But today I decided to check out the LA Farmers Market because there's a crazy expensive, but cool, market in the back called Monsieur Marcel that has a ton of olives in tubs of brine, etc. I had filled up a little cup of various olives - picholine, gaeta, etc. and saw peeking through a label, bright green olives. Then I saw the price....... then I looked at the label and saw they were imported from a city named..... Castelvetrano...... so I bought them...... I took the plastic labeling off so you can see what they look like



They are wonderful but let's just say they'll stay in the fridge and come out for special occasions or when I really need a mood-lifter ;)

Spaghetti with Garlic, Olive Oil, Red Pepper Flakes, and Olives

This is one of my traditional "go to" dinners when i'm sick of other stuff or in a rush or craving pasta or just too lazy to do something else. While the spaghetti's boiling (I eat about 3oz dried for myself for a filling dinner and don't always use spaghetti but any really good Italian dried pasta), I put some really good olive oil in a nonstick pan big enough to toss the pasta in, roughly chop a couple garlic cloves (I like it garlicky), and sort of warm up the garlic for a minute or two on low heat - I don't want to burn it or kill the garlic flavor.

Toss in some red pepper flakes and the pasta and chop up a few kinds of olives (in this case a mix from the TJ's Greek Olive Medley), toss a bunch of grated cheese on, and boom, hot fresh semi-healthy dinner in about 15 min. Yum. This time I had some fresh parsley around so I added a bit.