Moxy Thoughts

Today I’m working on the second sauce that I’d like my friends to try when they’re here on Thursday night.  I’ve decided to do my Black Olive and Caper Tomato sauce because it uses similar base ingredients to the Roasted Sweet Pepper sauce, but tastes really different because it’s so much more savory.  I think this will be a good one to share with them and see what they think.  I love this sauce so much because it’s more adult and has a bit of the salty flavor that I crave when I’m eating more carb and rich foods.  Plus, I really love capers and olives!  

Just like all of the other sauces that I make, I’m always looking for ingredients that are easy to find and not too expensive.  For the capers, our grocery store usually has a couple of different brands and both are pretty good.  You can find these yummy guys in the same area as the canned and jarred olives, so that’s a timesaver for this shopping list.  Capers are so interesting because they are a truly ancient food.  Their use dates back to more than 2000 B.C.!  Capers are the unripened buds of a prickly perennial plant found in the Mediterranean and some parts of Asia, called the Capparis Spinosa and I would describe the taste as a savory mix of lemons and olives.  They’re picked by hand and then marinated with vinegar and salt and so can be pricey, but they add a ton of flavor so I feel like they’re worth it.

The second critical ingredient to this sauce is the black olives.  While using Kalamata olives would make this sauce even better, here you can stick with the simple canned kind, and just buy the pre-sliced to speed up the cooking.  Black olives are just ripened green olives and contain no difference in nutritional value, except that they have slightly less sodium.  Otherwise, the difference is just a taste preference, like milk vs. dark chocolate (I’m a dark chocolate fan!).

The last part of this sauce that’s important to mention is that it contains wine, which in my opinion is a perfectly good reason to open up something yummy and pour yourself a glass while you’re making food for your family and friends.  But, I know that some people worry about which wine to use and also whether you’ll feel a bit boozy eating a sauce with wine in it.   As long as you cook it in your sauce for at least 20-30 seconds at full temperature (172 degrees or more, which appears as simmering) you will have cooked off all the alcohol in the wine so you don’t need to worry about the alcohol impacting the final product.  Now, which wine to use?  I have heard both arguments for using the wine you drink in the sauce you cook as well as using a lesser wine in what you are making.  Ultimately, I do believe that you want to cook with something you would be willing to drink.  This is because the point of adding wine is to add the flavor, not the alcohol.  Picking wine to put in as an ingredient should feel exactly like pairing a wine to the final meal.  If you’re sauce is going to be sweet, choose a wine that would pair nicely and add even more color to your flavor – I recommend a Zinfandel or Malbec for a sweeter tomato sauce.  If, like this caper and olive sauce, it’s going to be more savory, I stick with wine that is more tannic and peppery, like Cabernet Sauvignon or Syrah.  Play around and taste the wine in the glass before adding it to your sauce and try a small taste of your sauce before adding the wine, do they match?  Does the wine overpower the sauce or does it complement and make it taste better?  Wine pairing can be a lot of fun and think of it in cooking the exact same way.

Making this sauce is so easy because most of the ingredients just get thrown in and stew together to marry the flavors.  It’s incredible that something so delicious is so easy to make, but there you go!  As always, please let me know what you think and what you did to personalize it.