….So you MAY want to come by Thursday and Friday for your “fix”!
It’s become a yearly tradition to close down operations on the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend, we take a much needed end of Summer break. In fact, I’m making this extra short so I can leave NOW!
(We are open today, Thursday and tomorrow, Friday so you can pick up all your holiday weekend culinary needs!).
I’m back in Mexico but all I can think about is the Kentucky tomatoes, the sweet, sweet corn so sweet it could be dessert, the peaches that you have to eat outside (because they run down your arm when you bite into them!).
Take those peaches, especially if they are a bit soft and bruised, wrap a thin strip of proscuitto around each and carmelize in a hot skillet with a bit of olive oil (ours please).
Leftover tomatoes? Chop them into large pieces, add chopped sweet onion, toss with olive oil (see above) and roast in a 300 degree oven until they are soft and gooey. Drizzle more oil, add stale bread chunks and cheese, back into the oven until THAT’s also gooey and melted.
Cut the kernels from that sweet, sweet corn and sautee in a pan with olive oil, bacon and sweet onion. Add a bit of half and half (make it healthy and make it fat free) or cream or, pile onto baby corn pancakes and serve with a dab of salsa.
Flat steak is all the rage, grill one and spread a layer of our lemon pesto over the top, serve “schwarma style” with warm whole wheat pita breads for folks to make their own wraps. Roast or grill onions and lemon wedges to serve alongside.
While it’s August hot in Lexington, here in Mexico it feels like October: 50 degrees at night and 60 degrees during the day.
One of the things I most appreciate about living Kentucky is by the time I am tired of one season, along comes another.
Stop by the shop or market this week for your “shot” (of olive oil) and stock up on Cuban coffee, Italian Bread soup, pesto, and all of our other sauces and products (housemade ravioli, biscotti, cassoulet, wheatberry salad, breads, Italian pasta, Cipolini, Pomodori, lemon pesto, robusto sauce…plus more!).
After weeks of stockpiling heirloom tomatoes, we’ll have our first batch of Rustic Italian Tomato and Bread Soup available tomorrow.
For those of you who do not remember or who have never tasted it, this is our version of Gazpacho: fresh heirloom tomatoes combined with our olive oil, our rustic focaccia bread, a ton of garlic and lemon. And this is a raw and completely vegetarian soup, nothing is cooked. It’s absolutely delicious cold or at room temperature (a dollop of sour cream and minced cucumber dresses it up for company), and for those of you who do remember, it’s equally delicious served hot as a pasta sauce.
We’ll have it at the market and also at the shop for tasting and for purchase.
To beat the heat, we’ll also have shots (and quarts) of ice cold Cuban Coffee at the market and the shop.
Chef Stacy’s Demo at the Tasting Room: Bechamel Sauce
Bechamel is a white sauce made with milk, butter and flour and is the MOTHER of all French sauces. It’s also the base of many other sauces like Mornay. You’ll find bechamel sauce in Italian cooking baked into lasagnas, in Greek cuisine as the foundation for Moussaka.
Join Chef at 11:00 am and again at 1:00pm to learn how easy it is to make your own Bechamel Sauce. Chef Stacy will demonstrate the basics and will also do a baked pasta using the sauce. You can learn and then you can eat!
Stay cool and come see us!
I personally love any pizza any season, anytime, hot or cold, fresh or stale, thick or thin, New York style or Chicago style. In my estimation it’s one of the world’s perfect foods.
Then there is true Italian pizza; that one typically only finds in Italy, and more specifically the pizzas of Naples, where authentic pizza was born and still lives.
The pie is huge, at least 18 inches in diameter. And the first time I saw each person at the table order their own I couldn’t believe it! How could one person finish such a thing? For the record, two of the diners went on to order steak and salad after the pizza…and this was lunch!
The pizza di Napoli has the lightest and thinnest crust. The sauce – if any – is just enough to moisten and color the top of the pie. The pizza Margherita is made with the world famous Marzano tomatoes and fresh mozzarella cheese (from the local water buffalo milk). It’s light, delicious and will change your notion of pizza forever.
Other options might be plain crust piled with fresh arugula leaves, a few paper thin slices of prosciutto and a few healthy dribbles of the local olive oil. Maybe a few pinches of fresh herbs as well.
Why am I sharing my love affair with pizza?
This Saturday at the shop (11:00 am and again at 1:00 pm) , Chef Stacy will make light whole wheat flatbreads and show you what to use and how to use it to make light, healthy, satisfying, FULL of flavor summer flatbreads or pizzas.
Chef will feature cipollini with bleu cheese; a margherita with pomodori; pesto with asiago; peach with mascarpone, honey and walnuts.
These are easy, quick, fun to make, pretty - and especially with the great summer produce and herbs - delicious!
See you at the shop or at the market this week, it’s going to be a hot one Saturday, come by for your shot and quart of cold Cuban Coffee. We can’t wait to see you both places.
Chow!
It was fun to see the folks show up last Saturday at the shop for Chef Stacey’s Mayo Demo…some even brought notebooks as to not miss any details!
So, we’re at it again this week, tomorrow (Saturday) at the shop again at 11:00 am and 1:00 pm, Chef Stacey will show and taste our version of that Italian Classic the Caprese Salad.
In Italy, the classic Insalata Caprese (as in the style of Capri) is made with fresh buffalo mozzarella, ripe tomatoes, salt, pepper and olive oil. And it is typically served as a first course (antipasti) as opposed to a side dish.
As anyone who has been to Campania and has had the good fortune to enjoy a traditional Insalata Caprese knows, what defines this simple combination is the absolutely phenomenal ingredients. Mozzarella made in Campania from the milk of the water buffalo, the world famous tomatoes and basil from the same region, and “killer” extra virgin olive oil.
What we want to share tomorrow is this same theme, that the highest quality ingredients make the dish, but also that other simple factors such as making sure the food is served at room temperature impact the flavor and enjoyment as well. Who hasn’t ordered a Caprese salad at a restaurant only to be disappointed to be served ice cold slabs of tasteless mozzarella and tomatoes with inferior olive oil and typically inferior balsamico (It’s the Americans who added balsamic to this salad.)?
Our Insalata Caprese takes fresh mozzarella allowed to sit at room temperature, big beautiful juicy Kentucky tomatoes, our lemon pesto (also at room temp), buttery, tomatoey Olio Rustico from Sicily, freshly ground black pepper and great sea salt. I believe you will find this Insalata Caprese a religious experience!
Come watch, taste, enjoy and learn.
We will also be down at the Farmers Market with ice cold Cuban Coffee and all of our other products.
See you then!
As Barbara says (and apparently a whole slew of her Southern female ancestors), “Honey, (if) you don’t make your own mayonnaise…you don’t SERVE mayonnaise”.
I will vouch there is nothing like homemade mayonnaise and especially in the hot summer months when there is so much flavorful food to put it on! Slathered on thick warm slices of tomato and good bread, or used for dunking sauce for your hot crispy french fries (trust me…).
I am a girl of Miracle Whip heritage and when I did taste mayo as a child, I thought it was awful and bland.
And then I went to France.
And I TASTED real mayonnaise, and aioli (garlic mayonnaise).
Mayonnaise is such a simple recipe with few ingredients, however the key is that those few ingredients be pristine and of the highest quality, and the process to combine them must be correct.
Aioli is considered the “butter” of Provence, they put it on EVERYTHING: on raw vegetables, on grilled fish, on crabcakes, on BLT’s (okay, that’s me, not the French.), on steamed potatoes, as a sidekick to ALL fried foods, on burgers.
Aioli is not just garlic flavored mayonnaise, rather, garlic is the physical foundation of aioli. Aioli is a rich sauce of crushed garlic, egg yolks, lemon juice and great olive oil. Some eat pudding, I eat Aioli.
Saturday at the Tasting Room - at 11:00 am and again at 1:00 pm, Chef Stacey Moore will show you how to make your own mayonnaise and Aioli as well as let you taste them. I guarantee it will be hard for you to go back to the jar with the H on the front. While you have Chef front and center, it’s also a good time to ask her any other cooking questions, she knows the answers to them all.
LEMON PESTO!
Our seasonal lemon pesto is now available at the shop this week and at the farmers market on Saturday. We take a basic pesto recipe and give it our own fresh twist: beautiful, fragrant basil, whole lemons so yellow they “put your eyes out”, our pungent, rich olive oil. Each delicious ingredient is amazing on its own, combine them and you taste Summer in Italy in every spoonful.
It’s best served at room temperature (like most food). Fold a few spoonfuls into a pot of pasta, serve alongside grilled shrimp and grilled steak and grilled chicken. Toast some slices of ciabatta, add thick slices of Kentucky tomato, and pile on our lemon pesto (drizzle a bit more oil over the top and be sure to sniff this masterpiece before your first bite.).
Fold a teaspoon or two of the pesto into a cup of mayo and spread this on untoasted ciabatta with thin slices of grilled steak.
Corn on the cob! It’s the time of year to boil 8 ears and stand over the sink chomping down like a typewriter! Spread a bit of lemon pesto over each bite, or, roll in olive oil, sprinkle with good salt and squeeze lime. It’s going to run down your arm while you eat but, who cares? It’s summer man!
Cut the corn off the cob once you boil it, add the olive oil, lime juice and salt and a bit of minced sweet onion, serve as a great salsa or corn salad. Add cilantro and you can call it ensalada de maiz! Add steamed shrimp to that salad, roll it up in soft tortillas and you can call it taco con maiz y camorone! A Spanish lesson in every blog!
Come down to the market this Saturday and welcome our leetle Andrew back from Italy where he just spent the last week in Venice. While you’re there have a shot of cold Cuban coffee and tell us what you’re cooking this summer.
Thank you for your business and your friendship.
CHOW!
…you think I’m talking about Marta, don’t you?
Nope.
We have so many customers who want the Cuban Coffee to go, we typically package it up in a quart deli container for them to take home. Stir it up, heat it up, or pour it over ice. We’ve learned the packaging doesn’t matter when someone is “jonesing” for the Cuban.
So…in anticipation of the long holiday weekend, we are making quarts in advance for you to come through and pick up. And as always, making a phone call for us to hold one for you is not a bad idea.
While you are in grabbing the java you may as well stock up for the weekend on olive oil and balsamic, wheatberry salad, breads and sauces because….WE ARE CLOSED SATURDAY, JULY 3 AT BOTH THE SHOP AND FARMERS MARKET.
So here’s the scenario for the weekend:
Saturday, you drag yourself out of bed, get ready for the big Bluegrass 10,000 race (ha!…just a joke to see if you’re paying attention.). But, you’re cranky, whiny, and need a bigger reason to get up than pulling on your running shorts and crawling UNDER the bed to find that other sneaker that’s been there for a month.
THEN you remember, “I’ve got a big Cuban in the fridge”!
Oh Happy Day.
A cup or two of the Cuban coffee and you ARE happy (…and okay, maybe a bit high.).
Heck, you’ve heard of the ‘The Big Gulp’… poke a hole in the lid of the container for a straw and head downtown sipping on the Big Cuban!
Our hours this week are 10am to 6 pm Thursday and Friday.
Happy Fourth Folks!
…Let US do it for you!
Cool and quick and easy ideas for our new Golden Garlic Honey Dressing:
- halve a ripe avocado, fill each half with our dressing and top with cracked fresh pepper (a pinch of minced sweet onion would seal the deal, fresh lump crab meat would take it to nirvana), scoop out with a spoon
- toss with lefover rice (or boil a bag in the microwave…Uncle Ben’s now makes Minute Brown Rice) and frozen green peas for a quick and delicious cold salad. Add salted cashews and or steamed shrimp and it’s a summer dinner.
- Grill chicken and pull the pieces apart into large chunks, toss with our garlicy croutons, canned mandarin orange slices, raw red pepper strips, pile into iceberg lettuce cups and drizzle with our Golden Garlic dressing. TRUST ME…and Cat-scan Kim who gave me this idea! She and I had a “I got a better recipe” Throwdown in the Tasting Room today.
- MARINATE the same chicken or shrimp in the dressing beFORE you grill it
- I’ve poured the dressing into a coffee mug and pullled off a hunk of sourdough bread (our Pane di Altimura) and called it dinner
At the Farmers Market Saturday and at the Shop we are featuring our Robusto Sauce. Made with chunks of fresh Roma tomatoes, tons and tons of fresh basil, it’s such a bright and clean, yet savory tomato sauce.
Stacey and her kitchen crew have made tons this week.
- Heat it in the microwave, then add fresh shrimp, cover and let the shrimp “cook” in the hot sauce
- Add a tablespoon or two of low fat cream cheese to turn it into a pink, rosy, richer textured sauce. Pour a half cup over grilled salmon.
_Especially in hot summer months (like the August days we are having NOW), it’s absolutely delicious served room temperature over room temperature pasta, it is Italy on your plate!
Pick up a couple of extra wheatberry salads, for lunches and for picnic sides, and because so many of our customers open theirs in the shop and start eating it with their tasting spoons (and I bet some of those do not make it to the house!).
We have you covered for healthy, delicious summer meals. Join us at the shop or at the market and ask for more recipes and ideas.
CHOW!
And I’m not talking about Uncle Bill and Mr. French!
First, a Happy Birthday “shout out” to my Dad, Bernard Vessels who turned 83 years young yesterday. Pops is one of my best girlfriends. Thanks for all your love and guidance and for telling me “you missed a spot” every week when I mowed the lawn. (and thank YOU Judith my fine therapist!)
Continuing the family theme, Chef Stacey has her son Taylor down here in the kitchen chopping and cooking and I’m afraid to ask what else! He has graciously agreed to help us set up at the market on Saturdays.
And of course Marta’s mother Nilda and all of her Cubaness is in from Miami and will be here today (Friday) with Marta working the sales floor (Nilda considers herself management material so of course she’ll be supervising.), come in and practice your Spanglish with them!
If you miss them Friday, the “show” starts again on Saturday at the Lexington Farmers Market at 10! Believe me, it’s a PARTY you won’t want to miss! Back by VERY popular demand, Chef Stacey will be serving up Cassoulet (it’s amazing to me as hot as it is outside that we canNOT keep this in stock; it’s selling quickly) at the market from 10 to 12 along with cooking tips, stories about why she wants to buy rubber machetes to throw at me in HER kitchen, etc…
And then of course there is OUR OWN FAMILY at Oliva Bella who is the foundation of our business. Without all these hard working people who love to serve (you our customers), there would be no party. I am grateful for, and love them all.
We SOLD OUT of ALL of our prepared foods last week at the market (including the Wheatberry Salad, the Golden Garlic Honey Dressing) but Chef has doubled production this week. Still, you may want to call ahead and reserve just in case.
The Tasting Room at Oliva Bella will also be going strong on Saturday from 10 am to 4 pm, if you don’t want to fight the heat and humidity, come enjoy a culinary tour of Italy with PLENTY of AC and good food.
As always we will have our flagship products at both locations, the EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OILS FROM ITALY and 8 YEAR AGED BALSAMICO, for tasting and for oooohing and aaaahing over.
Stay cool, Be good to your belly, and come visit!