Italian fried olives or Ascolana olives

Hi, visiting Marche region (Italy) on our last Easter holidays Carlo and I ate the well known Ascolana olives  that is stuffed and fried green olives.

How yummy they are! You have to eat them seldom for frying – especially deep frying – adds a serious amount of fat and calories to a meal. But once a time …

Carlo and I use a different cooking technique at home: generally we are used to oven-fry stuffed  olives.

But it will be the matter for another post in the next weeks.

Today’s recipe is stuffed and fried olive recipe with its variations.

You can read the authentic Italian recipe of Ascolana olives on this page.

Ascolana olives or stuffed and fried green olives

But we have another version of Ascolana olives, ideal for people who don’t like cheese or have cheese intolerance or allergy. We created this new version of stuffed and fried olives for Carlo doesn’t  like cheese.

Well, read below how to prepare Ascolana olives with no cheese

Ingredients / Serves 4

300 g (11 oz) Ascolana olives or large and tender green olives (about 22-24 large tender olives)

125 g (4 1/2 oz) boneless chicken

75 g (2 1/2 0z) fresh sausage

45 g (1 1/2 oz) raw ham in a piece

Half a glass of white wine

Pinch grated nutmeg

Zest from half an organic lemon

Bunch of fresh chives

30 g (1 oz) crustless bread

2 eggs

All purpose flour

Dry breadcrumbs

Extra virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper

Clean, wash and pat dry with absorbent kitchen paper the chives and then chop it.

Cut the sausage, chicken and ham into pieces.

Heat two tablespoons of olive oil in a pan and add the chicken, sausage, ham and chives and sauté for some minutes.

Pour in the wine, season to taste with salt and pepper and continue cooking on a low heat, half-covered, until the meat is tender and the cooking juice is well retired. Stir now and then.

Let all the ingredients cool. Meanwhile prepare the olives. Remove the pits with a sharp knife, making a spiral cut from top to bottom without breaking them. Now your olives are ready to be filled with the meat mixture.If you aren’t able to make a spiral cut try to halve them.

This is a delicate step and you need a lot of time if you are completely inexperienced.

Then puree all the meats together with an egg, nutmeg, lemon zest and crustless bread in a food blender. You must have a very firm filling. As you can see reading the authentic recipes of fried olives we have changed the amount of meats and there is no more grated Parmesan and Pecorino cheese.

Take a bit of the filling and give it the shape of an olive. Put the olive you’ve prepared before around it and press among the palms of your hands. Continue until all the ingredients are used up. The olives should become large and fat. Dip every olive in the white flour, then in the remaining egg (lightly beaten) and at last in the breadcrumbs.

Heat the remaining olive oil in a pan and fry the olives until golden on all their sides. Remove them from the pan with a skimming ladle and put on absorbent kitchen paper to remove the fat in excess.

Serve warm or cold.

As we have just said you can also oven-fry the stuffed olives.

They are very tasty … we’re waiting for your opinion

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Greetings from Italy

Carlo & Loretta

PS  Have you seen carefully the image? what are the tidbits back the olives? we are going to answer tomorrow