My Olive Oil journey second part.

I stayed in my home town for 3 years. It was the happiest time of my life when I could enjoy the the slow pace of almost rural lifestyle, the bright Italian sun and the company of the most cheerful people on Earth. The Italians are known to have the greatest passion for love, the exceptional devotion to their families, the positive attitude to whatever they do and the optimistic view on life in general. They are also recognised as one of the healthiest and long living nations in the world. I always had a suspicion these things are somehow connected with each other and soon I got the proof for my suspicions.
So I soon realised that the main secret of the Italian phenomenon is their diet and lifestyle. Yes, just that simple :)...Have you ever asked yourself: why is Italian cuisine so popular all over the world? Why are Italian goods usually the synonym of the highest quality? The answer lays on the surface: these people are extremely self sufficient in their own way....you have your land which is so rich and fertile, you work hard on this land, you make quality products (good food, good things,  good services), you live a happy, full, healthy life.
      And the major part of Mediterranean diet is......Olive Oil for sure...the olive tree is a real symbol of Italy...:) the oil is the main ingredient of any dish, the main component on any table. No matter what you have: a huge wedding reception or a modest family dinner - Olive Oil is the heart of everything, its favourite taste, its genuine base.
      Almost every weekend I had dinner with the families of my numerous relatives: aunts, uncles and cousins. All Italian women are great cooks. So they told me a lot of their secrets and taught me how to cook proper Italian food. For me it was a great discovery to know that Olive Oil is very good for cooking. Before that I had the wrong belief that it can be only used for salad dressing and as a basis for different sauces and was very bad for frying for example, as it can lose all it's healthy components and become even dangerously toxic. And my aunt explained to me that that's not true and you can use Olive Oil for frying stuff but on the lowest heat only, unlike the sunflower oil for example, which produces its better frying qualities on the highest heat. If you fry on Olive Oil using low heat it keeps all its vitamins and health-giving micro elements and doesn't produce any toxic radicals.
       Now I want to share with you my favourite dish I learned to cook living in Italy. It's very simple, tasty and multi purpose , so can be used as a separate thing, or a side-dish for a main course.

It's called "Piedmontese peppers":

Ingredients:
8-12 ripe plum tomatoes
4 red peppers, stalks left on (for decoration), cut lengthways in half, seeds removed
4 garlic cloves, sliced
5-6 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper
8 large canned anchovies
small handful fresh basil.

Method:
Begin by cutting the peppers in half and removing the seeds but leaving the stalks intact (they're not edible but they do look attractive and they help the pepper halves to keep their shape).

Lay the pepper halves in the lightly oiled roasting tray. Now put the tomatoes in a bowl and pour boiling water over them. Leave them for 1 minute, then drain them and slip the skins off, using a cloth to protect your hands. Then cut the tomatoes into quarters and place three quarters in each pepper half.

After that, snip one anchovy fillet per pepper half into rough pieces and add to the tomatoes. Peel the garlic cloves, slice them thinly and divide the slices equally among the tomatoes and anchovies.

Now spoon 1 dessertspoon of Olive Oil into each pepper, season with freshly milled pepper (but no salt because of the anchovies) and place the tray on a high shelf in the oven for the peppers to roast for 50 minutes to 1 hour.

Then transfer the cooked peppers to a serving dish, with all the precious juices poured over, and garnish with a sprig of basil leaves.

These do need good bread to go with them as the juices are sublime – focaccia would be perfect.

buon appetito..