Passport and Plate

Passport & Plate - Olive Ascolane

Italy | Wednesday, February 26, 2014 | 5 photos

Ingredients
Ascolane Tenere olives
1/4 pound each chicken, pork, and beef
1/3 cup fresh bread crumbs
1 small onion finely chopped
1 small carrot finely chopped
1 small stalk of celery finely chopped
pinch of cloves
freshly grated nutmeg
salt
1 glass of white wine
grated zest of 1/2 lemon
3 ounces grated Parmigiano Reggiano
1 egg
flour, egg, and dried bread crumbs for frying
olive oil for deep frying

 

How to prepare this recipe
1. Chop the beef, pork, and chicken into 1/4 inch cubes
2. Sauté the onion, carrot, and celery until soft and starting to brown. Add the meat and sauté until the meat is browned. Add the glass of white wine and let it reduce until it's gone. Remove from the heat, let cool briefly, and chop very finely to a coarse paste with a knife or food processor.
3. Add the bread crumbs, nutmeg, cloves, lemon zest, Parmigiano, salt. Taste to adjust seasoning. Add the egg and mix well. The filling should be firm enough to be picked into pieces and rolled into small balls.
4. Remove the olive flesh from the pit in one piece by cutting around the pit in a downward spiral shape.
5. Form a small ball of filling and enclose the pitted olive around it, reforming the original shape of the olive, except it will be a bit larger. Fill the remaining olives
6. Dip each stuffed olive in flour, then the eggs, then the breadcrumbs, back into the eggs, and again in the breadcrumbs, making coating that completely covers the olive.
7. Heat olive oil to 350 degrees and fry a few olives at a time until golden brown. Remove and drain on paper towels. Serve hot.

 

The story behind this recipe
It was the first time meeting my wife's cousins in Le Marche. The 3-hour drive from Rome put us at their house in Rotella, north of Ascoli Piceno. After meeting them and visiting the tiny 12th-century village where her grandfather had lived, we went to the only restaurant in Rotella: a one-room, family establishment. The antipasto tray they brought to the table included Olive Ascolane, a regional specialty. I had seen these a few times in cookbooks, but even though I'm a accomplished Italian cook, I was daunted by the recipe's difficulty. We then had them at every restaurant and at stalls selling street food. As we left, her cousin handed us about two pounds of them, cooked and frozen by his friend. We nervously smuggled them through US customs, and refried them. Those were the best of all! On our next visit they gave us two bags plain olives to take home. I discovered that the secret to Olive Ascolane is the olive itself: Ascolane Tenere. Almost the entire crop is used the region, which is why they not only unavailable in US stores or on line. This olive is distinctly Italian, similar to the smaller Castelvetrano olives, but with a sweeter, rounder taste. On my initial attempt with the first bag, I broke most of the olives removing them from the pit. I painstakingly pieced them back together and they were still delicious, so I bought a bird's beak paring knife to help for the next batch, which made it much easier to remove the olive flesh in one spiraled piece. They turned out perfectly! I created an Olive Ascolane album in Facebook, which elicited advice from the Italians: "…use this…", "…don’t do that…", "I always…", etc. Olive Ascolane are so unique that they don’t just take you back to Italy, they take you back to the medieval street, trattoria, and the family and friends we were with while eating them. Memory inspires me to make them now, but it’s impossible without Ascolane Tenere, so I have to wait until I can bring back more bags of Ascolane Tenere!