Sunday Gravy Time in the Northern Hemisphere

 Cooking & Eating, Recipes, Sunday Gravy and Meatballs  1 Response »
Oct 282011
 

The weather is cooling here on the planetary topside. My husband’s cousin, Bill, in New Jersey slipped on a patch of ice today. And I’m thinking about Sunday Gravy.

Sunday Gravy is Italian and I am not, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to stand around in the kitchen for hours, chopping, frying, stirring, and tasting. I am powerless to the siren song of the Gravy burbling in a big pot.

I certainly did not come upon this desire to cook and eat Sunday Gravy naturally. My Mom was a 1950′s, college-degreed, home economist and health food fanatic, and my Dad, the sometimes family cook, made scary meals that usually ended up with a beer poured into them. Dad was also the family breakfast cook, but I don’t recall any beer in my grits or oatmeal. My sisters, brothers and I would surely have been sent home from whichever saint-named school we were attending at the time, or maybe not.

As far as I can recall, one day I started making what turned out to be Sunday Gravy and I was hooked. I don’t make it too often though. It takes a long time to prepare and it’s very fatty, which of course makes it taste good.

Olive Crazy’s Sunday Gravy and Meatballs

Notes: I don’t ever measure anything for the Gravy, but I do for the Meatballs. For the Gravy I switch out the meats I use, but stick to the basic meat formula of pork, beef, and Italian sausages. For the Meatballs, I always prefer a mix of ground pork and ground beef. Tomato paste is a thickener and flavor enhancer so don’t use much. I have never needed to use more than one small can. Of the herbs used in the recipes, I use both fresh and dried in the Gravy and the Meatballs.

Gravy

Olive oil
Meaty pork pieces and pork bones
Meaty beef pieces and beef bones
Italian sausages
Garlic
Red wine (one you would enjoy drinking)
Tomato paste
Peeled, seeded tomatoes
Water
Salt
Pepper
Italian parsley
Basil
Oregano

Meatballs

Olive oil
1/2 lb ground beef
1/2 lb ground pork
2 lrg eggs
1/2 c Italian bread crumbs (I buy canned at the grocery store)
2 cloves garlic
4 tbsp Italian parsley, finely chopped
1/2 c freshly grated Parmigiano or other hard cheese
Salt
Pepper

Begin with the gravy. Place a large, thick-bottomed pot over medium heat and wait until the bottom of the pot is warm. Add olive oil. Before adding the meats make sure you’ve patted them dry. Add pork pieces and bones and brown on all sides. Remove to a plate or bowl. Repeat for beef and beef bones, then for sausages. Drain fat.

Lower heat and let pot cool a little. Add olive oil and then the garlic. Move garlic around for a few seconds and add red wine and tomato paste. Increase temperature to medium high and stir continuously for a few minutes. This is where you dredge up all the caramelized, meaty goodness from the bottom of your pot and incorporate it into the sauce. Add tomatoes, stir, and break them up.

Beginning now and throughout the cooking process, if sauce gets too thick, add water, but don’t make it soupy. Add salt, pepper, parsley, basil, and oregano. Return meat and bones, but not sausages, to the pot. Decrease temperature to low, partially cover pot, and stir occasionally.

Start making meatballs. Put all meatball ingredients into a mixing bowl. Mix with clean, slightly olive-oiled hands. The olive oil on your hands keeps the meat from sticking to you. Make golf ball-sized meatballs. In a skillet, over medium to medium high heat, add olive oil and brown meatballs without cooking them all the way through.

When the meat in the pot easily falls apart, about two hours, add in sausages and meatballs, check the consistency of the liquid and add water as needed (don’t get carried away), and stir occasionally for another hour.

Remove all the bones, meats, sausages, and meatballs. Throw away the bones, and set the rest aside to serve after the pasta course or to use in another dish. As an Italian friend informed me – meat is eaten after pasta, not at the same time.

Toss pasta with the Sunday Gravy and serve.

May the sun shine through your branches.

www.olivecrazy.com

Another Olive Oil Ice Cream Recipe – Okay, I’m Obsessed

 Cooking & Eating, Olive Oil Ice Cream, Recipes  1 Response »
Oct 042011
 

Out of all the recipes I publish on Olive Crazy, I think olive oil ice cream recipes are tops. Have I made any yet? Nope, but I will. I have actually been exploring several combinations of oo ice cream and a sorbet as well.

Here is an article by Claire Kelsey for The Guardian entitled, “Olive oil and smoked sea salt ice cream recipe“. Definitely follow the link to the article. Claire looks fabulous in her groovy food truck.

“Use only the best extra virgin olive oil. I’m into a Hellenic (Greek) brand at the moment, as it’s so peppery and grassy. The quality of the ice-cream will come down to the oil used, so taste a few first. Have fun with the salt too. I use smoked Maldon sea salt flakes, but there’s a whole world of interesting salts like Fleur de Sel and Pink Himalayan, which contain distinctive minerals.

This is best straight from being churned, when the consistency is soft. If you’re putting it in the freezer for later, the oil will keep it slightly hard, so it’s best sucked from a cone.

140g sugar
200ml whole milk
100ml double cream
4 large egg yolks
160ml extra virgin olive oil, Hellenic (Olive Crazy says experiment)
Maldon smoked sea salt (Claire says experiment and Olive Crazy concurs)

Bring to boil the milk, cream and sugar. Leave to slightly cool for 2 minutes. Beat the yolks until pale and thick. Slowly add the liquid to the yolks, stirring as you go. Transfer this back to the pan, to make a custard over a low heat. Chill. Blend in olive oil with good pinch of smoked sea salt, tasting as you go. It should just “lift” the flavour of the olive oil, with the flavour sharpening noticeably. Let this completely cool before churning in an ice-cream maker. If it has separated when you come to churn, just give it a good whisk. Serve with extra pinch of smoked sea salt.”

May the sun shine through your branches.

www.olivecrazy.com

Sophia Loren’s Recipe for Penne alla Puttanesca

 Books, Cooking & Eating, Penne all Puttanesca, Recipes, Sophia Loren's Recipes & Memories  Comments Off
Sep 212011
 

Today I felt like my life was missing something, and it was. It’s books – real ones, not the Star Trek version, Kindle or Nook. I wasn’t missing just any books or even new books, but the kind you find at the library: old books; much read books; cookbooks by out-of-favor authors; books checked out by school children and copied for book reports; travel books showing barren, sandy beaches that are now covered in high rises; books … So I saddled up the old Cadillac and went to the library.

I do a lot of research and almost all of it is on the internet. I am tired of logging onto the world wide web and finding the same answers to my questions repeated verbatim from website to website. Sister Marie Renee would have called that – plagiarism and sent them to the Principal, Sister Mary James, for a phone call (rotary dial of course) to their parents. Now, plagiarism is old hat and stupid data like the widely-varying smoke point of extra virgin olive oil can freely circle the world dressed as “truth”. Groan!

After renewing my library card and re-acclimating myself to the Dewey Decimal System I combed the shelves for treasures. In Fiction I found some Alexander McCall Smith books I had missed. In 398 I found Folklore and in 292, Classical (Greek & Roman) Religion. In 641 I found Food & Drink and Sophia Loren’s Recipes & Memories a/k/a 641.5945. I took them all for a 28-day visit to Chez Olive Crazy. Thank you Atlanta-Fulton County Public Library.

Here is Mrs. Ponti’s “Penne alla Puttanesca” or “Pasta Quills, Whore Style”. Yup that’s right. As the dear lady explains, it is quick to prepare and indicates vitality and gaiety. Apparently these are whoreish qualities of which many of us are guilty.

Makes 4 servings

Salt
1 lb penne
4 anchovy fillets, drained
2 garlic cloves
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 tbsp unsalted butter
2 to 3 large tomatoes, peeled, seeded, chopped
1/2 c pitted black olives, drained, finely chopped
1 tbsp capers, drained
1/4 c Italian parsley, minced

Bring a large pot of water to boil, add a pinch of salt, and drop in the pasta.

In a mortar, use a pestle to pound the anchovies and garlic into a paste. If you don’t have a mortar and pestle, then finely chop them. Heat the oil and butter in a pan, add the paste, and sauté for about 1 to 2 minutes over a medium heat. Add the tomatoes, olives, and capers, and cook for 15 minutes.

When the pasta is al dente, drain it and dress it with the sauce. Sprinkle with the parsley and serve.

May the sun shine through your branches.

www.olivecrazy.com

A Lesson on How to Infuse Olive Oil

 Cooking & Eating, How to Infuse Olive Oil, Recipes  Comments Off
Sep 152011
 

The Olive Oil Source has a great tutorial on how to safely infuse olive oil with herbs and other tasty tidbits. Here are their recommendations:

“It is possible to make excellent infused oil at home using dried wild herbs. The intensity of the flavor varies with the season, whether the herbs are wild or domestic, how the local growing conditions have been, etc. It takes a lot of trial and error. It is more art than science and the people who are good at it are reluctant to share their trade secrets. The oil will pick up the flavor fairly quickly, in the first few weeks, and then slowly intensify. It is fine to leave the herbs in for a long time; eventually all the flavor leaves the herbs and the oil flavor stabilizes. Most oil sellers keep it simple and use one herb at a time. We have seen smoke flavoring added to an herb or peppers added to any one of the herbs. When mixing herbs, think salad dressing. Look at some recipes for dressing and substitute the dried herbs for any fresh herbs called for in the recipe. A dipping blend is like an Italian dressing with much more oil than vinegar.

Flavored olive oils and dressings make great gifts but watch out; there are safe and unsafe ways to make infused olive oil.  The unsafe way is to put anything in the oil that contains any trace of water or moisture.  That would include garlic, lemon peel, fresh peppers, fresh herbs and spices.  The oil will not support bacterial growth but the water containing herbs will.  Botulism bacteria can grow in this type of environment, even in a sealed bottle. There are several things you can do to avoid this problem.

1. Mix all the ingredients, refrigerate them and use them within a week. This is the best way if you are using fresh ingredients such as fresh basil, fresh rosemary or garlic. Garlic is ideal for adding to pasta dishes, that you can then top with a little grated dry cheese. Fill a decorative 1-litre bottle with extra virgin olive oil. Add a clean head of garlic (whole if desired), and leave to marinate for a few days. You can also use lemon peel, fresh or dried peppers, ginger, rosemary sprigs, etc. Alternatively, you can use a recipe for Italian salad dressing, but cut down on the vinegar or lemon juice.

2. Preserve the added ingredients. Maybe you have seen garlic or herbs mixed with oil.  The way it is done commercially is to first preserve the water-containing garlic, herb, etc.  with a strong brine or vinegar solution, then put it in the oil.  The vinegar solutions used commercially are up to 4 times stronger than the vinegars you find in the supermarket. You can find them at commercial food supply outlets. Many of the herb mixes have both salt and vinegar which both prevent bacterial growth. Commercial vinaigrettes and sauces also have chemical preservatives not usually available to the home cook.

3. Dry the herbs to remove all water, leaving the essential oils. This can be done with a food dehydrator or just by leaving in the sun.  After the spices and herbs are dry, you can add them to the olive oil.  Whole sprigs of thyme, rosemary, dried peppers, etc. can decorate the inside of the bottle this way.

4. Press the olives with the spices. Putting lemon, garlic, etc. in the olive press with the olives is the safest way to flavor oil.  You must have your own olive press (see our First Press). The oils from the added ingredients mingle with the olive oil and the watery part of the spices is removed along with the olive water. You could add essential spice oils to the olive oil to achieve the same effect.”

May the sun shine through your branches.

www.olivecrazy.com

Spaghetti Recipe from “The Pink Ribbon Diet”

 Cooking & Eating, Recipes, Spaghetti from The Pink Ribbon Diet  Comments Off
Aug 062011
 

Mary Flynn’s “The Pink Ribbon Diet” is all about olive oil. I have been reading her study on post-menopausal breast cancer patients and it is fascinating. I will prepare an article about the study soon.

But first! Here is a recipe for an American family meal staple – spaghetti.

Spaghetti with Tomatoes, Feta, and Basil

Serves one, 520 Calories

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 cup (5 ounces) cherry or grape tomatoes, cut in half
Salt
1 ounce feta cheese
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, torn
2 ounces whole wheat spaghetti

Heat the olive oil on medium-low in a medium skillet. Add the tomatoes, season with salt, and cook slowly so they absorb the olive oil, about 10 minutes. Add the feta and cook 2 to 3 minutes or until the feta starts to melt. Remove from the heat and add the basil leaves.

While the tomatoes are cooking, bring six cups of water to a boil. Add salt and the pasta, stirring occasionally until the water returns to a boil so the pasta does not stick together. Cook according to directions on the pasta package, tasting a minute before in case the package is wrong. Drain and toss with the sauce.

May the sun shine through your branches.

www.olivecrazy.com

 Older Entries