Erica De Mane

Still Life with Green and Black Olives, Vita Schagen

Often I have a hundred ideas about how to start a meal—and those ideas add up to appetizer chaos. Too many options? I’m not sure. My need to feed from beginning to end is strong, but it’s got to be smooth. Each meal must be of a piece, all the courses fitting together to create a meaningful flow. That’s not so hard in concept, so why do I get confused in my kitchen?

When I first read Lulu’s Provençal Table, Richard Olney’s book about Lulu Peyraud, a famous home cook of Provence and a muse to Olney, Alice Waters, Kermit Lynch, Paul Bertolli, and Jeremiah Tower, I was surprised to learn she only had a handful of amuse-gueules, openers she offered on rotation. They inevitably involved tapenade or anchoïade (olive or anchovy spreads) served on little toasts, or buttered sardines served on little toasts, or fresh garlic and olive oil rubbed on little toasts.  That is what happens when you focus your culinary mind exclusively on your region. If you’re a good cook, every dish can be a local jewel.

Being Italian American doesn’t always focus me enough. My soul is purely Mediterranean, but living in Manhattan I’m hit with culinary influences from all directions and frequently derailed. When I’m truly focused I remember that my reason for cooking is to revisit the flavors I grew up with and love, and to let those flavors naturally evolve. I’m not here to create fancy new versions of haikara soba.

So I was recently putting together a little birthday dinner for a good friend. I set out to buy olives but was immediately frustrated to find that my market had only Gaetas, not my favorite olives. I went looking for the smaller, sweeter Taggiasca ones from Liguria, but my shop was out. I bought the Gaetas anyway. They tasted a bit sharp, so I figured I’d doctor them up, settling on the rosemary fennel flavor combination that I wrote about in my last blog and find so appealing. Then I decided to bake the olives, something that I hadn’t done in a long time and had sort of forgotten was a thing to do. It’s a good solution if you ever need to mellow out a batch of sharp olives.

Here’s what I did:

Get out a nice looking baking dish that will fit your olives fairly snuggly in one layer. For this version I scattered on a palmful of fennel seeds and a generous amount of fresh rosemary sprigs. I also added the budding tops from a bunch of garlic scapes I had on hand. Then I drizzled on some good olive oil and added a few turns of coarse black pepper. I gave it all a good toss and then baked it, uncovered, in a 400-degree oven for about 10 minutes, just until the olives were hot through and starting to look a bit puffy. The aroma was intense and really appealing. I let them cool off slightly before serving them, so my guests wouldn’t burn themselves, but they were definitely still warm and juicy to bite into, and that is the beauty of this simple appetizer. It feels more substantial that cold olives, more like real food. Everyone loved it.  And it will be a good thing to remember the next time I freak out trying to come up with a simple opener to get a meal flowing.