Black Olive Sauce Recipe
How to Prepare Restaurant Quality Black Olive Sauce
With dozens of varieties, olives are indigenous to the Mediterranean and have been revered by man for millennia. Green olives are picked prior to ripening and black ones after ripening.
Nicoise olives hail from the Provence region of France but are grown in other countries. They are cured in brine, packed in olive oil and have a mellower flavor than their green counterparts.
Best Served With:
Roast Lamb
Beef
Ingredients
4 shallots, minced
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns
1 stick butter, divided
2 cups Madeira wine
2 cups red wine
1 teaspoon fresh chopped rosemary
1 tomato, diced
1 cup demi-glace
½ cup pitted Nicoise olives, divided
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.
How To Prepare At Home
In a medium sized saucepan over medium high heat, sauté the shallots, garlic, and peppercorns in 1 tablespoon of the butter until the shallots are translucent.
Add the Madeira, red wine, rosemary, and tomato and reduce by two-thirds.
Whisk in the demi-glace until completely incorporated. Whisk in the remaining butter a little bit at a time. This will add richness as well as thicken the sauce.
Strain through a fine sieve and transfer sauce to a blender.
Add half the black olives and puree until smooth.
Return the sauce to the pan, add salt and pepper if necessary.
Roughly chop the remaining olives and add them to the sauce.
If the sauce is too thin, reduce until the sauce is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.