Fried stuffed olives Ascolana style (olive all’ascolana) Italian recipe (VIDEO)

This appetizer is one of the most representative of the Italian culinary tradition and it will surely be a hit with your friends: the fried stuffed olives Ascolana style!

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Hi everyone and welcome to the GialloZafferano kitchen, today we’ll be preparing the fried stuffed olives Ascolana style: they are a local appetizer from the Marches region, but they’re well-known and appreciated all over Italy. Today we’ll use a meat stuffing, but there are also those with a fish stuffing.

Let’s see what ingredients we’ll need:
• 2,2 lbs (1 kg) of soft tender olives from Ascoli
• 1 oz (30 g) of the soft, inner part of bread
• ¾ cup (80 g) of grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 egg / the grated zest of ½ lemon
• (A pinch of) nutmeg / (a pinch of) clove powder
• About a cup (200-250 ml) of white wine
• Salt / a small stalk of celery
• A small carrot / ½ onion • 3,5 oz (100 g) of chicken breast
• 3,5 oz (100 g) of beef meat
• 3,5 oz (100 g) of pork meat

For breading and frying, we’ll have:
• breadcrumbs / 2 eggs / some flour
• 2 cups (½ l) of extra virgin olive oil

So, let’s prepare the olives Ascolana style:
First of all, I’ve heated 3-4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in a saucepan, then I’ve added the chopped carrot, celery and onion. Wait 15-20 minutes until they get soft, then add the finely diced chicken, beef and pork meat.
When the meat will be well browned, add a glass of white wine and let it evaporate on a very low flame. In all, you’ll need about an hour.
60 min — low heat
While the meat is simmering, we’ll apply ourselves to pitting our olives. So, take a small knife and make a spiral cut from top to bottom. Just to make things clear, it’s like peeling an apple without breaking its skin, so get as close to the pit as possible, as you can see, trying not to break the olive, also because you’ll have to recompose it with the inner stuffing.
Once the meat is ready and the wine has evaporated, add some salt, then remove it from the heat and let it cool down. Once the meat is cold, we’ll be able to mince it, with a food processor for instance, until fine-grained.
At this point, we can add the grated lemon zest… the clove powder and the nutmeg… the egg… the grated cheese… and the soft inner part of bread which I’ve previously smashed.
Now we can knead our mixture… add salt if necessary, and let it rest for a few minutes.
Now it’s finally time to start stuffing our olives, so take a small piece of the mixture, about as big as the pit you’ve removed, open an olive, put the stuffing inside and recompose it, closing it perfectly, and go on this way, with some patience, until all the olives are stuffed.
Once they’re all stuffed and recomposed, it’s time to bread them, so roll each olive in flour, whisked egg and breadcrumbs. After this procedure, if you want your olives to have a firmer breading, roll them again in egg and breadcrumbs. Now we have our olives, let’s fry them in very hot oil.
Remove them when they’re nice and golden brown.
After so much effort, here are our fried stuffed olives Ascolana style, ready to be served: you can serve them either hot or cold, they’re very good anyway.
From Sonia and GialloZafferano, bye bye, see you next videorecipe!