The article below was written by Jason and Ashley Bartner at La Tavola Marche Cooking School located in Le Marche region of central Italy. I asked Jason, Head Chef, and his wife Ashley for their thoughts and feelings on Olive Oil, how they use it, and how it is a part of their life at La Tavola Marche. I wanted get a unique and authentic perspective from them about how and why olive oil is such a key ingredient in Italian cuisine. I was lucky enough to get a wonderful email back from them, which I have included above for everyone on Cafe Izabel .

If you are interested in taking a trip to Italy, please check out the La Tavola Marche website to book a cooking holiday. You can also stay in touch with Ashley and Jason on their blog.

Olive Oil

by Jason and Ashley Bartner

Olive oil is used in everything in Italy! In the kitchen of course, but also can be used to coat squeaky hinges, fix equipment & cure many ailments. We live in the foothills of the Apennine Mountains so its a bit too cold to grow olives in our area however Cartoceto just a bit closer to the Adriatic Sea is famous for its fantastic olive oil.

I use 3 different types of olive oil in the kitchen

Number one – the every day good olive oil – its extra virgin, cold pressed unfiltered from Umbria. I buy this in 5 litre jugs and it’s excellent. It’s not very acidic or green in flavor, thus not overpowering in taste.

The second I use to finish dishes, this is our local olive oil from Cartoceto. It’s got a bit more bite to it, but not peppery. A beautiful color. This is used to finish a pasta dish or top a crostini – just when you need a drizzle.

The third I use for frying, sautéing & when lots of heat is added to the oil. For this I buy an economical name brand, extra virgin from the grocery store.

We are extremely lucky, we live in Italy, so olive oil, good olive oil, is found cheaper here than anything you can find in the States. For example, my ‘every day oil’ (which is better than anything I used in the States) is 7,50 Euro a liter. A bottle of extra virgin olive oil in the grocery store is 2,99 Euro! I once read that a family of four is expected to go through at least a litre of olive oil a week. It is part of everyday life.

How do I use my olive oils? Liberally.

It goes into almost everything. When I make an antipasta of raw vegetables (for example thinly sliced zucchini with just a drizzle of olive oil, salt & pepper) where there are very few ingredients & nothing is being cooked, I’ll use the ‘good stuff.’ If I’m sautéing veggies in a pan, my ‘everyday olive oil’ is perfect. And the fried zucchini blossoms get dunked in a more economical oil. This, I realize is not practical for most people. I would suggest using a normal store bought as your everyday bottle & spending a little money on something nice to finish your dishes. It doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of money on oil you are going to cook with. And you really never want to heat good olive oil.

If you are going to go out & spend twenty or thirty dollars on a bottle of oil you should be able to taste the oil first. I prefer bottles that are not very acidic or green tasting. But its really what you prefer. When you have an oil tasting, as with wine you can really taste the differences in all of them, from peppery to almost buttery & smooth. Each oil has it’s own personality & uniqueness. Remember the most expensive bottle is not necessarily the best and the fancy label & packaging doesn’t make it taste any better either.

As far as making dressings with oils, be careful because if you use a strongly flavored oil, it can be bitter in some cases. For me, the best salad dressing ever is a drizzle of olive oil, little vinegar & a crack of salt & pepper.

Olive oil doesn’t really like air or light when stored. Keep it in the cupboard in a bottle with an airtight lid if you are going to go through it slowly.

A good olive oil story…

This past fall we drove into Umbria to Citta di Castello for a Slow Food & White Truffle Festival. We ended up in a sample heaven of fresh pressed extra virgin olive oils! Ashley found it her duty to thoroughly try & retry each oil! It was a great way to taste the differences in over 20 different local oils. As we made our way around the room dunking hunks of bread into saucers filled with pools of the cloudy green life blood of Italy, in a room filled with frescos on the ceiling & admiring Italians arguing over which oil is best, we could taste fall and easily understand how these people are so passionate for the oil of an olive.

(You can read more about it on our blog: http://latavolamarche.blogspot.com/2008/11/sample-heaven.html)

La Tavola Marche Cooking Holiday Promotion

They currently have a special price for the "AMORE IN LE MARCHE!" vacation package, this includes:

1. Romantic Holiday in the Italian Countryside
2. 3 nights accommodation, dinner for 2 with wine, horseback riding and custom cooking class ~ € 580 a couple

Please click here to download the PDF with the package details.

This is my breakfast ritual: illy coffee, cookies (gluten free of course), and my Macbook to read emails and catch up with my RSS feeds. I do, of course, eat breakfast too but these things are my ritual, that I can’t go without or the day just doesn’t feel right. I need some caffeine and something sweet to get going in the morning .

illy

Here is a link to lots of different types of illy coffees and espresso, this is where I get my illy from.

I have not tried the illy Caffe Scuro line, or illy Caffe Normale MOKA line.

Has anyone tried them? Which do you prefer?

I consider illy coffee the best. It is the best I have ever had, and I have ordered coffee online from many different coffee sites and farms and gone to many gourmet grocery stores. Wat I love about illy is the consistency in each can. A lot of what makes coffee good is how it is stored and packaged, to ensure it tastes as good as possible once it actually gets to you. Often times great care is taken to grow beans, and less is taken to roast them, and even less to grind them, and the least care is given to packaging and getting them to the customer. So all the effort is lost, it is sad.

I think coffee loses any of of the goodness it once had by the time it gets to me, at least with most coffees available in the grocery store. There are lots of coffee websites that will brew the coffee only days before they send it to you, and assuming they brew it well, this would be a good way to source your coffee. But, most coffee sites and coffee farms don’t take the time or effort to ensure you are getting really new and freshly roasted beans. This is why illy is so awesome, because you can get it just about anywhere in the world and it tastes perfect every time.

Even as I used up my can of coffee, the last cup was just as good as the first. Every other time I have bought coffee that was pre-ground, the beans get stale and don’t taste as good at the end. So, I take a large batch of coffee and put it into small resealable bags so they don’t get exposed to the air as much, but still this isn’t quite the same. Also, I have to mention that the illy grind is perfect too, not too small not too big, perfecto!! .

Cookies

I have to start my morning off with something sweet. I use Agave nectar in my coffee, which I prefer over sugar, but I still need something extra. I eat gluten free cookies, usually made by Enjoy Life Foods.

I buy them here. As you can see, there are many flavors but I prefer Snickerdoodle the best. I also sometimes eat Pamela’s cookies, which are just as good if not better, than regular (non gluten free) cookies. I have had many people who can eat gluten test these cookies out and none could believe they weren’t regular cookies until I told them .

Do you eat something sweet in the morning too?

If I could have anything I wanted, it would be Spanish churros with chocolate sauce…every morning and probably for dessert after dinner too . Yum.

Please share your breakfast ritual below.

Mafe

This post is in response to Demba’s comment about her favorite dish being Mafe, so since I had never heard of it before I had to look up a recipe. It is made with meat in a spicy peanut sauce, and it sounds AMAZING. It is a very popular dish from Senegal and I found a couple recipes, one with chicken and the other with beef.

Mafé is a famous and popular West African dish, particularly in Senegal, Gambia, Mali and the Ivory Coast. It is a stew with meat simmered in a sauce thickened with ground peanuts and has a wonderful sweet-salty flavor. Mafé is known by many names, including groundnut stew, mafe, maffé, maffe, sauce d’arachide, sauce z’ara, tigadèguèna and tigadene.

- Whats4Eats.com

Recipes

• Chicken Mafe Recipe
  
• Beef Mafe Recipe

Community Feedback:

Has anyone tried Mafe at a restaurant or made it at home? Can you suggest variations to these recipes?

This post is all about my new favorite ingredient called the Piquillo pepper, it is an essential ingredient to Spanish food and can be used in just about any recipe (Spanish or not) or at least, I would hehe. First off, a little history behind it. Piquillo translates to “little beak” in English because of its shape, all the peppers are very uniform in shape. Piquillo peppers are harvested by hand twice between the months of September and December. Then, they are slow roasted and the skin is peeled off (by hand) and immediately packed into cans or jars, so there isn’t anything added to them and they are packaged basically just after they are picked. Fresh and yummy!!

Taste

Well, this is very subjective…but overall they are spicy (not too hot) and sweet, and very juicy and fleshy. They also have a smoky taste to them, from they were slow smoked after picking.

What do you think they taste like? Please describe it.

How and where to buy them

To get these peppers outside of Spain, you have to order them online in cans or jars. Or, if you have a cool grocery store near you, you can probably get them there but look out for imitations, it is easiest to get them from Amazon.

Pure Piquillos have been produced for generations almost entirely by hand, using no chemicals in the washing, roasting and peeling process.

Piquillo Peppers imported to the US carry an exclusive seal of authenticity, granted only to those peppers that have been hand-picked in the Ribera del Ebro region of Northern Spain.

Source: http://www.piquillopepper.com

If you want to buy some Piquillo peppers, you can purchase them from Amazon.com, these peppers are sold by an authorized importer that carries D.O. Lodosa seal.

Has anyone bought them online on in the grocery store before? Or going to Spain for them?

Where do they come from?

Well, Lodosa is one of the places that they grow, Lodosa is located in the Autonomous Community of Spain called, Navarra. In order to get the seal they can come from a few different places in Navarra:

The production area comprises the land located in the ‘Lower Ribera’ region of Navarra, in the north of the peninsula, on the banks of the rivers Ebro and Ega, and includes eight towns: Andosilla, Ázagra, Cárcar, Lerín, Lodosa, Mendavia, San Adrián and Sartaguda.

Source: http://www.spain.info

A Great way to eat them

Last night I saw the “Navarra” episode of Made in Spain, which inspired me to write this post. To watch all his eqisodes, check out the Made in Spain page on Hulu. Jose made an AMAZING recipe using these peppers, and also Roncal cheese called: “Seared Piquillo peppers stuffed with Roncal cheese”. I cannot eat cheese and watching him make this recipe, knowing I can’t have the cheese, made me actually shed a tear… if you get the chance, please make this and eat some extra for me!!

Before you make this recipe, you will need some Roncal cheese, and you can get it from your friendly neighborhood Amazon.com, here.

Here is a video of Jose making Seared Piquillo peppers stuffed with Roncal cheese.

Here is a PDF of the recipe.

Are there things you can’t eat? If so, what are they?

I am intolerant to so much stuff, it is easier for me to tell people what I CAN eat. But basically, no gluten, wheat, rice or any grains of any kind, no dairy products and this includes butter and cheese, and very few spices.

I am going to include lots of allergy-free recipes on CafeIzabel.com as well as instructional videos of how to make my recipes. I will have “after market mods” you can add to all my recipes to spice them up and embellish them for those without allergies or intolerances.

Do you have any food allergies or intolerances?

Community feedback:

Amy

Hi Izabel, I just saw your post on LinkedIn. My daughter was GF and DF (and a list of other things) for over a year. I have a cooking background so I decided to start recipe testing. I have had a lot of success. She’s ok now (it was a sensitivity and her skin has cleared up).

I do have many GF recipes on my blog but it sounds like you have a lot of restrictions. I have decided to go GF for a week to see how I feel and to cut down on the amount of wheat I eat. So far, so good.

I can see why you like Spanish food; it’s a lot of meat and fish. I was in Madrid with my family a few weeks ago and Tapas are my new thing! Keep in touch. Amy Fothergill

- Amy from The Family Chef – http://thefamilychef.blogspot.com/

Natalie

Define “food”. I have an intolerance to artificial sweeteners and an allergy to stabilizers (guar gum, xantham gum…). That means I get sick when eating the majority of processed foods available, even the organic health food store stuff (sometimes *especially* the health food store items). I also appear to get eczema flare-ups from corn syrup, artificial colors, and/or artificial flavors. That being said, my stance is that I have no food allergies or intolerances, because I feel that the ingredients that trigger my reactions don’t qualify as “food”.

-Natalie

Kay

I have had allergies to several foods all of my life. I can easily live without peaches and apricots. My other allergies include legumes – all peas and beans. Soybean has been a real problem for me and lately as it seems to be used in more and more food products (under several different names – ie vegetable protein, etc.). Cows are now being feed soybean product instead of corn product which now affects milk and milk products. It seems like everyday another thing I used to enjoy is now using soy…even chocolate, ice cream, etc. Soy is being used as a filler/substitute in many convenience foods so I try to eat as much natural foods as possible. As you can imagine, I would make an awful vegetarian.

- Kay

Please leave your feedback and comments below.

Yummy Food

This is a post dedicated to food… I am a total Foodie and I love to cook but especially eat. Food is really my life. I prefer to cook each meal fresh and from scratch. Unfortunately, this isn’t quite possible with working full-time, but I do cook from scratch a few times a week and store it for later. Also I currently I have a lot of food intolerances but I am working through them slowly. So, there is A LOT I can’t eat but I have tasted a lot in the past so I know what things taste like . I really look forward to the day I can eat anything I desire to eat on a whim. I am sure I will gain a lot of weight then but that is OK by me. I will have to up the exercise a lot!! Since food is a huge part of my life, and I plan to take lots of cooking classes, the exercise and staying trim will be balanced with the food intake. One day, when I have more money and a different lifestyle (no day job, lots of savings, and the courtyard house I am going to build) I will basically eat, exercise, and sleep floating around on a boat somewhere! Ah the life!! .

(Please note Giada’s pic below, she is in Capri, my future home, or at least one of them).

Right now I eat almost completely carb-free. Carbs make me feel like crap and don’t make me feel full at all so I really stick to mean and veggies, legumes, and fruit. But man-o-man do I love carbs. They taste great but are almost like a dessert food to me at this point. I can only have carbs once a week or so, and this includes rice. Some of my most favorite dishes are Italian dishes, all involving pasta of course.

Food Network changed my life

I am a HUGE fan of Giada De Laurentiis’ pasta recipes. Here is a link to her page on Food Network. I basically love all the food she makes, it is all very carby, greasy, cheesy, chocolatey, and basically everything I would eat if I could . It is REAL food, food that you eat when you are really living and indulging. Wow, I would have to get a personal trainer and work out a lot, but I WOULD!! It would be worth it…but anways…

Another of my favorite chefs is Alton Brown. Here is his Food Network page, and here is a link to his website. Alton is the most amazing teacher I have ever seen. He got me more interested in cooking than anyone I have ever met. I learned so many techniques from watching him on Good Eats. Because of him, I use Le Creuset cast iron cooking pans, I do not know how I lived before cast iron. Here are the 2 pieces I have, the Grill Pan and the Skillet. I HIGHLY recommend these 2 if you are at all serious about cooking and your food tasting good. Cast iron cookware is quite possibly one of God’s greatest inventions on Earth!!! other than Porsche of course . All of Alton’s recipes are of the highest quality and the de facto standard for most dishes out there. Also, all of the gadgets and tools he recommends are life-changers. Down with the uni-tasker!!! .

Continue reading the rest of ‘Some of my favorite recipes from Food Network’ …

Café Izabel  is an international community and I believe it would enrich everyone’s experience to hear about where all of you are from and what is your favorite meal from your country/home town/ mom’s kitchen?

Please share with the community a little about your:

• Home town
• Your favorite dish or meal
• Why it is your favorite?
• What does it remind you of?
• What is the history or story behind the food? (Personal or historical)

Please leave your comments in the comments section below this post. I am excited to read your feedback. If you have any issues or would like to include pictures, e-mail me at: iz@mylisty.com.

-Izabel

Izabel is a Foodie

Here is a special post about my "all time" favorite chef José Andrés and his show Made in Spain. Last night I saw my first episode of this PBS show, Made in Spain about Murcia, Spain. Before the episode was over, I had already decided I am going to live there, like… seriously… I really am going to move there in the next few years. Just you wait and see . hehe.

José

I first heard of José from Tony Bourdain’s show No Reservations on the Travel Channel. Tony showed him at his restaurant called minibar at Cafe Atlantico. I was immediately impressed by José and felt that he was something special and knew I needed to go to his restaurants. The passion that he has for food, ingredients, and cooking is something I rarely see in humans, that type of passion in general, for anything in life in something truly special.

It is hard to find truly special, passionate people like José and there are sure a lot of "chefs" and "celebrity chefs" out there to jade a person to the whole idea of cooking and cooking shows. What I love about his is he is the REAL thing, and I can feel the passion he has for food. He doesn’t try to force food to be something it’s not or taste like something it’s not, he lets it self-express and appreciates amazing ingredients. It sure makes sense to me and this is the way I cook at home. Maybe I am part Spanish, who knows .

Restaurants

I feel SO lucky that José has 5 restaurants in my area! I haven’t been to any of them yet due to my food in tolerances, but I am going to go soon, I wish I could meet him . He happens to live in the D.C. area, near me!!

If you happen to live in the mid-Atlantic area or are going to be traveling here, I recommend you stop by any of these restaurants and please let me know how it went. I am going to do my best to visit them all and write reviews here on DLG.

• mini bar at Café Atlantico
• Café Atlantico
• Jaleo
• Zaytinya
• Oyamel

More Washington D.C. Restaurants (if you are in the area)

Please check out the list of places that Tony Bourdain stopped by on his episode of No Reservations in D.C.

Cookbooks

He has a new cookbook with recipes from his show called:

• Made in Spain: Spanish Dishes for the American Kitchen - I am going to pick this one up after work today!!
• Tapas Deck50 Little Dishes that Capture the Essence of Spanish Cooking (Cards) - these cards look very nice for easy, quick recipes you can keep out for your spouse to use when he/she cooks dinner FOR you .
• Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America – who doesn’t love tapas?!

Please take some time to look over his website and recipes, and if you don’t get PBS you can order his episodes from his website.

Yummy!

Molecular gastronomy from the Bazaar at SLS

More molecular gastronomy from the Bazaar at SLS

For those of you living in or traveling to the L.A. area, here is a great review of the Bazaar Restaurant located in the SLS hotel, by My Last Bite.com.

Has anyone watched “Made in Spain” on PBS? Bought his cookbooks? Or eaten at his restaurants? If so, please leave your feedback below and let me know how you liked it .

I am not sure how many of you saw Tony Bourdain’s “Food Porn” episode of No Reservations but it was one of the best, funniest, and weirdest episodes yet . Have you seen this episode? What do you think of it? I do agree with him!

Here is Tony’s Food Porn Photo Journal.

A taste of food porn