STEEMIT IRON CHEF 2018 Act 01 Round 01 ~ Olives ~ 🇮🇹 Italy meets Germany 🇩🇪

Olives! Is the theme for round 01 on Steemit Iron Chef 2018. Wow! This is the original link to the article of @progressivechef with all the things to say about it and the rules: STEEMIT IRON CHEF 2018 Act 01 Round 01 : Contest now OPEN!!!.

I wonder how many of us thought "Tapenade!" initially! So did I and then: Focaccia! Anti pasti! Pizza! Any mediterranean dish came to my mind. That was to be expected. I wanted something else. Then I had this idea: Aren't olives a fermented food as well as the good old german Sauerkraut is? Lactic acid bacterias transform both into the product we love to savor. Why shouldn't they harmonize properly? I wanted to try it out and created this dish:

🇮🇹 Italy meets Germany: Potato Gnocchi on Sauerkraut and Olives 🇩🇪

The dish created itself while I was cooking. I only had an approximate idea of what I wanted to do. That's why there is no photography of all the ingredients together this time. Actually I had everything at home already but the olives. I bought some green and black olives in olive oil and some winter lettuces for the fresh and crispy part of the dish. The olives went into a jar with more olive oil, two chopped gloves of garlic and some dried herbs like thym and rosmary. I stored them at room temperature until sunday evening...

In the afternoon a pot of potatoes cooked in the pressure cooker while we made a long nice walk on the shores of the river Main.

The first thing when I came back home was to peel them and to mash approximately a pound of them. The original idea were potato pancakes but then I thought of all the oil I would need and the steem and the smell afterwards...

Gnocchi seemed to be the healthier option. I mixed the mashed potatoes with five tablespoons of starch meal, replaced the egg yolks with three tablespoons of soy meal whisked with five tablespoons of oat milk and a dash of Kala Namak and seasoned with salt, fresh ground white pepper and fresh ground nutmeg. In a large pot I whisked two tablespoons of starch meal with a little bit of cold water, added hot water and brought it to boil.

Inbetween I formed small balls of the potato dough between moist hands and pressed a fork on top of each to flatten a little and to create nice pattern.

I let them simmer in the hot water until they came up to the surface, catched them with a skimmer and placed them on a kitchen towel to remove the excess water. At this point I decided to give the gnocchi an extra kick. They tasted delicious already but were very soft and - uhm - slimy? Not so sexy at all! 😝

I moved every single of this little creatures on a baking sheet covered with baking paper and set them aside to dry out a little bit more.

In between I chopped two shallots and a glove of garlic and stirfried them in olive oil until glassy. Then I added the Sauerkraut (200g) which I chopped in shorter stripes before and let it cook for about five minutes. I cut a few dried and olive oil infuced tomatoes in short stripes and put them to the Sauerkraut together with some mediterranean herbs. I used dried thym, oregano and basil.

I cut 100 g of black and green olives in slices and mixed them and a can of tomato purée under the Sauerkraut. I let it simmer on low heat for 15minutes,  seasoned with salt, fresh ground pepper, another sip of olive oil and a dash of raw cane sugar.

This is my supply of olive oils. I think I need at least one of them every day. The first bottle is a simple supermarket greek olive oil from Chania (Crete) which I use for cooking and frying on low heat. The second bottle is refilled in my zero waste shop (one minute walk from my door! which is amazing!). It is an organic tunesian olive oil and the second is an another greek organic olive oil. Both I like a lot in salads and when olive oil is added in a cold way.

While the vegetables were cooking I brushed the gnocchi with the remaining garlicky herb olive oil and backed them in the preheated (180 degrees Celsius) for about 20 minutes until they started to get golden brown.

I prepared a very fresh and slightly bitter side salad of chicory, radicchio, rucola and halved olives covered by a fruity sweet and sour dressing made of olive oil, (Oh - and I found another bottle of olive oil in my kitchen) perfumed lemon olive oil, raspberry gelly, mustard, aceto balsamico and salt and pepper.

This is how the whole dish looked like and it was zum "Niederknien"! 😜 (brings you to your knies)

I wish all the other participants huge success in this round and for the whole contest but most of all a wonderful tasting meal after all this chopping and cooking and decorating! The most important thing is that you loved it yourself! 😋

Thank you @progressivechef for a new episode of the #stemitironchef! It is such a great competition!