CategoriesSauces
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Tangerine Balsamic Cranberry Sauce

Homemade cranberry sauce beats out canned cranberry sauce every time. Once I started to make my own, I’ve never went back. Most cranberry sauce recipes require one cup of sugar, but we cut the sugar in half because of the natural sweetness of the tangerine balsamic and tangerine juice. This recipe is quick and simple.

What you’ll need: 

12 oz. fresh cranberries

3/4 cup tangerine or clementine juice

1/4 cup So Olive Tangerine Balsamic Vinegar

1/2 cup cane sugar

1 tablespoon tangerine zest

Here’s How:

Add the tangerine balsamic, tangerine juice, and sugar to a medium sauce pan. Bring it to a boil and stir until sugar disolves. Add the cranberries. Stir and reduce heat, allowing the cranberries to simmer for about 10 minutes or until the cranberries have burst. You will hear the cranberries pop. Once the cranberries are done, stir in the tangerine zest. Remove the sauce pan from the heat and allow the sauce to cool. Then transfer in a container to be chilled in the refrigerator. The cranberry sauce will thicken in the refrigerator.

CategoriesMain Dish Sides
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Tuscan Bean Bake

As the weather cools, one pot meals are the way to go because you can easily just add all the ingredients together at once and just let it cook. This Tuscan Bean Bake recipe is just one of those dishes. It can be made as a side dish or as the main meal with a nice warm loaf of crusty bread. This recipe also calls for a dutch oven, but if you don’t have one, a large baking dish is fine too. You’ll just need to use aluminum foil to cover the beans. I believe that dutch ovens make the food taste better so it’s well worth the investment. The cheese is entirely optional and bread crumbs mixed with olive oil may be substituted as a topping.

What you’ll need: 

1 pound bag of cannellini beans

3 leeks

5 cloves of garlic

3 tablespoons So Olive Tuscan Herb Extra Virgin Olive Oil

2 tablespoons thyme, dried

1 tablespoon oregano, dried

4 cups vegetable broth

Sea salt to taste

1 cup mozzarella, shredded (optional)

1/4 cup parmesan (optional)

Here’s how:

Soak beans for at least 4 hours or overnight in a large bowl of cold water. After beans have soaked, drain the water.

Preheat oven to 225°F. Trim the the dark green tops of the leeks and discard.  Cut leeks in half and rinse out any dirt between the white layers of the leeks. Then thinly slice the leeks. Mince the garlic. I use a garlic press. In a dutch oven, sauté the leeks and garlic until leeks are softened. Then add the soaked beans, thyme, oregano, vegetable broth, and sea salt. Place lid on dutch oven and place on third lower rack of oven. Bake for 3.5 hours. In between check on the beans to see how much water has absorbed. Add a 1/2 cup of water if needed. Once the beans have cooked through and water has absorbed take beans out of the oven.

In the mean time, increase the oven temperature to 450°F. Add the cheese, then place the dutch oven without the lid back into the oven for about 15 minutes until cheese is slightly brown. Then take it out of the oven. It’s ready to eat. Goes great with a slice of crusty bread and a garden salad.

CategoriesGuides
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How to Taste Extra Virgin Olive Oil Like A Pro

Olives are stone fruits and just like fresh squeezed juice, olive oil is the juice of an olive. As there are hundreds of variety of cultivated olives, each produces its own varietal of olive oil with its own unique flavor characteristics. Not only that, but soil conditions, weather, and how the olives are processed impacts how the olive oil will taste.

Professional tasters look for three main characteristics in olive oil: fruitiness, bitterness, and pungency. Fruitiness is the olive oil’s aroma or smell. Bitterness is the taste that should appear on the back of the tongue, and pungency is the stinging sensation in your throat after the oil has been swallowed. Note that all three characteristics must be present. If one is missing, the olive oil is defective.

So how does one find those main characteristics and eventually choose a favorite varietal?

This step-by-step guide will help you in discovering your favorite varietal olive oil.

1. Start with a mild olive oil. Olive oil usually comes in three flavor intensities; mild, medium, and robust. After you have gone through the steps of tasting a mild one, work your way to medium intensity and then to the robust olive oils. Sip some water in between each tasting.

2. Pour 1 – 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a small cup.

3. Warm the olive oil in your hands. Nest the cup into the palm of one hand and cover the top with your other hand. Gently twist the cup in your hand for about 20 seconds to warm the oil. This releases the aroma in the oil.

4. Make a note of the nose (Fruitiness). Raise cup to your nose and tuck nose into the cup, then take a deep whiff of the oil. This is the first insight that professional tasters assess when tasting olive oil. The first fragrant notes are clues to its flavor. Is it heavily fragrant? Can you identify the characteristics? Is it fruity or is it grassy? Is there something more subtle? Good quality olive oil should always have a fruity or green, herbaceous smell such as fresh cut grass.

5. Taste the oil (Bitterness). Draw a long, slurping sip while curling your tongue upward, taking a fair amount of air into your mouth along with that first sip in order to aerate the olive oil. This is called strippagio. Roll the oil across your tongue and all the way to the back of your mouth, allowing tongue to identify as many aspects of the flavor as possible. Remember that bitterness should be present.

6. Swallow the oil (Pungency). By now your tongue and your nose have all the information they need to tell you how the olive oil tastes. Is it fruity? Peppery? Pungent? Bitter? What did you like the most? Note the flavor characteristics and any lingering sensations of pungency in the throat. These distinctions will point you toward your favorites and rule out other oils.

When you know how to taste and identify the flavors of an extra virgin olive oil, you can start to narrow your choices down to the varietals you like, and you’re on your way to finding a favorite.

INFOGRAPHIC

how-to-taste-extra-virgin-olive-oil

CategoriesSpreads
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Balsamic Apple Butter

It’s apple season and that means it’s a good time to make apple butter. This apple butter recipe is great to make over the weekend since it requires about 8 hours in a slow cooker. I like to start the process early Sunday morning and just let it be, so that way I can catch-up on whatever tasks that I didn’t get to during the week. Three apple varieties are in this apple butter: Gala, Granny Smith, and Honeycrisp, but any apple variety may used. The cinnamon pear balsamic vinegar gives it a nice, subtle cinnamon balsamic flavor without it tasting like vinegar. You may also substitute any type of balsamic.

What you’ll need:

6 pounds of apples (I used Gala, Granny Smith, and Honeycrisp)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup So Olive Cinnamon Pear Balsamic Vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Here’s how:

Peel and core the apples. Cut the apples in medium sized cubes, and then toss them in a slow cooker. In a bowl, whisk balsamic vinegar, brown sugar, vanilla, and salt. Then pour the mixture over the apples in the slow cooker and mix. Place lid on the slow cooker and set it on low. In between, check on the apples and stir it a bit, allowing it to cook for about 8 hours or until apples are softened. After the apples are soft, grab an immersion blender, and blend the apples until smooth. If needed, cook for another half an hour. Then turn the slow cooker off and allow the apple butter to cool. Once cooled, put it in a container to freeze or refrigerate it to be consumed within a week. Enjoy with a warm buttery biscuit.

CategoriesSides
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Oven Baked Rosemary Sweet Potato Fries

Growing up as an Airforce brat in Germany, I couldn’t get enough of pommes frites (french fries in German). ‘Til this day I eat my fries with mayonnaise, a popular condiment in Germany. Oh and the curry ketchup! Yum. I’m not exactly sure when sweet potato fries came on the scene but on my first taste, I was hooked. Now the ones I make are much healther since these are oven roasted with olive oil. Rosemary and potatoes are beautiful together, so why not sweet potatoes? Oh boy, the combination is delicious. This recipe calls for both rosemary olive oil and dried rosemary.

What you’ll need:

4-5 medium sweet potatoes, new

2 tablespoons So Olive Rosemary Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1 teaspoon garlic salt

2 teaspoons dried rosemary

Sea salt to taste

Here’s how:

Preheat oven to 425º. Cut sweet potatoes into even french fry shaped pieces. If you are using new sweet potatoes there is no need to peel the skin, but you’re more than welcome to peel them. It also depends on the sweet potato variety used. Toss the raw sweet potatoes into a mixing bowl and pour rosemary olive oil over the potatoes. Season with garlic powder, sea salt, and dried rosemary. Mix so that the seasoning and oil are coated around the potatoes evenly. Arrange on baking sheet in a single layer. Place the sheet on the top rack of the oven for baking. After 20 minutes, pull baking sheet out and flip sweet potatoes on the other side. Bake for another 15 minutes until brown and crispy. You’ll notice that the smaller pieces will turn dark brown, do not worry, it’s just caramelization of the natural sugars found in the sweet potatoes. Enjoy with mayo or ketchup!

CategoriesSalads Vinaigrettes
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Summer Squash Noodle Salad with Pineapple Basil Vinaigrette

Besides the cherry tomato forest growing in my backyard from last year’s seeds, this year I did not plant a garden on purpose. But around this time of year, I would usually get a bumper crop of zucchini and yellow squash. So if you have an abundance of summer squash, more than you know what to do with, making a noodle salad will be a great way to use them. This salad is very simple and quick. It makes a great side dish or light meal. I used a spiral slicer to make the noodles. If you don’t have a spiral slicer, you may also use a julienne peeler. The noodles will just be more straight instead of spiral.

What’ll you need:

2 medium zucchini

2 medium yellow squash

1 cup cherry or grape tomatoes

Vinaigrette Ingredients:

1/4 cup Pineapple White Balsamic

1/4 cup Arbequina or Koroneiki Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1 small clove garlic

7-9 basil leaves

sea salt to taste

Here’s how:

Make the vinaigrette first. Combine olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, basil, and a pinch of salt into a blender. We used a small food prep blender. Grab a large bowl. Then spiralize or peel zucchini, summer squash into bowl. Add sliced cherry tomatoes. Pour vinaigrette over the squash noodles. Then mix it well. Add salt to taste. It’s ready to eat.

CategoriesBaking
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Blueberry-Coconut Lime Muffins

Make these tasty Blueberry-Coconut Lime Muffins! Persian Lime olive oil and flaked coconut add a nice tropical twist to standard blueberry muffins. If you are not a fan of coconut, you may exclude the flaked coconut in this recipe. You may also add fresh blueberries when they are in season but frozen blueberries work just as great .

These muffins are whole grain, made with white whole wheat flour, which is simply a softer wheat variety and our preferred type of whole wheat for sweet baked goods. Substituting one part with All-purpose flour will work just as great. We chose coconut palm sugar for its lower glycemic properties. The Persian lime olive oil makes these blueberry-coconut lime muffins wonderfully moist.

What you’ll need:

2 Cups White Whole Wheat Flour or 1 part All-purpose flour and 1 part White Whole Wheat Flour

2/3 Cups Coconut Palm Sugar

1/2 Cup Coconut Flakes, unsweetened

1 tablespoon Baking Powder

1/2 teaspoon Sea Salt

1/4 cup So Olive Persian Lime Olive Oil

2 large Eggs or 2 tablespoons Flax Meal with 6 tablespoons water, soaked

One Cup Plant-based Milk

1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract

1 Cup Blueberries, frozen or fresh

Here’s how:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a muffin pan with muffin cups. Combine flour, sugar, coconut flakes, baking powder, sea salt in a bowl and mix it well.

In another bowl, mix Persian Lime Olive Oil, eggs (or egg substitute), milk, and vanilla extract very well. Mixing them in a mixer or using a handheld electric mix is recommended.

In the bowl with dry ingredients, form a well in the center. Pour the wet ingredients into the center and use a spoon to gently mix the wet ingredients with the dry for about 20 seconds.  Make sure you do not over mix even when you feel the urge to do so. Gently, fold the blueberries in the muffin batter.  Spoon the batter in each muffin cup and bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes.

Serving: Makes 12 Muffins

CategoriesBread
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Super Easy Garlic Olive Oil Bread

This is my Go To recipe for quick and easy garlic bread by substituting garlic olive oil for butter. You just need three ingredients; So Olive Garlic Olive Oil, your favorite bread, and dried parsley flakes. Grab a basting brush and brush the olive oil on the bread together with the dried parsley flakes, and pop it in the oven at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes.

While taking it out of the oven, smell that garlicky goodness, then slice, and enjoy. Yum!

 

CategoriesAppetizers
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Avocado Mango Salsa

It’s nice that we have warmer weather and that means an abundance of fresh produce. So I will be featuring plenty of recipes from summer’s harvests. I love to make my own salsa and experiment with different veggies and flavors. I find no need to by salsa in a jar unless I’m absolutely feeling lazy or prohibited with time.

I had some avocado that I needed to quickly use before turning brown. Hence the small brown spots around the edges. 🙂 What I also like about combining mango and avocado is that mango prevents avocado from oxidizing, adding lemon juice is not needed.

I’ve made this avocado mango salsa with Baklouti Green Chili extra virgin olive oil. It truly tastes like fresh chopped peppers so there really isn’t any need to chop any and it’s spicy. Baklouti peppers are grown in Tunisia, and the olive oil is made by pressing these spicy peppers together with early harvest Chemlali olives. The sweet mango and creamy avocado adds a nice balance to the heat that permeates throughout the salsa.This salsa can easily be doubled.

What you’ll need:

2 ripe avocados

1 mango

1/2 small red onion

1 cup grape tomatoes

1/2 cup black beans

2 Tbsp cilantro

1 Tbsp So Olive Baklouti Green Chili Olive Oil

1/2 tsp sea salt or to taste

Here’s how:

1. Peel and dice the avocado and mango. Dice the red onion very fine. Quarter the grape tomatoes. Chop the cilantro.

2. Combine all ingredients in a bowl.

3. Drizzle the Baklouti chili olive oil over the ingredients. Then sprinkle with salt. Gently mix the ingredients together (I use my hands).

4. Taste. You may add more salt if needed.

5. Serve with tortilla chips.

(Originally published May 18th)