February 5, 2010 by jason.gibb
If you’re lucky enough to be in Rome and fancy hanging out with a young crowd, you could do a lot worse than head to Cafe Del Teatro in Testaccio. Order up an aperitivo – something colourful like Campari – and sit in wonder as a huge plate of canapés arrives with your prosecco. They’re not really canapés of course since those are French; the Italian equivalent are called ’stuzzichini’ or literally ‘little prodders’ (of the appetite). For anyone with a normal human appetite they do a lot more than prod. Don’t book a dinner reservation for afterwards.
Here are a couple of stuzzichini I’ve come up with which are guaranteed to prod your party guests into demanding the recipe from you.
Olive tapenade wheel
Ingredients
Puff pastry – 250g
Egg – beaten for brushing
Flour for dusting
On a floury surface roll out your pastry into a rectangle till it’s 2-3mm thick and roughly 30cm by 20 wide. Spoon out the tapenade evenly over the pastry leaving the top edge clear. Now roll up the pastry like a jam roll and use some egg on the clear upper edge to seal it. With dainty fingers carefully cut the roll into 1cm wide pieces and place in a baking tray lined with bake-o-glide. Cook at 220oC for about 14 minutes.
Sun-dried tomato and parmesan stuzzichino
Ingredients
Puff pastry – 250g
Parmesan – 75g cut into strips
Flour – for dusting
Egg – one beaten
Preheat the oven to 220oC. Roll out the pastry on a floury surface till it’s about 3mm thick. Cut it into 6cm squares. Fold a square in half to make a triangle. Then from the folded edge make a cut along each side towards the tip, but leave the apex attached. Unfold the square and place a piece of parmesan cheese lengthways from the uncut corner to the uncut corner. Fold the cut edges over each other, seal with a dab of egg, and place a sun dried cherry tomato on the top. Repeat until you’ve finished the pastry or just had enough. Place them all on a baking tray lined with bake-o-glide or something similar. Cook for 10 minutes and serve immediately.
Posted in Jason's Recipes | Tagged canape, dolce vita diaries, Italy, Jason Gibb, Nudo, olive tapenade, olives, prosecco, Rome, stuzzichino, sundried tomatoes | Leave a Comment »
February 2, 2010 by dolcevitadiaries
Diana Bauman from
A Little Bit of Spain in Iowa shares this delicious recipe with Nudo olive oil from her
blog with us this week. We think you’ll never look at those green old sprouts the same again.
Ingredients:
1/2 lb Brussel Sprouts, cleaned and halved
8 slices Pancetta
4 cloves garlic
1/2 red onion, sliced
1 slice of bread
Method:
1. In a large ziplock baggie, toss the brussel sprouts, 3 pressed garlic cloves and 2 tbls Nudo Olive Oil.
2. Empty the contents into a ovenproof dish and roast at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.
3. While the brussel sprouts are roasting, in a pan heat 1/4 cup nudo olive oil. When the olive oil is heated through, saute a slice of bread until browned on both sides. Set aside.
4. When the brussel sprouts have finished roasting… In the same pan that you sauteed the bread, add the onion and saute for about 3 minutes. Do not let them get fully tender. Add the pancetta and heat through for an additional minute.
5. Add the brussel sprouts and heat through for an additional 3 minutes. Remove from heat.
6. In a food processor, blend the bread and 1 – 2 cloves of garlic.
7. Sprinkle on top of the brussel sprouts mixture and finish by a last drizzle of Nudo Olive Oil!
You can read more about Diana’s food philosophy in our previous post. Thank you for sharing Diana.
Posted in Jason's Recipes, Your Stories | Tagged a little bit of spain in iowa, brussel sprouts, Diana Bauman, dolce vita diaries, food philosophy, Guest blog, Nudo, olive oil, pancetta, spain in iowa | Leave a Comment »
February 2, 2010 by dolcevitadiaries
Diana Bauman, the first blogger to be featured in our series on Nudo’s international foodie friends, is an organic vegetable grower, chicken rearer, local produce supporter, homemaker, mother, graphic/web designer and a world class blogger. So many things in one and still doing her bit to save the planet every day. But not just doing – really living her philosophy. Her very popular blog, A Little Bit of Spain in Iowa, recently featured a delicious recipe using Nudo oils. So we asked her to share her food philosophy with us. Here’s what Diana had to say:
Growing up as the daughter of immigrants to the USA, I was raised eating traditional foods and grew up in an environment where meals were created from scratch using whole ingredients.
Unfortunately, the industrialization of our food system in the United States has compromised the health and well being of its citizens by means of processed foods and meats and dairy containing hormones and antibiotics. My philosophy is simple: eat food in its natural form as God made it.
I am an advocate of supporting local family farmers who have a passion for raising pastured animals without the use of growth hormones or rampant use of antibiotics and thus shop at our local farmers markets. Also, I grow my own vegetables organically at home and raise my own backyard chickens.
From what I grow and buy at the farmers markets, I can preserve and freeze fresh local ingredients to use during our extremely cold winter months. It’s a step that I’ve taken to self sustainability.
Why do all of this? Our health is dependent upon it and above all else, the health of our children. Because of this, I strive to cook the way that my grandparents did in hopes that my children will learn the important skill of cooking using REAL FOOD to nourish themselves and their children to come.
Posted in Your Stories | Tagged a little bit of spain in iowa, blog, champion, Diana Bauman, dolce vita diaries, food philosophy, local food, Nudo, spain in iowa | Leave a Comment »
January 26, 2010 by cathy.rogers
I know Valentine’s is still a way off but I want to write this now in case anyone would like to copy the idea –you’ll need a bit of time. It is a very simple thing but one I’ve always loved and meant to copy myself. The idea is this: you use Valentine’s Day not to focus what is already probably too much attention on the one you love, but rather as an excuse to remind everyone else in your world – friends, family, colleagues, whoever you want – that you love them. Of course you don’t have to do anything as naff as actually use the ‘love’ word: that’s the genius of being able to say ‘Happy Valentine’s’ – it does it all for you. Your missive will be more like a Christmas card without the Christianity and frankly you’ll stand out a lot better in February than in the glut of December.
A very lovely friend used to do this every year. She would take (or have someone take) a great photograph which she would turn into a great card which she’d mail out to friends all over the world. They were always beautifully done which meant that the recipients invariably kept them on display for ages – so sometimes you’d go to someone else’s house and see one just like the one that you had received. Far from minding that the card was replicated, this would instantly induce a moment of exquisite and profound bonding.
So get to it. It’ll be even better now. At a time when we all type instead of write and have digital prints by the shedload, how much more magical to receive a real physical card in the post on a day when only the dead-hearted can completely deny a glimmer of hope of a mysterious love surprise.
Posted in Stories from the Olive Grove | Tagged cards, cathy rogers, dolce vita diaries, family, friends, ideas, love, Valentine's Day | 3 Comments »
January 22, 2010 by jason.gibb
I’m on a bit of a baking mission at the moment. It’s to do with the cold. There’s nothing more homely than the smell of freshly baked bread and there’s the bonus of the extra heat from the oven.
A big hit with all the family is this focaccia. It’s pretty simple but there’s a bit of waiting for the yeast to do its business. It’s a nice thing to make at the weekend when it’s just too parky to play outside. Get the family to join in with a bit of kneading and this is the perfect indoor plaything.
You can top focaccia with pretty much whatever you want – typically it’d be rock salt, oil and rosemary – but onions, artichokes and even sugar and nutella are options (Rosie would spy enviously at her friends arriving at school gobbling down the last of their sugary focaccia, a popular Italian breakfast on the run). This recipe uses our organic sun-dried cherry tomatoes. They’re really yummy pachino tomatoes, grown only in Sicily, and a little burst of summer for these wintery days.
Ingredients for serving for 4
‘00’ flour – 250g
Salt – 1 tablespoon
Fresh yeast – 8g or the dried equivalent (usually double, but check the pack instructions).
Warm water – 150ml
Extra virgin olive oil – 1 1/2 tablespoons plus more for oiling
Rock salt
Nudo sun-dried cherry tomatoes – 40g
Rosemary – a couple of sprigs.
Dissolve the yeast in the warm water, making sure there are no lumps. Add the flour, the salt, the yeasty water and oil to a mixing bowl. Mix it all together with a plastic dough scraper and then turn onto a floury surface. Knead it for 10 minutes till it bounces back to the touch and feels elastic. Make it into a big dough ball and put it in an oiled bowl, drizzle all over with olive oil, then leave in a warm place covered with a tea towel. It should take about 1 hour to double in size. Now grease a baking tray with some oil and ease out the dough onto it, keeping the smooth, top of the ball facing up. Now flatten it out in the tray with your fingers until it’s about 2cm thick. Pull off clumps of rosemary leaves and push them into the dough. The better they are inserted the less likely they are to burn. Do the same with the cherry tomatoes and then cover again with a teatowel and leave for half an hour to rise some more.
Preheat the oven to 220oC/425oC/GM7. When the dough has risen to about twice the thickness make more indentations with your fingertips, drizzle all over with olive oil and sprinkle good dose of rock salt. Now whack it in the oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Turn out onto a wire rack so it doesn’t sweat underneath, and eat within a day.
Posted in Jason's Recipes | Tagged cherry tomatoes, dolce vita diaries, focaccia, Italy, Jason Gibb, recipe, sun-dried, sundried, tomatoes | 1 Comment »
January 19, 2010 by cathy.rogers
It’s round about now that new year’s resolutions start to tumble. That convincingly enthusiastic new year’s day trip to the gym which saw you coming home pumped in mind (‘You see? All I needed was that little extra push, I AM driven, I CAN do this) and body (ow) – is now but a distant ache. You haven’t been since and you don’t want to, you just wish you hadn’t called it a resolution.
I have never been a gym goer (except for a few years in LA, it’s actually a civil offence there not to and I didn’t fancy another run-in with the LAPD) and much prefer exercise that is part of rather than an addition to normal life. Cycling to work, harvesting olives, mowing the lawn – these are all good examples of exercise. Spin classes, jogging on the spot these are not.
And I have a theory about winter exercise. With winter exercise, a little goes a lot further. Just think how much extra effort your body is making just to keep a normal temperature when the world outside is freezing its ass off; you’re practically exercising by just getting out of bed. Shivering – that’s high velocity muscle pumping. Chattering teeth? A full workout for craniofacial ligaments. Those old people noises that arrive unbidden when you stand up? Meditation with vocal enhancement.
So go for a nice brisk bracing walk, knowing that you’re practically running a half marathon of effort, enjoy a nice cup of tea with a fully earned piece of cake at the end of it, and leave your resolutions where they should have stayed in the first place, in the bin with the party popper carcasses.
Posted in Stories from the Olive Grove | Tagged cake, cathy rogers, exercise, LA, new year, new years resolutions, winter | Leave a Comment »
January 15, 2010 by jason.gibb
This is a wickedly simple recipe, lots of tomatoes and lots of garlic, which is a perfect antidote to chicken, roast potatoes and all those heavy christmasy things. And good for the heart thanks to the barrel-full of garlic that’s in it. It’s from my brother-in-love (my partner’s sister’s partner) and he of course, being a loyal relative, uses the fabulous Nudo organic artichoke hearts.
Ingredients for 4
Cherry tomatoes – 500g/17oz
Garlic – 8 decent sized cloves
Olive oil – drizzle
Balsamic vinegar – drizzle
Brown sugar – a teaspoon
Spaghetti – 350-400g/12-14oz
Artichoke hearts – 480g/17oz
Salt and pepper – to taste
Parmesan cheese – 50g/1.8oz
Preheat the oven to 170oC/325oF/GM3. Chop up the cherry tomatoes into quarters, roughly chop the garlic and put them on a baking tray. Drizzle a good glug of good quality olive oil over the top, the same of the balsamic and then sprinkle over a good pinch of brown sugar. Roast these for 30 minutes.
Chop up the artichoke hearts and remember to keep the oily/herby contents of the jar. Cook the spaghetti according to the instruction. Drain and place in a bowl. Mix in the oven-roasted tomatoes and garlic and then the artichokes and the contents of the artichoke jars. Mix through well, season with salt and pepper and serve with a healthy dose of parmesan cheese.
Posted in Jason's Recipes | Tagged artichoke, brother, dolce vita diaries, in love, Jason Gibb, recipes, spaghetti, tomato | Leave a Comment »
January 12, 2010 by cathy.rogers
My sister came over a bit 70s at a party she was having recently. She wanted to tantalise her guests with what she dubbed ‘taste sensations’ – little nibbles that would orally corruscate. She didn’t say orally corruscate, I said that, I don’t know why I did, it sounds daft now. To bring the concept down to earth, and to gel the 70s reference – a taste sensation is the sort you get when you eat the quintessential 70s cocktail party combo – the cheese and pineapple spike. Each individual taste, of strong cheese and sweetly acidic pineapple, are quite potent even alone and together they are deadly. I don’t think it an exaggeration to say they actually hurt your salivary glands.
My sister’s taste sensations were much more sophisticated and befitting of the fully modern lady she is. They involved no cheese nor pineapple, but fresh anchovies, pickled baby chillis and green olives, all clinging to their 70s heritage through the DNA of the cocktail stick. Delicious (not the stick).
At this time of year, taste sensations – small surprises for the mouth that almost make you say ‘oh’ – are great for keeping all that winter warming cooking alive and bristling. I don’t mean you have to ram fresh anchovies into your shepherds pie – the very thought – but little moments of extreme pleasure can really help puncture the winter gloom. This is the time to look to jars of baby gherkins, olives, capers, anchovies, strong parmesan, smoked bacon, pickled onions, sun dried tomatoes, dried apricots and dried fruit of all kinds. Intense flavours, concentrated hits. It’s all going to be ok.
Posted in Stories from the Olive Grove | Tagged 70s, anchovies, cathy rogers, cocktail, dolce vita diaries, olives, parmesan, sensations, taste | 1 Comment »
January 8, 2010 by jason.gibb
There is an Italian proverb that says that the more lentils that you eat on New Years Eve the more money comes your way the following year. I’m sure most Italians would of course think this is twaddle. But, as the other saying goes, it’s better to be safe than sorry, so come the 31st of December they’ll consume lentils by the truckload.
What better way to brighten up a bowl of lentils that with a big fat herby pork sausage from Modena. If you cook it right (and we’re talking a couple hours of loving simmering here) it’s exquisitely tender and creamy. You should be able to find one at your local Italian deli.
So spend the day cooking, eat and feast, then put your feet up and work out what to do with all that wodge that is coming your way.
Ingredients for 4
Cotechino sausage – 500g/17oz
Lentils – 2 400g/14oz tins of precooked lentils will save a tonne of time
Onion – 2 small ones
Carrot – 2 chopped
Celery – 2 sticks chopped
Sage – the leaves from a few sprigs
Olive oil for frying
Cook the cotechino according to your butcher’s advice or the instructions on the package. This usually involves boiling in ample water for anything from 45 minutes to 2.5 hours.
Finely chop the onions and sauté them in some olive oil until they are going golden. Add the chopped carrot and chopped celery for a couple of minutes and then empty in the lentil contents of the tins. Mix in the some chopped up sage and simmer away for half an hour, making sure that it doesn’t go dry.
When the sausage is ready (don’t check by piercing the skin, as you don’t want to let the juices escape), let it rest for 10 minutes and then slice into 2cm/0.8inch slices. Fill a bowl with the lentils and add a few slices of cotechino on top. Serve straight away.
Posted in Jason's Recipes | Tagged cotechino, dolce vita diaries, Jason Gibb, lentils, New Years Eve, olive oil, recipe, sausage | Leave a Comment »
January 5, 2010 by cathy.rogers
The thing we have to keep telling ourselves at this time of year is ‘the worst is over’. The shortest day is behind us, the nights are opening up, the light is coming back. The worst is over. The worst is over. It doesn’t feel like it – it feels like winter is still tightly closing around us, the event horizon of a looming black hole (Sorry Professor Hawking, I didn’t get past chapter 3). But it is an astronomical fact that the shortest day falls on what we humans call December 21st. We must cling to astronomical facts.
In fact this is the perfect time of year to while away a few hours helping making some astronomical facts. There’s this wonderful site called Galaxyzoo http://www.galaxyzoo.org/ where you can sit and categorise galaxies. The data is all pooled into a giant information resource about the stars all around us. So the project is no less than a crowd sourced classification of the universe, wee humans tapping away, sorting millions of galaxies squillions of lightyears away into different boxes. How fabulous is that? It’s the perfect winter project.
Not only that, but the worst is over. You see? You’d forgotten already.
Posted in Stories from the Olive Grove | Tagged cathy rogers, galaxy, galaxyzoo, naming, pasttime, stars, winter, worst is over | 2 Comments »
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Preheat the oven to 220oC. Roll out the pastry on a floury surface till it’s about 3mm thick. Cut it into 6cm squares. Fold a square in half to make a triangle. Then from the folded edge make a cut along each side towards the tip, but leave the apex attached. Unfold the square and place a piece of parmesan cheese lengthways from the uncut corner to the uncut corner. Fold the cut edges over each other, seal with a dab of egg, and place a sun dried cherry tomato on the top. Repeat until you’ve finished the pastry or just had enough. Place them all on a baking tray lined with bake-o-glide or something similar. Cook for 10 minutes and serve immediately.
