By CHRIS SHERMAN, Times Food Critic
Published August 9, 2006
Dirty, your way
Punch drunk with olive spunk, funk and salt, "dirty" martinis hold their own against the rainbow of candy colors and flavors in silly-tinis.
Enough so that "dirty martini olive juice" from Santa Barbara, Calif., is sold for about $4 a bottle at local liquor stores and at Jay's Marketplace, 3618 49th St. N, St. Petersburg; (727) 528-0707.
Olive "juice" is, of course, not oil so much as water, olive debris and a good squeeze of savory flavor.
Bottled mixes do deliver consistency and mess-free preparation, but you can easily make your own from the leftover drips and dregs in any can or bottle of olives. Dilute with water to your druthers.
Teetotaling cooks can find plenty of uses for olive juice, without gin or vodka. As an alternative to olive oil: It can have more flavor, fewer calories. Try it in potato salad, couscous, rosemary bread, pizza dough or a sandwich of cold cuts.
Or just upgrade your olives. Greek, Italian and Mediterranean markets have plenty of choices. Ola's Olives, which sells olive products at St. Petersburg's Saturday Morning Market in season (it's off for the summer), packs stuffed olives in lemon juice, garlic and fresh oregano. (727) 895-1400.
Setting fine tables
Rare treasures come out of the cellar for a grand 50th birthday at Bern's Steak House on Tuesday: great vintages of Beaulieu Vineyards reserve wines made over the years by legendary Andre Tchelistcheff in honor of BV founder Georges de Latour. The late Tchelistcheff was a friend of Bern Laxer, who started buying and storing BV vintages in 1965.
Current BV wine maker Joel Aiken will host the banquet, which features the 1965, '77, '84, '97, '01 and other wines. A rare sampling, and priced accordingly at $450 a plate. (813) 865-1487.
That same night, in Clearwater, Cafe Ponte's food will match up to the modern pleasures of the wines of Hahn and Smith & Hook, at a benefit for Abilities of Florida. That's only $100. Give 'em 50 years and prices may go up. (727) 538-7370, ext. 349.
Wine of the week
Stump Jump, D'Arenberg, 2004, McClaren Vale, Australia
This winery and some of its vines have been at it for 100 years and came up with funny names before other wits of Oz started wagging Woop Woop and Yellowtail.
Its most famous, Dead Arm shiraz, named for a disease that leaves very old vines with a shriveled branch, sells for top dollar. Stump Jump, named for an old plow the Aussies invented, is a simpler everyday blend of Rhone grapes: grenache, syrah and mourvedre.
That red mix tastes of the McLaren Vale, a special part of Australian wine country, a hilly appellation of Mediterranean climate and ocean breezes south of Adelaide. The GSM blend is perfect for a peasant picnic, plum soft, bright with berries, warm with toasty, roasty flavors and beefed up with enough tannin for anything from the barbie.
It's young and inexpensive, but ripe, rich and easy to drink. Match it with sausage or anything else off the grill, rustic pasta and pizza.
Availability: Liquor stores and wine shops, about $12.
