New shops: Zara's Deli + Ugo & Joe's Italian Deli

We are happy to say that you can now find our salt with citrus in Zara's Deli, located at #128 - 1689 Johnston Street in the Granville Island public market. This deli has a wide range of great products for sale and it's set in the centre of one of Vancouver's best markets.

Another great shop in the Hastings Sunrise area. Ugo & Joes Italian Deli, located at 2406 East Hastings Street, is a great place to find your Mediterranean favourites. They have a wide variety of imported baked goods, cheese, meats and oils, and from now on Cazorliva will be part of their good selection of EVOO.

Recipes: "Vegan crepes and Pan con tomate" & "Tipalipia with crumb topping"

We want to share with you these 2 fantastic posts!!

Koko's Kitchen and Strawberries are glutten free took the time to try our products and share with their readers these fantastic recipe ideas!!! We're so happy to be part of their healthier webpages!!!!

Check them out, when you have the chance, we're sure that you will fall in love with them right away! :)

Vegan Crepes and Pan Con Tomate

31 OCTOBER 2011 5 COMMENTS

I was contacted by the company Olives & Things, a relatively new company made up of a Spanish woman and her Canadian husband with the intention of bringing 100% natural products of the Mediterranean and Spain to the world.

I was able to try the Cazorliva, a Spanish, cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil. I wanted to try it in a recipe that really focused on the flavour of the olive oil itself. I chose a Spanish tapa, “Pan con Tomate”. It’s basically toast with tomato and garlic and lots of delicious olive oil. It’s a widely eaten dish all over Spain.

Pan con Tomate

• 1 baguette
• 1-2 big juicy tomatoes
• 1 clove of garlic
• sea salt
• 1-2 tbsp Olives & Things Cazorlina extra virgin olive oil

Slice the baguette in half lengthwise and toast (I did this in the oven at 350 degrees F for just a couple of minutes). Peel garlic clove and rub over baguette. Slice tomato in half and rub over baguette. Drizzle generously with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt.

I really enjoyed the flavour of this olive oil and I know that Spanish olive oils are becoming quite popular and I can see why. It would be beautiful in all sorts of recipes, especially simple ones like this where the flavour of the olive oil is the star.

I was also able to try their 100% natural Barcelona Salt with Wild Berries. I love flavoured salts and I was really excited to try this one, as I have never had a salt with a sweet element to it before. I decided to make crepes with raspberries and chocolate sauce, along with this salt, to add a salty-sweet tasty combination and really bring out the flavours.

Vegan Crepes with Wild Berry Sea Salt (adapted from here)

• 1/2 cup almond milk
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup Earth Balance, melted
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 2 tbsp maple syrup
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp Salt with Wild Berries

In a large mixing bowl, blend almond milk, water, 1/4 cup Earth Balance, sugar, syrup, flour, and salt. Cover and chill the mixture for 2 hours.

Lightly grease a 5 to 6 inch skillet with some Earth Balance. Heat the skillet until hot. Pour approximately 3 tablespoons batter into the skillet (*Add a small bit of water if too thick). Swirl to make the batter cover the skillet’s bottom. Cook until golden, flip and cook on opposite side. Stuff with your favourite stuffing (ie. raspberries) and drizzle with dark chocolate. Sprinkle with a generous pinch of salt.

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Tilapia with Crumb Topping & Cazorliva EVOO

November 9, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

When I said I was a lazy cook, I don’t think I thoroughly explained just how lazy I can be.   When I say lazy, I don’t mean, I cook like gourmet, super-organized, couponing, mamma extraordinaire only once a month.  I don’t mean that I cook from a can or box (all the time) either.  When I saylazy I mean that I take shortcuts like a queen.

I’m the kitchen-shortcut-queen. 

For example, this fish recipe – you don’t even have to defrost the fish!  Of course, when I was originally planning on make this (a whole 10 minutes ago) I had planned on the fish being defrosted.  But when I removed the packaging and discovered this gloriously thin and evenly placed frozen fillets, my kitchen-shortcut-queenwas inspired.  just cook it all – at once.  Woot!  One step saved – no microwave necessary.

Then, in a stroke of genius, (I may have been inspired by google’s recipe archive) I discovered you can place the crumb topping on top of the fish and save yourself the entirely-too-messy goo that goes with drying, dipping, coating, and crumbing each fillet!  Brilliant!

And then I knew it to be true, when I zested the lemon and it looked like this:

Yep, I zested around the sticker.  Be inspired my friends to new heights of cooking lazyness.

How can I be such an inspired kitchen queen and keep my family in good health you ask?  Quality ingredients.  And easy recipes.

Begin EVOO Lesson of the Day

For example, the creme de la creme of olive oil for this recipe: Cazorliva Extra Virgin Olive Oil.  I was asked to review this olive oil, and frankly, I’m not much of a connoisseur, but my curiosity was peaked because I was in a store last week and was offered RICE oil because “olive oil isn’t good for cooking with, it has a low smoking point”.  Huh?  I thought olive oil was just better than anything else, because Rachel Ray uses it.  Apparently I need to be schooled in my olive oil use.  This is what I found out from the nice, local company, Olives and Things.

Ahem, in my most professor-like tone, here’s the highlights from their collective knowledge of all things EVOO:

• The majority of EVOOs are mixed and blended with other varieties of olives. The problem with this, is that you can’t even taste the olives in those oils, you taste just oil. Our oil comes from just 1 kind of olive, the Picual variety.
• Our variety, Picual- is the healthy olive. It’s the variety that contains the highest % of antioxidants and oleic acids, it’s almost 80%, comparing to other varieties like Manzanilla, that contains around 30%.
• Because of the characteristics of this variety, it has the highest smoking point. You can cook with it up to 470ºF, you can even deep fry with our EVOO reusing it up to 4 times.
• The Picual olive is a variety with a longer shelf life. Keeping the bottle propertly closed and away from direct sun and heat, it stays better for longer.  Some other oils get rancid very quick!  <– THAT would explain some nasty smelling stuff coming from the pretty glass bottles by my stovetop.

[end EVOO lesson]

So, don’t listen to the nice people offering you, yet another use for rice flour/ germ/ bran/ grain.   Just visit Olives and Things and get some Cazorliva EVOO and you’ll be just like Rachel Ray, ‘xcept healthier.  So you’re thinking, thats gotta be a (worth every penny) high cost oil, right?

Wrong.

They sell this little beauty for $12.99 a 750ml bottle at their website, Olives and Things.

Tilapia with Crumb Topping

And now that we’re done discussing how to zest around the sticker, and to purchase a lovely Picual EVOO, on to the easy-peasy recipe for dinner:

Crumb Topped Tilapia

Ingredients:

* 2 pkg frozen tilapia fillets

* 1 cup crushed rice chex cereal

*  1 cup shredded parmesan cheese

*  1 Tbsp lemon zest

* salt & pepper to taste

*  2-3 Tbsp Cazorliva olive oil

Directions

1. Combine all topping ingredients and 1.5 Tbsp olive oil together until crumbly.
2. Sprinkle olive oil on covered baking sheet.
3. Place fillets on top.
4. Pat crumb mixture thickly on fillets as shown.

Serve with cooked rice, veggies or salad.www.kokoskitchen.com

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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Twitter: @olivesandthings

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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.