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Julie Bove[_2_] Julie Bove[_2_] is offline
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Default Butter on green beans?


"Ozgirl" > wrote in message
...
..
>
> Even better if the last thing added, as you take it off the stove, is a
> slurp of a very strong flavoured olive oil. I do that with beef spagetti
> sauce at the last minute too. The flavour tends to cook away if you add it
> whilst cooking. When I was 2 we had the good fortune of living right
> across the road from a newly migrated Italian family. Over the years I was
> invited to eat there a lot and witness them cooking. That's where I
> picked up the olive oil trick. There house always had the yummiest smells
> and their kitchen chairs always had home made spagetti hanging over the
> backs of them.


I had an Italian roommate who was a horrible cook. When she would invite
her boyfriend over for dinner, he would call me and ask if I was cooking or
she was. He would only come if I was cooking.

When she made spaghetti sauce, she fried the hell out of the dry spices
using most likely Wesson oil. In those days I didn't even know about olive
oil and never had it in the house.

After the spices had been nicely charred and there was a thin trail of smoke
wafting through the house, she would add the meat and then eventually the
tomato sauce.

She also had a fondness for Worcestershire sauce and added it to pretty much
everything including carrots. Her boyfriend told me she did this to
disguise the taste of the food in case it was actually spoiled. He said she
had a habit of serving spoiled food. After he told me this I frequently
went through the fridge and tossed out any suspects.

Eventually I learned that the real problem was that she could not read. She
liked to look at my cookbooks. She didn't own any herself. She would look
for things that showed pictures and would try by looking at the picture to
find out what was in there. She would then have to guess at the method for
cooking it.

She kept telling me about this wonderful polenta that her mother made and
how she would make it for me one day but it required hours of standing over
the stove and stirring it. She spoke of it like it was a magical dish but I
now know otherwise.

One odd thing I discovered about my Italian in-laws is that they seem not to
use olive oil in their cooking. My MIL never had any in the house. She
would buy some cheap store brand of cooking oil and she used that for
everything.

Several of the relatives told me how to cook the eggs and peppers that my
husband likes (and that they seem to eat pretty much every day for lunch).
They told me to use whatever oil I have in the house.

I generally keep Extra Virgin and Light Olive Oil and corn oil. I don't use
the corn oil very often at all.