Tag Archive for 'roasted'

Roast olives with kumquats and almonds

Published
by
marc
on May 26, 2008
in Appetizer and Party
. 6 Comments

Huge thanks to Michelle and Brian over at Thursday Night Smackdown for inviting us over to their Memorial Day smoke-a-thon. I think I must have eaten half my body weight in pork and the other half in beer. I don’t want to steal her thunder, so I’ll let you mosey on over there to read about it, but I will say that if you’re ever lucky enough to get invited over for smoked meat and beer (or anything else for that matter) it’s an experience not to be missed.

These are some olives I roasted to take with me to the bbq. They’re relatively simple to make and the roasting gives them a unique flavor and texture more closely resembling oil-cured olives. The real stars of this dish in my opinion are the almonds and kumquats which both take taste great roasted on their own, but even better when roasted with olives.

I used some brine-cured olives I made last fall, but you could use just about any variety of store bought seed-in olives. My olives had meyer lemons, serrano chiles, garlic and celery that had been pickling along-side the olives so I threw those in as well. The olives straight out of the jar were a bit garlicy for my taste, but the roasting toned down the garlic while intensifying the flavour of the olive itself.

a few pounds of seed-in olives
3/4 C blanched almonds (Marcona almonds work well)
1 C kumquats (large ones sliced in half)
couple sprigs of thyme
fresh ground black pepper
olive oil
honey for drizzling

Preheat oven to 350 degrees (F).

In a non-reactive baking sheet, spread an single layer of olives, then scatter the almonds and kumquats. Strip the sprigs of thyme of their leaves and sprinkle on top along with some black pepper. Cover with a good layer of olive oil (I used about half a cup). Then cover the pan loosely with foil.

Roast for 30 minutes then take the foil off and roast uncovered for another 30-40 minutes stirring with a spatula every 10-15 minutes. Drizzle honey over everything about 10 minutes before they’re done. You’ll know they’re finished when the kumquats are nice and caramelized, the almonds are golden brown and the skin on the olives is starting to blister.

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Ramp kimchi & Ramp confit

Published
by
marc
on April 29, 2008
in Pickle, Spring, Vegan, Vegetable and Vegetarian
. 12 Comments

So this weekend we made another trip north to pick ramps. This time we brought home a grocery bag brimming with these delightful members of the onion family (they’re sweet and have a flavor somewhere between leeks and garlic). The reason for this large harvest is that L had the brilliant idea of making ramp kimchi, and I wanted to make a ramp confit.

Kimchi, for those unfamiliar, is a fiery Korean side-dish that’s pickled in a potent mix of chili powder and garlic. The specifics and vegetables vary by region and season, but Korean families take pride in the number of urns of kimchi they prepare per year. Prior to winter, families would gather to pickle the last of fall’s vegetables to last them through the cold months until spring.

Confit on the other hand traces its roots to France before refrigeration where meats like duck and goose were cooked in their own fat to preserve them. The word is derived from the verb “confire” which quite literally means “to preserve” and can refer to fruits or vegetables as well as meat.

If you haven’t guessed by now, the common thread here is 2 ways to preserve these perishable gems so they last more than a few days. I figured it would be fun to employ methods coming from 2 continents, and the results were fantastic!

While ramps are a vegetable that aren’t available in Korea, they work perfectly for kimchi because of their strong (though not overpowering) garlic flavor. The long leaves are well suited for wrapping around a slice of steamed pork, or a bit of rice and the flavors just burst with spicy goodness in your mouth.

The confit on the other hand roasts the ramps in an ample amount of olive oil, rounding out the flavor and intensifying the sweetness. The olive oil it’s cooked in is redolent with ramp’s leeky garlicy aroma and is marvelous on pizza dough or bread.
Continue for full recipe

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