The most delicious red sauce known to man.
Mediterranean Oliveira Classical Red Sauce.
The secret to a perfectly rounded Marinara.
My love for Italian food has always been with me since I was just a little kid. As I matured and eventually roamed my taste buds across the borders of Italy, I discovered that the foods I loved so much, that were typically thought to me as “Italian”, turned out to all be covered under the word, “Mediterranean” and crossed borders, oceans, and lead me into many lands of tasty complexities.
I fell in love with all kinds of foods as a kid, but as I grew into a Chef, the foods typically found around the borders of Italy, and close to the shorelines of the Mediterranean Sea, became a mysterious quest of understanding how one ingredient added to one thing could change the “origin” of a dish. Greek foods I mistook for Italian, suddenly opened my palette to a world rich in familure tastes, but unknown origins.
I found similarities in one ethnic food item, that could be found in others, and furthermore used for other items of creation. Yet, the flavors or purposes of those similar items yielded enchanting varieties for additional flavor when added to traditional foods I knew all too well.
When I took my first real job as an Executive Chef, I was hired out of a group of 13 people all trying to get the job. How? Simple because of my favorite sauce of all time. Marinara. One of the most complex, but most standardized sauces in the world. You would not be hard fetched to find equivalents for that red sauce on store shelves, in fact, store brands can be just as tasty and since most people doctor up a sauce from a can, they make for great stabilized bases in Marinara production.
My sauce on the other hand, back then, some 21 years ago came from scratch. No cans. No jars. Just tomatoes and a ton of hard work.
Today, my sauces still take time, but I know a few secrets that can change the flavor and the applause. Although those secret ingredients might come from a jar, I assure you, they are not only wonderful additions for classic Marinara sauce, but pleasantly natural and awesomely fanfreakingtastic!
Chef Jeff’s Mediterranean Oliveira Classical Red Sauce.
First. Make your sauce. Be it a plain Marinara or a Meat based sauce, however you enjoy it, make it! Now here is my secret ingredients that will change the flavor and the texture into a very wonderfully flavored red sauce. Which I named myself.
Now I swear by this, if you do what I tell you, exactly, you’ll have people begging you for the recipe. Screw it up, and forget about it!
Buy yourself a jar or a bottle of Mezzetta’s Appetizer Olives Petite Blend, in dipping oil. The ingredients in the jar are perfectly natural. California Olive oil, sunflower oil, balsamic vinegar, sea salt, spices and rosemary extract. Not to forget the four different types of olives found in the jar. Arbequina. Kalamata. Manzanilla. Nicoise.
Mezzetta Petite Blend Appetizer Olives, 10 Ounce -- 6 per case.
Depending upon the amount of sauce your making, I suggest using about 3 Tablespoons of the dipping oil to each quart of your red sauce near the end of its completion. Plus an additional tablespoon of olives minced, which I suggest adding at the beginning of your production.
Now, my homemade from scratch Marinara takes me about 8 hours to make. Boiling tomatoes, peeling, deseeding, chopping, cooking, adding a little onion, fresh garlic, minced carrots, red bell peppers, etc etc. …but in the end, sometimes, just sometimes, things that come out of a jar can be absolutely incredible. 🔱
Since it takes a little extra time to remove the pits and mince up the olives, you will have to work for it, just a little, but I assure you, if you go sparingly with the flavor of the above olives, you will make one incredible, delicious and silky smooth red sauce.
Before you go, this flavor is pungent, keep that in mind, but it blends wonderfully into any red sauce.
It also works wonderfully with a seafood based, or lamb based red sauce. It even works perfectly in addition to a red paste rub for veal or goat bone braising. Not that you, or I couldn’t make the same oils from scratch, as I have before in my long history of culinary awesomeness, but finding a product that can meet or might surpass my own, is worthy of sharing. Hence the reason for this post. ☺
Thanks for reading! Chef Jeffrey Allen Kaufman🔱🗼🔥🔯🈚
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