New shop: The European Delicatessen

Our products are available in another great store in downtown Vancouver, The European Delicatessen, located at 1220 Davie Street. This is a family-owned deli that offers a variety of harder to find packaged goods, cheeses, meats, and also has homemade Iranian food every day with at least 2 dishes to choose from.

WE WILL BE DOING A TASTING IN 'THE EUROPEAN DELICATESSEN' TOMORROW, FROM 12-2!! SEE YOU THERE!!

New shop: Stong's market

We are pleased to announce that our products can now be found at Stong's Market, located at 4560 Dunbar Street, Vancouver. At Stong's Market, you will find everything that you're looking for, including a wide selection of unique, gourmet, natural and organic products.

New shops: Whole Foods Markets in Vancouver

We are very happy to say that you can now find Cazorliva EVOO at each of the 4 locations of Whole Foods in Vancouver (Cambie, Kitsilano, Robson and Park Royal). Whole Foods has everything you need. Find a great selection of all natural/organic products at each of their 4 locations in Vancouver.

In Whole Foods Market, Cambie.

Recipe: "Escalivada" A new fantastic recipe for Thanksgiving!!!

                                         "ESCALIVADA"




"Escalivada" is one of the most popular dishes of the Catalan cuisine (Catalonia is a region of Spain). The name comes from the catalan verb "escalivar" that in english means baking with embers, or ember of coal. It's a culinary technique by itself. "Escalivada" is to cook food as closest to the embers of a fire as possible, "caliu" in Catalan, and always seeking the absence of flames. Keeping them turning to as they are cooking to avoid burning the skin, until they are cooked in the embers shelter. The flavour will be influenced by the type of wood or coals with which the fire has been made previously. You can cook this dish as a main dish or to use as a accompaniment with fish, poultry, rice and pasta. It's a great "tapa" aswell!!


This is a very heatly, easy and extremely tasty dish to get ready for your Thanksgiving dinner. Cook it, serve it and amaze your guests!!!


                                                    THE RECIPE


Ingredients - For 4 servings:


The traditional dish includes:
- 4 Egplants
- 4 big red peppers
- 2 big onions
- Extra Virgin olive oil
- Salt


Other ingredients that you can include in it, even they are not part of the traditional ingredients:
- 2 boiled eggs
- Green olives ( You can use black olives aswell, but green olives are healthier!)
- 2 tomatoes
- Anchovies
- Garlic


Preparation:


1- Wash the vegetables and place them on the oven tray or BBQ. (In our day by day, it's not easy to get ready  in our house ember of coal, but you can use one of the most common option, the BBQ or the oven)

  

It's a good tip to wrap the vegetable with tin foil, separately, to help peel more easily.

2- Preheat the oven to 200ºC and reduce to 180ºC before introducing the vegetables inside and leave them for 40-50 minutes aprox. An Let them sit for 20 minutes.

This is how the vegetables will look like after 40-50 minutes.

3- After those 20 minutes, peel and remove the sheeds from the vegetables with your fingers.

4- Once all the vegetables are peeled and the seed are removed, cut them into long strips and place them decora-tively in a platter. 
 

5- It's not part of the "traditional, tradicional" recipe, but I love to add chopped garlic at the end.

6- The last step and no less important is sprinkling liberally over all with our pure spanish extra virgin olive oil, Cazorliva, and add salt lightly with one of our Casanovas Barcelona salts. It will taste fantastic with our salt with sundried tomatoes, smoke, 5 peppers or olives. Add your favourite!

* The extra virgin olive oil used in this recipe is very important, because you have to add quite a big quantity of it, and if you don't choose a good one, it will ruin this amazing dish.

7- It's a great dish aswell for a more casual dinner /lunch. It can be presented as a tapa for an appetizer, on the top of "Pa amb tomaquet" which it means spread tomato bread in catalan.

8- As I mentioned in the beginning, there are other ingredients that can be added to this great dish. Anchovies for examples (as you can see in the last photo), boiled egg and good olives.

We wish you an amazing Thanksgiving dinner with all your family and friends, and we are sure that they will love you more after tasting this delicious dish.

We are getting new clients every week to be more convenient for you. Our last clients have been: Wholefoods in Cambie and West Vancouver and 2 locations in Whistler. Check your closest location where you can find our products in this link in our web page http://www.olivesandthings.com/OLIVESANDTHINGS/Where.html

Thank you for being there!!

Kris and Diana

Olives and things

www.olivesandthings.com

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Our blog: http://www.olivesandthings.com/OLIVESANDTHINGS/News.html

New Shops: Whistler Marketplace IGA & Whitler's Creeckside Market

Now you can find a piece of Spain in beautiful Whistler!!!

Our products are now available in two new locations


Look for our Cazorliva Spanish EVOO and our salts Casanovas Barcelona in Whistler village in the Marketplace IGA, located at 4330 Northlands Blvd.  It is one of the largest food service stores in the city. They have a full service deli, in-store bakery, full selection of specialty foods, fresh meat and produce.  It's located next to the Olympic Celebration Center.

You can also find our products 5 kms south of Whistler village in the Creekside Market located at #305-2071 Lake Placid Road. It's a full service grocery store with a large retail supply of the freshest produce, fine meats, seafood, locally baked goods, artisan breads, deli foods and much more.  Their selection features many foods that are unique to the area and they provide a perfect opportunity to enjoy new culinary experiences. 

News: What Makes An Olive Oil Special? by Mark Busse in Foodists.ca

What Makes An Olive Oil Special?

Posted by Mark Busse on Friday, August 5th, 2011 @www.foodists.ca
Tags for this Article: Cazorliva, Jaencoop, olive oil, spain, vancouver

How often does a friend say to you, “Hold on, I want you to try this new brand of olive oil my friend is importing from Spain. It’s quite special, tell me what you think.” Well, that’s exactly what happened to me recently as I was leaving my foodie friends Dawn and Joe’s house.

Apparently Dawn and Joe’s friends Kris and Diana recently started an importer/distribution company call Olives and Things, specializing in 100% natural products from Spain and the Mediterranean. One of their products is a high end, single cold pressed extra virgin olive oil calledCazorliva made from only one particular kind of olive called Picual with only 0.4% acidity.

“You can heat this olive oil past 475 degrees—well past the standard smoke point—high enough you can even fry with it!” exclaimed Dawn. Yeah, sure, I thought, knowing only too well how bitter, burnt olive oil can ruin a dish if you’re not careful. Well, she was right. I’ve used the oil a number of times in a number of different situations, and it’s an excellent cooking oil.

During the recent Butchers of Gastown seafood event, I had a number of Foodists contributors do a tasting against a couple of popular brands. It fared well, with a lovely colour, aroma and flavour. It was unanimously chosen as superior to a popular brand, but its slightly sharp note on the finish made it come second to a more expensive competitor from Italy (that the clerk made sure to remind me would not do well under heat and not to use for cooking). But having cooked with it a number of times, I like this oil more and more each use.

I did a little digging and discovered that Cazorliva is made by a company in Spain called Jaencoop. Located in La Loma, Sierra de las Villas, El Condado and Sierra de Segura in the province of Jaén, they also happen to be the second largest producer of olive oil on the planet! News to me, apparently Spain is the world’s largest producer and exporter of olive oil, with Italy and Greece second and third. Italian olive oil was marketed to the North American market sooner that Spanish oil, even though 1/3 of most Italian olive oil is in fact from Spain!

If you live in or around Vancouver, there are a growing number of locations where you can find Cazorliva so you can try some for yourself.

New shop: Donald's market - E. Hastings

It is great to announce that our products are available in Donald's market, this great market is located in 2342 E. Hastings St., Vancouver. 

Donald’s Market has been serving the Sunrise neighbourhood since 1986. The store has evolved from mostly produce with a small selection of essential grocery to the wide selection we have today. They carry just about everything you need to run your household, including food, drinks, personal care products, cleaning supplies, kitchen tools, pet supplies, and more. They carry both conventional and organic products.

We invite you to go to Donald’s Market and experience their diverse product selection and great prices.