Especially Puglia is excited to announce a new partner: Food52! Food52 is a rapidly-growing online community of cooks and food lovers who believe that “how you eat is how you live.” Just like us, the Food52 community is passionate about having authentic culinary experiences and access to quality ingredients to prepare great meals.

Our founder, Michele Iadarola, sat down with Food52 to tell them about our Adopt an Olive Tree program – and how it helps wellness-minded home cooks here in the States access farm-to-table olive oil from Pugliese farms.

Food52 was so excited about what we do that they are offering their readers the opportunity to adopt an olive tree through their website. We are also a part of Food52’s wedding registry – so newly-engaged readers, register now! With Food52 we are expanding our reach so that hundreds more can cook more sustainably, healthfully, and happily.

Read about Michele’s conversation with Food52 here, and learn more about the Adopt-an-Olive Tree program. To get your hands on this incredible single-origin, extra virgin olive oil, order here.

We are honored and thrilled that Food52 is partnering with us to bring the harvest of Puglia to tables across the country!

The best way to eat a vegetable is to pick it at its peak ripeness, when it is full of flavor and packed with nutrients. Farmers have known this in Puglia for generations. They have developed a technique that keeps the flavor of a perfectly ripe vegetable all year-long. The preservation method, known as sott’olio meaning “under the oil”, preserves some of the most delicate vegetables – artichokes, mushrooms, asparagus, olives – in extra virgin olive oil.

From start to finish this Pugliese style of preservation takes several days from harvesting to the final drip of olive oil. The result is a delectable side dish served year-round across the region.

How the Sott’olio Method Works

Every family has their own recipes for sott’olio in Puglia, but the process starts the same. At the peak of ripeness, farmers go out to the fields to harvest the vegetables. Many commercial brands do not use fresh vegetables; rather they use semi-preserved vegetables, which diminishes the flavor and quality of the final product. In Puglia, farmers take the ripe vegetables indoors to be cleaned and prepped for the cooking stage.  The vegetables are then boiled in white wine vinegar until they are cooked al-dente. They are then cooled to room temperature and tossed with salt and a mix of spices such as black pepper, chili pepper, garlic etc. This is where every family differs, with recipes transferred from generation to generation.

Once the vegetables have absorbed the flavors they are packed into jars, and covered with extra virgin olive oil. Olive oil acts as a natural preservative by keeping air away from the food, which is the source of spoilage. Unlike many commercial brands, that use cheaper oils like sunflower, Especially Puglia’s sott’oli is made with extra virgin olive oil. This ensures it has healthy benefits and keeps the natural flavors of the vegetables intact.

For a Puglia family, this is where the process would end, and they would enjoy vegetables for the rest of the year. To commercially sell sott’oli, a special technique to pasteurize the product is used to keep the integrity of the extra virgin olive oil as well as the flavor of the vegetables. The end result is a lovely vegetable, preserved in delicious olive oil.

Eating Sott’oli Style Vegetables

Sott’oli are delicious on an antipasto platter, as well as a side dish to a lovely fish or roast dinner. Olive tapenade or artichoke tapenade are perfect on top of toasted bread, as a bruschetta.  Less traditional, but just as delicious, is using the sott’olio vegetables in salads, using the olive oil to make a delightful dressing. The vegetables, prepared in this method will keep for up to two years if stored in a dry, cool place.

Where to Find Sott’olio Vegetables

Especially Puglia’s winter Farmshare includes asparagus and artichoke sott’olis as well as the artichoke and black olive tapenade. These high-quality traditional sott`oli vegetables are hard to find outside of Puglia. Sign up for your Farmshare now and enjoy these savory Pugliese delights.

This simple, traditional Pugliese dish is known in Italy as fave e cicoria. It is a fava bean puree with sautéed wild chicory greens. It will be sure to bring any Pugliese a taste of home. Fava beans are a staple of Puglia, and the chicory plant grows freely in the fields, so it is easy to find all year old.

Serves 4

Ingredients:

500 g dried, peeled fava beans

1 kg wild chicory – If the chicory is hard to find you can substitute it with young dandelion leaves that are similar to the bitter chicory

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1 clove garlic

2-3 bay leaves

Salt and pepper to taste

Water

Preparation:

1. Cook the beans and bay leaves with 3-4 pinches of salt, add enough water to just cover. Cover and leave to simmer for 2-3 hours until it has a puree consistency. Add water if needed and season to taste with salt and pepper.
2. Meanwhile wash chicory leaves and cook in boiling water with a pinch of salt for 20-30 minutes.
3. Heat olive oil in a different pan and add crushed garlic. We recommend you use a mortar & pestle, so garlic is crushed, not to a mush, but rather just broken up a little, to allow the flavors to come through.
4. Add drained, cooked chicory almost right away. Cook for 10-15 minutes and season with salt and pepper at the end.
5. Serve together by spooning fava bean puree on one side of the plate and the chicory leaves on the other. Drizzle with olive oil.
6. Eat chicory like you would spaghetti, by twirling it on your fork. The bitter taste of the leaves are in perfect harmony with the fava bean’s sweet, creamy texture.