Smoked Olives, smoked Olive Oil with wine, galic, herbs.

Mike Flaherty

Ingredients

• 1 tsp inquiring mind

Instructions

Here's a great &#034condiment&#034 discovereed by accident. It's a by-product of the fantastic the smoked olives recipe in Smoke & Spice. There's a lot of leeway/room for creativity here, but the basic recipe is

1. Use or make a disposable aluminum pan, just a couple of square inches than the layer of olives you want to smoke.

2. Put olives in this pan, in a single layer. I usually do about a 6&#034 x 6&#034 sixe pans worth, so keep that in mind when you need t increase the following qty's...

3. Drizzle about 4 tablespoons olive oil, 3 tables spoons red wine or port, 2 tables spoons finely chopped garlic, 1 tablespoon dried rosemary (or basil or oregano or all 3), and 1 tablespoon rough cracked black pepper, over the olives. (Optional... add a few cloves whole garlic, add some dried tomatoes in oil, add some golden raisins, add some charred red bell pepper, or any type of pepper for that matter.)

4. I smoke on BGE, over lump with just 3 or 4 small chunks of wood (cherry, what have you), at 190 for about 2 hrs, to infuse with smoke-a-roma. Then pump up the temp to 270 or so for about 30 min (til juice starts to simmer) to get the olives coated with the heat-coagulate juices.

Basically, you are DONE! The cool thisg about these, besides how delicious they are, is that I almost always manage to be able to throw a batch in on the side of whatever I'm cooking. Don't oversmoke, however, or they can get that slightly bitter twang.

Now the interesting part. I screwed this up a few weeks back (I can't remember... I added a little too much opil, or I undercooked them a little), and when they were done there were a few tables spoons of residual oil, loaded, of course, with bits of garlic, pepper, etc. I tried drizzling this over a little parmiaggiano reggiano, and HOO BOY is was fantastic. Smoky, olivey, etc etc. I then drizzled some on top of a tenderloin steak and is was fantastic. Really good, even.

Which leaves me wondering..... theoretically, you could &#034optimize&#034 this recipe for the original intent (smoked oilves) AND the delicious by product of &#034smoked oil&#034 (by adding a little extrac oil/wine) or even make a tapanade perhaps, by also rough chopping the ingredients.

Oh, PS.... (the disclaimer)... using canned olives in this recipe yield poor results. I use just about every kind of olive imagineable, becuase there a bulk &#034Olive Bar&#034 at the local grocer. My favorites are Kalamata and Nicoise, but they are all good, as long didn't come from a can. The canned olives never seem to &#034soften up.&#034

Thanks for all your help! I can't wait to try that &#034latent skin&#034 pork butt idea, Spin!

Mike/Seattle

Notes

Number of Servings:

Time to Prepare: