Hope, Chicory, and 3-liter Cans

A Few Words about Hope, as in “Hope is the thing with feathers” . . .

Most of you know by now that I read a thing that many people don’t—poetry. You might recognize the quoted line above as the title of an Emily Dickinson poem. I thought of it today because the last two weeks and the next couple of weeks coming up are crucial times for our olives. They have flowered, hooray, and have been pollinated (self-pollinated, with some help from bees), but now comes the test—will the minuscule olives make their way in the world or will they be brutally burned by the sun, by 90 degree-plus temperatures, and give up and drop to the ground! We go through this struggle at this time of year every year. And all we can do is cross our fingers (please, everyone) and hope. Speriamo vada tutto bene!

But we also have to eat. It’s late spring and the chicory (cicoria) is one of my favorite things to cook and eat. I steam the leaves (chop the stems, which can take longer to cook) and in the meantime, in a sauté pan swimming in our olive oil, I gently cook 3 cloves of garlic, smashed, and a finely-diced hot pepper (your choice), for 3-5 minutes. When the chicory is tender (10 minutes or so), I strain it and add it to the sauté pan, and let it gently cook for another 10 minutes. Salt, pepper. And that’s it! Why can’t everything we do be so simple and healthy!

Claudia with cicoria.

And one more thing today: many of you have ordered the 2 3-liter cans and have filled the empty 500ml bottles that are too beautiful to send to the recycling center. One thing we also do at Bramasole is fill the lovely ceramic olive oil containers that Vietri sells (click here)—it holds 2 and a half cups.