deVine Table

Olive Puffs

My first class at the Northwest Wine Academy was Food and Wine Pairing with Chef Lenny Rede. One of our challenges was to create a pairing to share with our classmates. I wanted to pair something with a big red wine, making the task all the more challenging. This recipe came about as a result. It is adapted from one of my dear late mother’s 1960′s cookbooks, The Sunset Appetizer Book.

• 1 cup shredded aged Manchego cheese
• 3 T butter, softened
• 1 T Dijon mustard
• cream or milk, as needed
• ½ cup flour
• 1 T finely diced salami (for vegetarians, either omit or substitute cocoa nibs)
• 24 colossal garlic stuffed green olives
• ½ cup crushed hazelnuts

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix together cheese, butter, and mustard.  Blend in flour and salami, adding cream or milk as needed to form dough.  Take approximately 1 tablespoonful of dough (you need just enough dough to cover the olive). Flatten the dough and wrap it around an olive, covering completely.  Repeat for each olive.  Roll each covered olive in crushed hazelnuts.  Bake for about 15 minutes.

Wine Pairing

I made the Olive Puffs to pair specifically with Northstar Winery’s 2005 Petit Verdot, a truly fantastic wine. Not many grape growers are up to the challenges posed by these late ripening grapes. Therefore, Petit Verdot is usually blended in to other wines and not many people have tasted the variety on its own. This pairing works because the cheese, butter, cream, and salami help cut through the big tannins associated with this robust red wine. The hazelnuts create even more of a bridge. This non-traditional pairing is bound to become a new classic!

Or stick with an old classic and try these puffs with a sparkling wine. Experiment, and let me know which pairing you prefer.