European olives elevate your dish and add a dash of surprise

European olives elevate your dish and add a dash of surprise


When we feel like we’re always in a hurry, we tend to cook up the same trusted dishes for family and friends. Rice and beans and chicken, for example, make for an always nourishing pot of pleasure. They’re part of dinners all over the world, with variations in nearly every culture. No doubt you have your own!

We lose interest in our kitchens and postpone our culinary aspirations, envisioning a future day when we’ll have more time to pursue them. No doubt, you have your signature go-to recipes that your family and friends love – and take for granted.

Why not change it up and surprise them with some spice in their lives? Take a minute or two and imagine you’re in a European kitchen looking out your window, contemplating the ingredients in the fridge and the pantry, waiting for a recipe idea to come to you.

European olives could be just the trick. A simple solution to change things up and elevate a dish to a higher standard as well.

Here are five examples of how olives from Europe can bring a few dishes up to a new level.

Starting with a weekend snack when you have guests over or an appetizer before a weekday dinner. You can’t go wrong with a dip when the gang is gathered around a board game, for example. In this cheese dip recipe, simply incorporating sliced Hojiblanca olives as a garnish adds tasty complexity and visual panache.

Whole Gordal olives are added to the pot at the last stage of this hearty chicken and rice dinner. You can also add them to your own trusted chicken and rice recipe.

Enhance your roasted cauliflower side dish with this quick-to-mix Hojiblanca olive salsa.

And believe it or not, these black olives can also make a fresh impression in your sweet and savory baking. Here are two surprising treats that integrate them – shortbread with Hojiblanca olives and Hojiblanca olive and orange cake.