Today we are taking the opportunity to bring to your attention a food-and-wine activity that comes from Marches, called “Italian-style mixed fry” because we want to talk to you about the town Ascoli Piceno and its environs. Ascoli is a border province, where the sober Apennine landscape alternates with the sea landscape of the Adriatic beaches.

Ascoli Piceno is situated in this territory, which is made of strong matchings. The town has preserved a medieval town planning scheme that is characterized by the beautiful Arringo Square
(with the Duomo, the baptistery and the Town Hall) and by the nearby Popolo Square, the ‘town’s sitting room’, where the inhabitants meet everyday.

The local gastronomy, as the territory, matches the land specialities with some tasty salt water fish dishes, bound together by the vigour of a cooking characterized by strong tastes and by its popular fried food, as the delicious “Olives from Ascoli” (pitted olives stuffed with a soft farce made with various kinds of minced meat that is then rolled in bread-crumbs and fried in olive oil).

This gastronomic exhibition gives you the opportunity to enjoy, within three days, the typical local dishes of this area (and, in particular, the fried food from this part of Italy) and to meet the town and its environs. In fact, the three days of this gastronomic itinerary also include many interesting trips to Acquasanta Terme, that overlooks the Tronto valley and to Arquata del Tronto, the town with two parks. One of these parks belongs to the Sibillini Mounts and the other one belongs to the Gran Sasso, the starting point for various trips into the beauties of nature.

This is an interesting route that unites the pleasures of the table with the interest for a very pleasant town and for a territory completely plunged into nature. If you wish to have more information about this activity, you can pop into the site www.movimondo.it We wish you a good trip and we let you read the recipe of the “Olives from Ascoli” … we wish you to have fun with your experimentation!

Ingredients for 4 people

- Green pickled olives of the Olea Europea Sativa sort: 20 big ones
- Mixed sorts of thin minced meat (beef, pork, chicken ):250g
- Grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese: 70g
- Onion: a small one
- Carrot: a small one
- Celery: a rib
- Parsley: a small branch
- Nutmeg
- Bread crumbs: 20g
- Eggs: 3
- One lemon
- Extra-virgin olive oil: 6 spoons
- Flour and breadcrumbs
- Salt and pepper: as much as necessary

Preparation:

Take off the stones from the olives with one spiral cut in the pulp, so that you can give back to the olives the original form, by rolling up again their pulp band.
Chop coarsely the vegetables and the meat and let them brown in a pan with a little oil for 10 minutes, season with salt and pepper: the meat must be not completely cooked.
Then remove the vegetables, mince the mixture and work it with the spices, a pinch of raped lemon peel, one egg, the chopped parsley, the bread crumbs soaked in water and then wrung, the Parmesan cheese.
At this point give to the olives their original form by stuffing them with this mixture. Then cover them with flour, put them into the whipped eggs and turn them over in the breadcrumbs.
Fry them in plentiful boiling olive oil, remove the excessive oil by dripping the olives on blotting paper, then serve them hot with slices of lemon, if you like.

These olives are very good as appetizers and even as a side dish with barbecued meat!

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 10:23 am and is filed under italian cooking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.