Fried Olives Are Delicious and Easy to Prepare in Advance for the Super Bowl Party

It is hard to believe that this Sunday will be the Super Bowl.   It's also hard to believe that today's high in Chicago is over 60 degrees.  What's not hard? This recipe that will be a boon to your Super Bowl gathering.  It's from The Essential New York Times Cookbook by Amanda Hesser.  I will later post about why this cookbook is essential to add to your collection but for now I give you a delicious, and easy, recipe.

Fried Olives


Makes about 30, and can be prepared eight hours in advance
Marcona almonds
30 olives, I used home-cured Barouni, pitted
3/4 c flour
2 eggs, beaten
1 c Panko bread crumbs, these are my default for bread crumbs
Approximately 2 quarts of Mild oil for deep frying, I used a mix of
olive and grape seed

Stuff the olives with the almonds.

Set up a small bowl and place your flour in it. Then use another small bowl for your eggs. Finally, a third bowl should house the Panko.  Next,designate one hand for your dry ingredients and the other hand for the eggs. Using your designated "dry hand", coat an olive in flour. Second, drop the flour-coated olive into the egg, and roll it in the egg with your designated "wet hand".  Finally, roll the coated egg, with your " dry hand" in the Panko.  Set aside on a plate and repeat with the remaining olives.  You can fry them now or set them aside in the fridge, covered with plastic wrap until you are ready to fry them.

Heat 2 inches of oil in a medium sauce pan over medium high heat.  The oil will be hot enough once it reaches 375°. Add a handful of olives at a time to the pan but please don't crowd the pan.  Watch carefully, fry the olives until golden brown; this won't take very long.  Remove the olives with a slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel-lined plate.

This year, like last year, it's all about the food at the party and not the teams if you are a Bears' fan, but then again the $64,000 question is whether Beyonce will sing or lip-sync her half-time performance?

Gift Guide 2012: Keep Calm and Carry On or in the Alternative KISS (Keep It Simple, Silly)

So you've waited and now you are getting up and surfing online trying to make it happen.  You don’t want to just give another gift card to Starbucks or even worse, an email gift certificate to itunes or amazon.com (not that there’s anything wrong with gift cards or these businesses).

You however, pride yourself on being awesome.  Most of those on your list have everything they need and during the rest of the year you have amazing conversations with them about what’s important.  Your “what’s important” conversation is never about things.

Here’s what we’ve been doing and we’ve gotten peals of delight and bright eyes whenever the recipient sees it.

It’s a cookie from Dorie Greenspan of Beurre & Sel called a Port Jammer.  She’s every bakers’ favorite holiday elf.   It has everything a heart could sing for, cherries, port (or NA wine as I chose), chocolate, seasonal cranberries, spices, and streusel.  My husband says it is one of his favorite things.  My husband doesn’t like sweets!

Now pick up a bottle of your favorite sparkler, grab a jar of fancy jam (yes, there’s still time to make one, but I’m trying to keep this stress-free) and your favorite coffee (if you roast your own, then place the coffee in a mason jar) and watch their eyes light up with joy.

So worse case scenario, you don’t run to the mall but maybe, just maybe you run to the grocer and grab the ingredients listed below, head home, turn up whatever music grooves you and bake this cookie!

Continue Reading Over at The Local Beet...

The Complexities of the Love Apple

On this wet and cold day, it is amazing to think just how fantastic the tomato is. It is a fruit. Although our legal system has deemed it a vegetable. Now comes word that this fruit's genome has been decoded.

  May 31,2012:

The tomato, whose genome has just now been decoded, turns out to be one well-endowed vegetable, possessing 31,760 genes. This rich legacy, possibly a reflection of the disaster that killed off the dinosaurs, is some 7,000 more than that of a person, and presents a complex puzzle to scientists who hope to understand its secrets.

The tomato has also been called everything from sweet to tart, and even meaty. Is it any wonder that this fruit has been mischaracterized by mere mortals?

Just Say No to Eating Animals: Vol. #40 Ripped from a Favorite Restaurant or Two

Most days I want something different to eat. I'm far from a creature of habit when it comes to eating. That said, I've gone on jags of eating the same thing since I learned to scramble eggs and fry bologna in a tiny cast iron skillet when I was seven. I think I ate that as an after school snack most days for a very, very long time. In fact it was such a long time that even the smell of veggie bologna now causes my stomach to lurch. 

Then there was that period of time my first year in law school when dinner was a bowl of buttered popcorn with freshly grated Parmesan. But for most of my life, I like variety in meals. Earlier this year something odd happened, and I couldn't stop eating at Athenian Room. At least once, I went twice in the same day to this little Greek-American restaurant that isn't far from home. It is very similar in appearance to the salad at Cross Rhodes in Evanston. On each visit this year, I ate the exact same thing. It's called a Vegetarian Salad. This salad has lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, olives, and a vinaigrette but the kicker is it comes topped with fries covered in the same vinaigrette. This is genius, pure and simple. In part it reminds me of my summer after college spent with my mum, my godmum,and my aunt in France. It was an exceptionally hot summer there and I lived off of green salad, pomme frites, and lemonade. So Saturday's lunch was my take on that remarkably simple offering.

  Opa Salad, the fries featured are from Cook's Illustrated's New Best Light Recipe Oven Fries

12 c. torn lettuce, I used Romaine

1/2 c. roasted tomatoes (raw is fine if they are at their seasonal best)

1/2 c. roasted red bell peppers (raw is fine if they are at the peak of their season)

1/4 c.  feta cheese crumbled

Vinaigrette

5 ¾ T water

¼ c. of EVOO

3T Champagne wine vinegar

2 t Dijon Mustard

Salt and Pepper to taste

Toss ingredients and then add 6 T. vinaigrette  to the salad and fries and serve

Sign Up to Dig Your Own Garden

The Overnight low is back in the 30’s but it is never too early to plan ahead.

Peterson Garden Project opened up spots in its community gardens project yesterday. One location is already sold out. I’ve gardened with them from the start. I garden there for the sense of community; I get plenty of food for the family from the Earthboxes out back. Still, meeting with my fellow plot sharers to ogle over seed catalogs has been fun.

Continue Reading over at The Local Beet...

The Weather Outside is Frightful?

Right now, the sun is beaming here in Chicago and we've just set another record day for high temperatures. My car Indicated it was in the 80's today. All of the talk here has turned to the weather, so much so that you would think we were Brits, but we aren't.

Here are some of the weather-comments I've heard and seen:

I'm worried about a hard freeze.

I'm worried about global warming.

I'm too hot!

With comments like the one's above you would think we weren't the same folks who managed just fine during Snowpocalypse 2011.

Folks, the USDA hardiness zone changes make the odds of a freeze about as likely as the odds that I will win tomorrow's Megamillions $290 Million alone. Can it happen? Of course it can. But right now, stop fretting about this delightful, not the least bit frightful, weather and just plant already!

Just Say No to Eating Animals Monday: Volume #39: Healthy Salad

We had pancakes and eggs all weekend, and then my husband sent me this article today
about over-eating and memory loss.

Excessive calorie intake isn't only making us fat.

A new study from the Mayo Clinic found that people over 70 who ate higher-calorie diets had an increased risk of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a stage of memory loss that often precedes dementia (via Time Healthland).

Researchers divided 1,233 participants—163 who had symptoms of MCI—aged 70 to 89 into three groups based on the amount of the calories they consumed each day.

The group who ate the highest amount of calories (between 2,143 to 6,000 calories per day) were twice as likely to have MCI compared to those who consumed the lowest amount of calories (between 600 to 1,526 per day).

“Not only did each category show differences, but we also saw a dose-response trend,” study author Dr. Yonas Geda told Loren Grush of FoxNews.com. “This means that if you keep increasing and increasing caloric intake, then the risk of developing MCI keeps increasing. So we looked at each category separately, and then we looked at [and observed] a trend overall.”

So we still have to eat and I love food too much to not have something delicious, but who says great tasting food can’t be good for you?

So I had an idea, that combined the delicious honeybell tangerines I shipped from FL, it’s the end of the citrus season there, pomegranate, just-shelled pistachios, and home-cured olives. But when I put those ingredients together, no ordinary salad dressing would do, a drop of rose water was essential.

Souk Salad

8 c. of torn romaine

1 honeybell tangerine, peeled and chopped

¼ c of olives, pitted and chopped

1/3 c. of just-shelled pistachios, chopped

½ c of pomegranate arils

¼ c of thinly sliced red onion

Vinaigrette

5 ¾ T water

¼ t of rose water

¼ c. of EVOO

3T Champagne wine vinegar

2 t Dijon Mustard

Salt and Pepper to taste

Toss ingredients and then add 3 T. vinaigrette and serve.