Each time that I find myself grocery shopping for a dinner party, I make sure to pick up a few snacks for cocktail hour. Being a creature of habit, my pre-dinner nibbles are inevitably Marcona almonds and olives. The almonds are easy, but the olives are another story; no jars or sub-par olives at my house.
I am fortunate to have a few go-to olive purveyors that sell the tastiest and meatiest olives in town. But if you're not as lucky, there is no need to fret: You, too, can have fantastically flavorful olives at home. Olives are preserved, but that doesn't mean that you cannot doctor them up up. A simple roast with a few aromatic herbs and a bit of acid changes their flavor completely. This recipe for roasted olives from Sasa Mahr-Batu and Andy Pforzheimer's The Barcelona Cookbook infuses a mix of olives with roasted red pepper, herbs, orange zest, and two types of vinegar. Citrus zest is a wonderful addition to olives, but the possibilities are endless. I'd recommend experimenting with fresh or dried chiles and some peppercorns. Home-roasted olives, still warm from the oven, will beat the pants off of your supermarket olive bar.
As always with our Cook the Book feature, we have five (5) copies of The Barcelona Cookbook to give away this week.
Advertisement will not be printed.