For the best marinated olives recipe, we started with good brined olives that still contain their pits, which have a better flavor than pitted olives. For the marinade, we started with a base of olive oil and added garlic, herbs like thyme, and red pepper flakes. In addition to these basics, we liked thinly sliced shallots, which softened in the mixture and contributed their welcome allium bite, and grated orange zest for a lively citrus kick. The real surprise in our marinated olives recipe came when we added a splash of anise-flavored (or Pernod), which enhanced all the other flavors.
Skirt steaks come from two different muscles and are sometimes labeled as inside skirt steak or outside skirt steak. The more desirable outside skirt steak measures 3 to 4 inches wide and 1/2 to 1 inch thick. Avoid the inside skirt steak, which typically measures 5 to 7 inches wide and 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick, as it is very chewy. Skirt steak is most tender when cooked to medium (130 to 135 degrees). Thin steaks cook very quickly, so we recommend using an instant-read thermometer for a quick and accurate measurement.
It’s an unlikely scenario—early season vegetables cooked at a low simmer to amplify their fresh flavors—but it works.
This recipe is based off of the oldest known written recipe for milk punch (which I found in cocktail historian David Wondrich’s book Punch). The original features a simple combination of brandy, lemon zest and juice, sugar, and water and is clarified with scalded milk. My adaptations to Mary’s original recipe are few: I use cold milk in place of hot, add orange peel and orange juice to the lemon for a more complex citrus flavor, and scale it down to make one quart (the original makes about twelve 750-milliliter bottles). The finished drink is bright and clean with limoncello-like lemon (and orange) intensity, and the whey that remains after clarification provides velvety body.
English chef Gill Meyer's love of rye flour shows up all over his book Gather, but this recipe, paired with chocolate and fresh bay leaves is deliciously haunting.
Baking with olive oil has been a way of life for Mediterranean cooks, and is gaining steam in America. In California, where olive oil is produced and citrus grown, this cake is as common as a yellow birthday cake with chocolate frosting.
Ingredients
Not a traditional Florentine, this lacelike biscuit is the kind you just can't leave alone. Although its crisp lightness is quite extraordinary, you could brush one side with melted dark chocolate if you like, to justify the name and give it a more substantial texture.
Good to Know: A mix of sugar and honey in these citrusy cookies satisfies a sweet tooth, yet each thin, delicate cookie has only forty-four calories. Go ahead, have two.
The trifle needs to be done a day ahead.