Making the most out of store cupboard olives – Top tips from Celeb Chef Omar Allibhoy

Olives from Spain has teamed up with celebrity chef Omar Allibhoy, as seen on This Morning and Gordon Ramsay’s Best Restaurant, to inspire us Brits to cook authentic Spanish dishes more often.  To help you experiment in the kitchen, Omar has kindly offered gastrogossip some top olive tips and a yummy recipe – enjoy!

Top tips from Omar Allibhoy on making the most of Spanish Olives: http://www.olivesfromspain.co.uk

• Olives can be enjoyed at any time of the day

• Use them to complement a glass of Sherry, a Dry Martini or any other dry cocktail

• Have as a pre-dinner snack or an entrée

• Olives are equally impressive served as part of a main meal in any hot dish – turkey, chicken, duck, rice, veal – as well as many other gastronomic specialities which are popular all around the world

• Olives are a common salad ingredient because of their freshness and natural characteristics. They go especially well in Mediterranean-style salads with other flavoursome ingredients like tuna, onions, anchovies and capsicums

• Cold meat selections are a favourite across the globe and olives are a great accompaniment because they bring out the flavour of the meats

• Roasts / casseroles / tagines: These kinds of slow-cooked dishes are internationally popular and olives are frequently added to give them a touch of the Mediterranean!

• Of course there are many other things that olives can be served with too, so why don’t you open a jar and experiment today!

Lubina a la sarten con aceitunas, piquillos y fino. (Pan fried sea bass with Spanish olives, piquillo peppers and dry Sherry wine)

4 pieces of seabass of 150g each.

1 tin of pitted purple Spanish olives

1 tin of piquillo pepers

1 handfull of Spanish Caperberries

100 ml of Spanish olive oil

4 garlic cloves

1 small glass of dry Fino wine

Some cracked black pepper

A pinch of salt

2 sprigs of flat parsley

Wash and pat dry your seabass fillets and put to one side to pan fry later. Open the tin of piquillo peppers, half them and remove any seeds. Drain the caperberries and olives put aside also.

Peel and thinly slice the garlic cloves, fry over a medium heat until golden with half of the olive oil. Add the piquillo peppers and sauté for 30 seconds. Add the purple Spanish olives and caperberries and sauté again. Season with salt and pepper and add a splash of Fino wine. Let the alcohol burn and sprinkle a bit of finely chopped parsley. Taste the seasoning and alter if needed.

Preheat a non stick pan over a high heat and pour a bit of Spanish olive oil. Pan fry the seabass fillets skin side down until ¾ done, turn over, season the skin with some salt flakes and cook for one more minute.

Serve a bed of the Spanish olives accompaniment and place the seabass on the top, drizzle a bit of olive oil to finish off.

Follow Spanish Olives on Twitter for all the latest news and ideas on how to incorporate them into your cooking @Taste_of_Spain or find them on Facebook facebook.com/Taste-of-Spain.com.

Costa launches Costa light! Check out the video to see how light it really is!

Costa’s Master of Coffee, Gennaro Pelliccia, gets airborne in this new video to promote Costa Light (cl).

The new concoction is a shot of Costa expresso, which is then mixed with skimmed milk and finally frothed together to make Costa light… sounds good to me!

One thing that surprised me about this video is that Costa sells a whopping 520 million cups of coffee each day worldwide – That sure is a hell of a lot of coffee!

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Guest Post: Love Food Give Food campaign for Action Against Hunger

Great idea from guest blogger: Jo Furnival!

Jo works for marketing consultancy All about the Idea, which specialises in producing big ‘bang for buck’ ideas for companies stuck in a creative communications vacuum. She is a food enthusiast, keen dinner party host and proactive charity busy body. You can find her tweeting at @allabouttheidea and writing on the Big Ideas blog.

“Something that I heard about recently is the Love Food Give Food campaign. To raise awareness and money for Action Against Hunger, which works to save the lives of malnourished children by providing communities with access to safe water and sustainable solutions to hunger, Love Food Give Food appeals to those who love food and encourages them to give food to those they love.

The big idea is that food enthusiasts sign up to host a dinner party for however many people and whosoever they wish. As long as each guest brings along a donation for Action Against Hunger, money is raised for the charity and a good time is had by all.

I tried this idea last Saturday, but I wanted to go one step further, give a little extra and create as much bang for Action Against Hunger’s buck as I could. So I contacted a few local businesses and old friends who agreed to give me a hand.

True Deli, a bespoke London based catering and events company, were the first to offer their assistance and with a generous commitment from Co-Founder Henry O’Grady, the Love Food Give Food dinner party was able to double in capacity to a total of 12 confirmed guests. This carried with it inherent drawbacks, as a kitchen table capable of seating six was just not going to cut it in the face of this augmented food extravaganza. Furniture Hire UK then stepped into the breach and promised to lend a 6ft round table and 10 banqueting chairs for the event. To add a real sense of occasion moreover, Chase Distillery, award winning vodka and gin producers from Herefordshire, sent over a bottle of their finest Williams Gin for pre dinner G ‘n’ Ts in the drawing room.

After a fine feast of Chicken Liver Parfait (with Onion Confit), Goats Cheese Mousse with Confit Cherry Tomato and Smoked Mackerel Pate (all couriered that morning from True Deli’s kitchen in South Kensington), followed by my own homemade Fragrant Chicken with steamed Basmati rice and green salad, then True Deli chocolate brownies for dessert, guests received a slip of paper posing as ‘the bill’. This was merely an opportunity to use Gift Aid and to record the details of who was donating and exactly how much.

I’m thrilled to report that we raised a grand total of £280 for Action Against Hunger. Special thanks again to True Deli, Furniture Hire UK and Chase Distillery for their kindness and generosity. Try it yourself!”