OLIVE OIL: COOKING FOR PEACE

Chef Samuel Perea

While shopping this week at El Corte Inglés , Spain’s largest department store chain, looking for ideas for holiday meals, holiday gifts, I chanced upon a special event in the local store’s restaurant-cafeteria. La Cocina con Sabor a Málaga was a celebration of Málaga foods, interpreted by Chef Samuel Perea http://www.samuelperea.com/ , a Malagueño who, as a sort of culinary ambassador, also cooks in Israel.

Chef Samuel was cooking a special menu featuring foods of Playas, Montes y Huertas—beaches, mountains and fields of Málaga. From the fields, an intensely flavored olive dip; from the sea, an escabeche of fresh anchovies with bitter orange; from the hills, roast baby kid-goat (and many more dishes). Chef Samuel, a self-taught cook, told me his dishes are mostly interpretations of the food he remembers from his childhood.

“When I was working in Cairo,” Samuel explained, “I missed my mother’s cooking and asked her to send me some recipes. That’s when I started cooking.” But, recipes, he said, are like a music score. They provide the “notes,” but each individual lends the interpretation—the sentiment,  experience and emotion—that makes them original.

He has worked in restaurants in Madrid and Málaga and, notably, with María José San Román  of Restaurante Monastrell in Alicante. With Chef María José, Samuel said, he made a qualitative culinary jump, putting together techniques, vision and food memories.

Samuel first went to Israel in the 1980s, sent by his Spanish company to do a course in border security. There, he set up a company commercializing skin products made with minerals from the Dead Sea. Returning frequently to Israel—including every Christmas to carry Christmas cards to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem for blessing—Samuel made many friends, including in the culinary world. Collaborating with Israeli restaurateur Victor Bloger, he founded Cocina por la Paz, Cooking for Peace, an NGO to foment convivencia,  “living together,” amongst Jews, Muslims and Christians in Mediterranean countries. (Chef Samuel Perea will be at Restaurant Chloélys in Tel Aviv, Israel, cooking with Victor Gloger December 30 and 31.)

When peoples of various faiths sit down to share a meal at their special gatherings, Samuel said, they drink a toast to friendship and peace with olive oil.

Creamy olive dip, molturado de aceitunas.

Molturado de Aceitunas
Milled Olives

Chef Samuel said this smooth olive paste was inspired by the powerful aroma of fresh olives being molturado, crushed, at the mill. The resulting olive pulp is then pressed (or, in modern mills, put through a centrifugal extractor) to release the extra virgin olive oil.

I decided this olive oil dip would be the perfect dish to serve at a Hanukkah dinner this week. After all, Hanukkah is a celebration of olive oil. The holiday marks the victory in the 2nd Century BC of the Jewish Maccabees over an occupying force and the re-lighting of the menorah in the Temple. The olive oil for the menorah, enough for a single day, lasted for eight days and nights.

Adapted from the recipe by Samuel Perea.

Pitted Manzanilla olives.

Chef Samuel’s recipe calls for Aloreña Manzanilla olives (Álora is a town in Málaga province; Manzanilla is a variety of olive.). I used my own home-cured Manzanillas. Spanish brine-cured olives are usually whole, split open, and flavored with garlic and herbs. It’s easy to remove the pits—just squeeze them out or press them with the side of a knife on a cutting board. Brine-cured olives usually have enough salt that it’s not necessary to season them.

The original recipe by Chef Samuel calls for huevina (powdered egg), avoiding the issue of using raw eggs. As I couldn’t get powdered egg, I substituted whole raw egg in the recipe.

Serve the olive paste as a dip, a sandwich smear, a sauce. It's a wonderful accompaniment to grilled tuna, roast lamb, leftover turkey.

Grind in processor.

1 cup, packed, drained and pitted brine-cured olives
1 egg
½ tablespoon water or olive brine
1 cup extra virgin olive oil (Verdial, Hojiblanca or Arbequina variety) plus additional to serve
Regañas (crisp crackers), if desired

Set aside a few olives for garnish. Puree the rest in a food processor until smooth.

Place the egg, water and olive oil in the container of an immersion blender. Blend at high speed without lifting the blender until the mixture emulsifies. Then raise the blender wand and blend to incorporate any oil that is still unmixed.

Separate ½ cup of the oil/egg emulsion (this is olive oil mayonnaise) and reserve for another use (season with salt and lemon juice). Add the olive puree to the mayonnaise in the blender and blend until smooth. Chill the puree before serving.

Serve on a dish with additional olive oil and garnished with a few olives. Accompany with regañás crackers for dipping.

The sauce and the reserved mayonnaise keep, covered and refrigerated, up to one week.

Fresh anchovies in escabeche marinade with saffron and zest of bitter orange.

Manojitos de Boquerones en escabeche de Naranjas Cachorreña
Anchovy Bunches Marinated in Bitter Orange Escabeche

Chef Samuel’s recipe calls for the dried skin of a “cachorreña” orange. Cachorreña is a Málaga name for the bitter orange, the sour orange, beloved for marmalade and used also for sauces and soups. The fresh skin is mouth-numbingly bitter—so I chose to blanch it first. The juice is sour—a wonderful condiment in dressings for vegetables such as asparagus and artichokes. Look for bitter oranges in Latin markets at this time of year. If not available, substitute sweet orange and/or lemon.

Small, fresh anchovies are ideal for this dish, but if not available, try sardines or fillets of mackerel, herring or trout.

Serves 4.

½ pound small fresh anchovies (about 20)
Flour for dredging the anchovies
Olive oil for frying
1 bay leaf, lightly toasted in a skillet
3 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
6 peppercorns
1 strip zest from a bitter orange, blanched
Pinch of saffron, crushed
¼ cup white wine vinegar
Olive oil for frying plus additional to serve
Salt
Water (about ½ cup)
Lettuce, to garnish
Sliced orange or lemon, to garnish

Clean the anchovies, removing heads and guts (it is not necessary to fillet them). Rinse and drain well. Sprinkle with salt.

Heat the oil to a depth of 1 inch in a medium skillet. Gather 4or 5 anchovies together by the tails, dredge them in flour and, pinching the tails together, lay them in into the hot oil. Turn the anchovies when they are golden on one side and fry on the reverse side. Remove and drain on paper towels. Continue with remaining anchovies, making bunches, flouring and frying.

Place the anchovy bunches in a single layer in a shallow bowl.

In a small bowl combine the bay leaf, crushed garlic, peppercorns, blanched and chopped orange zest, saffron and vinegar. Add 1 tablespoon of the hot oil in which the anchovies were fried. Add 1 teaspoon salt. Pour this marinade over the anchovies with enough water to just barely cover them. Cover and marinate 2 hours or, refrigerate, and marinate up to 12 hours.

Lift the anchovies out of the marinade and place on serving plates with lettuce and sliced orange to garnish. Drizzle with additional olive oil to serve.


© Janet Mendel

Marinated anchovies--nice starter for a holiday meal.

Olive oil lamp for Hanukkah or Christmas. HAPPY HOLIDAYS.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

JUMPING ON THE OLIVE BANDWAGON

¡PRACTICA EL ACEITUNING!  Before you say “Gesundheit!” to “aceituning,” let me remind you that the Spanish word for “olive” is aceituna. Olivo, a word that comes from the Romans, is an olive tree, but aceituna, from the Arabic, is the fruit of that tree.

Practica el aceituning is the catchy slogan for the grand marketing campaign rolled out this week by the producers of table olives. Spain is the world’s principal producer and exporter of table olives. What is aceituning? “To add original and creative seasonings to commercially bottled olives from Spain.”

Some examples: olives with pesto, cheese and salt cod; black olives with cayenne and orange peel; green olives with goat cheese, honey and hazelnuts; black olives with strawberries, tomato and PX vinegar; olives with soy sauce and ginger. (See more recipes.)

Brining my olives.

I’m practicing aceituning in my own way. I just put my hand-picked olives into salmuera, a brine seasoned with garlic, thyme and fennel. They should be ready to eat in a couple of weeks. I’m also using store-bought olives in some new ways.

Queen-sized Gordal olives.

The most familiar Spanish table olives are Manzanilla, sometimes marketed as “Seville” olives. Manzanilla is the name of the variety of olive tree. It produces a plump, meaty olive. Manzanillas make up the bulk of Spain’s table olive production, but the fat Gordal olive (also called “queen”) is another favorite commercial table olive.

The olives are hand-picked when still green. The curing process entails first soaking in an alkaline solution to remove the bitterness. Then the olives are left in a brine to ferment, which converts the olives’ natural sugars into lactic acid. This is what gives them that wonderful tangy flavor. They are canned or bottled whole and unpitted, pitted and stuffed.

Black olives are picked green.

Most olive varieties, when fully ripe, turn a purplish color, not black. Black olives that you buy in a can—gorgeous for garnishing salads and cold dishes—are not really ripe olives. They are picked green, processed in alkaline solution, then the black color is fixed by oxidation.

These are by no means the only olives in Spain. Every olive-producing region has its particular varieties and methods of curing and flavoring olives.

In Andalusia, you might sample aceitunas partidas, green olives (Manzanilla, Hojiblanca or Morisco)  that have been cracked to split them open, then brine-cured (no alkaline is used). They may be flavored with thyme, fennel, cloves of garlic, slices of lemon, oregano and strips of red pepper.

Split and brine-cured.

In Extremadura and La Mancha, ripe Cornicabra and Cacereña olives are prepared rayado, incised with a sharp blade, then cured in brine and flavored with local herbs. Arbequina is the varietal best-known in Catalonia, especially Lérida. These are tiny olives with a delicate flavor, simply brine-cured. The Empeltre olives of Aragón and Navarre are cured in brine when they reach a purplish-black degree of ripeness. In Murcia and Alicante, the Cuquillo olive is cured when nearly black.

You can add flavor to bottled, store-bought olives by draining them, then marinating for two days in salt water with slivered garlic, fresh or dried thyme,  sliced lemon and a splash of extra virgin olive oil. Or, practice some extreme aceituning and get a little adventuresome.

Olive Bread with Sardines. Inspiration for this recipe comes from a recipe booklet published by the board of the Denominación de Origen Protegida Aloreña de Málaga. The Aloreña olive is a type of brine-cured Manzanilla.  The recipe calls for a sort of focaccia bread made with Aloreña olives and roasted red pepper, topped with grilled sardines, olive “air,” and a smear of strawberry alioli. The bread recipe didn’t work so well for me and the “air” required techniques and ingredients with which I am not familiar. So I topped the bread with canned sardines and stacked some sliced Aloreña olives on top. The strawberry alioli (garlic mayonnaise) was, uh, interesting.

 Potato-Olive Salad. I “aceituned” a typical Spanish potato salad, papas aliñadas, by upping the proportion of olives. For 1 cup of diced, cooked potatoes, I used 1 cup of pitted brine-cured olives. (Split olives are easily pitted by pressing them on a board to squeeze out the pits.) Other ingredients are diced tomato, parsley, green onions, chunks of tuna, hard-cooked egg, olive oil and Sherry vinegar.

Olive-Cream Cheese Dip. This is incredibly easy! In a blender or mini processor, blend 1 cup softened cream cheese, 2 cloves garlic, 2 tablespoons chopped onion, ½ teaspoon pimentón de la Vera (smoked paprika), and ½ teaspoon ground cumin. Add 1 cup pitted green Manzanilla olives and process until they are coarsely chopped. Serve with regañás  or any crisp crackers for dipping.

Black Olive, Corn and Avocado Salsa. Relish, salsa or salad?  Combine equal quantities of pitted black olives, corn kernels and chopped avocado with roasted red pepper, scallions, chile to taste, olive oil, lemon juice and a garnish of cilantro. Because olives are salty, you may not need to add salt.