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See you there!
0 Comment » When I saw Michelle’s post over at Bleeding Espresso for the O foods for Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month recipe contest, I knew I’d have to join in. It’s a great cause and it gives me a chance to do one of my favorite things…. cook up a good recipe.
Of course, then the challenge was finding something that starts or ends with O. Being in Italy, the first thing that came to mind was obviously something with Olives. So, I decided to make some Olive Ascolane - Olives from Ascoli.
This calls for a forewarning however. This recipe is by no means a diet recipe. We’re talking breaded olives stuffed with meat and cheese and deep fried. And, even though the recipe isn’t difficult, it is pretty time-consuming. But, they make pretty spectacular aperitivi and, in fact, you’ll often find them as antipasti in restaurants here in Italy. Of course, I’m sure most of the restaurants buy them frozen and already stuffed.
The recipe calls for olives from Ascoli, but any green olive will do. You’ll need to find the biggest ones you can though because you’ll be stuffing them and, since neither you nor I have an industrial olive-stuffing machine, jumbo olives are a must.
You can stuff the olives in a variety of ways: using a pastry bag, with a ziploc bag with the corner cut off, or by cutting a slit down one side of the olive and using a small spoon to spoon the stuffing in. This last one was the method I used after my ziploc bag popped a seam.
One more thing… the recipe calls for 2 lbs of olives but these are the kind with the pits still in them. If you’re lucky enough to find huge pitted olives, you won’t have enough filling for 2 lbs of them (and probably don’t want to make that many at once). I wasn’t lucky enough to find pitted ones, but Dad’s here visiting, so I put him to work. (Thanks Dad!)
These babies freeze well and can be deep fried without thawing. In fact, I froze the majority of the ones I made and will keep the rest in the freezer for the next time I have some company over for aperitivi.
Anyway, enough of the preliminaries, here’s the recipe:
Ingredients
2 lbs large green olives
1/2 lb ground beef
4 oz. prosciutto crudo
1 cup mixed grated cheese (parmiggiano & pecorino romano)
4 eggs
1 tsp tomato paste
flour
breadcrumbs
oil for frying
Directions
Pit olives if they aren’t already pitted.
Cook the ground beef in a frying pan (with no added oil or salt) and allow to cool.
Cut the prosciutto up into small pieces.
Put the ground meat, grated cheese, prosciutto, tomato paste and two of the eggs into the food processor and process until you have a smooth paste. Do not add any salt - between the cured olives, prosciutto and the cheeses, there is plenty of salt already.
Fill olives with the meat mixture using your preferred method. (See discussion above.)
Beat the other two eggs in a bowl.
Dip olives first in flour, then in egg, then in breadcrumbs.
Once the oil is hot and ready for deep frying, dump the olives in and allow to cook for a few minutes until breading has browned. (I’m assuming everyone knows how to deep fry. i.e. how to check and see if the oil is hot enough and not to overfill the pan, etc.)
Once cooked, drain on paper towels and serve hot.
Enjoy!
Here’s the information about the O foods for Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month again:
O Foods for Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month
September is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. In honor of Gina DePalma, author of Dolce Italiano: Desserts from the Babbo Kitchen and Executive Pastry Chef of Babbo Ristorante in NYC, who was recently diagnosed with ovarian cancer, Sara of Ms Adventures in Italy, Jenn of The Leftover Queen, and Michelle of Bleeding Espresso are asking you to donate to the:
Ovarian Cancer Research Fund (via FirstGiving.org)
and then, out of the goodness of your hearts and to be eligible for the O Foods for Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month Contest, please do the following:
1. Post a recipe to your blog using a food that starts or ends with the letter O (e.g., oatmeal, orange, okra, octopus, olive, onion, potato, tomato) and include this entire text box in the post;
OR
2. If you’re not into the recipe thing, simply post this entire text box in a post on your blog to help spread the word about the event and Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month.
AND
3. Then send your post url [along with a photo (100 x 100) if you’ve made a recipe] to ofoods[at]gmail[dot]com by 11:59 pm (Italy time) on September 30, 2008.
We will post a roundup and announce prize winners on October 3.
Prizes:
- 1 Recipe Prize for best “O food” concoction: $50 gift certificate to Amazon;
- 1 Awareness Prize for only publicizing event: Copy of Dolce Italiano cookbook.
———
From the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund:
- Ovarian cancer is the leading cause of death from gynecologic cancers in the United States and is the fifth leading cause of cancer death among U.S. women; a woman’s lifetime risk of ovarian cancer is 1 in 67.
- The American Cancer Society estimates that 21,650 women will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer in the U.S. in 2008 and about 15,520 women will die from the disease.
- The symptoms of ovarian cancer are often vague and subtle, making it difficult to diagnose. There is no effective screening test for ovarian cancer but there are tests which can detect ovarian cancer when patients are at high risk or have early symptoms.
- In spite of this patients are usually diagnosed in advanced stages and only 45% survive longer than five years. Only 19% of cases are caught before the cancer has spread beyond the ovary to the pelvic region.
- When ovarian cancer is detected and treated early on, the five-year survival rate is greater than 92%.
Please donate to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund
and help spread the word!
Head on over to My Bella Vita where Cherrye has cooked up some luscious baked potatOes! And, before you say, “what’s so special about a baked potato?”, check it out because they’re not your average spuds. They’ve got some extra added yumminess.
This is a plug for a new site started by some of the people here in town. It’s a forum where people from town can discuss current events, people far away can keep in contact with what’s going on or get in touch with relatives, request information, etc. Since I know there are quite a few people who read my blog that have relatives in town or nearby, or just want to know more about it, I thought I’d mention it here so that you can head over and register if interested.
Here’s the link:
http://palmoliviva.forumattivo.com/forum.htm
I’ll be helping out on the English side of things, so let me know if you need any help.
Two years ago, O introduced me to an herb he called, Erba Pepe. His mom’s neighbor cultivates it and now I’ve started to keep a plant handy too.
I can understand why it’s called erba pepe because it has a slightly peppery flavor, but I have been unable to determine what herb it really is.
Here’s a picture
I don’t know if you can tell, but the stem is woody, the leaves are tiny, and they get tiny lavender flowers (yes, they look white in the picture, but trust me, they’re lavendar colored). In fact, it resembles thyme although with a slightly different flavor, and I was originally convinced that it was some kind of thyme. That is until I saw it for sale in a garden show. There was a row of thyme and a row of erba pepe. Hmmm.
Research on the internet (Google) has given me three possible names of what it could be:
lepidium latifolium
polygonum hydropiper
spiraea filipendula
With these names in hand, I was determined to find out what it really is. Unfortunately, I’m still left pretty much clueless.
Lepidium latifolium is also known as “broadleaved pepperweed” or “pepperwort”. That must be it, right? Wrong. I thought I’d stumbled upon it, and the description made it sound possible. But, then I saw that it has masses of white flowers. My erba pepe has one small lavendar colored flower. They don’t grow in clusters.
So, it was off to the next name, polygonum hydropiper. It’s also known as “Water Pepper” . When I read that, I thought that surely I had found it. But no, according to what I’ve read, Water Pepper has hardly any odor and a bitter taste when chewed. Besides, the pictures don’t look anything like my erba pepe.
Last but not least was spiraea filipendula. I stumbled upon two possibilities for this one: “dropwort” or “meadowsweet”. The dropwort description didn’t fit and neither did the meadowsweet description.
So, I’m back to square one. Could it be some species of thyme? The leaves are more pointed than those of common thyme. There is a species called thymus herba-barona which has pink flowers and does resemble it more closely, but its common name is caraway thyme because its scent is similar to caraway, so I’ve ruled that one out too.
Whatever it is, it dries nicely and retains all of its flavor. And, whether fresh or dried, it’s great with chicken or turkey cutlets and in broth and soups.
Some day I may know what it is. Until then, I’ll continue to experiment with it and use it on my turkey cutlets.
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