Strike Recipes from out, a weblog by George Girton

Strike Recipes . . . . . oct 15 2003 — o32.dat

There are immediate benefits to the local Southern California shopper of the supermarket strike and lockout: a chance to experience new shopping venues and exchange recipes while waiting in long lines with fellow shoppers.

Shopping for baking potatoes at a nearby Mexican market, I noticed some items not usually seen on local supermarket shelves. At least, not seen by me; a combination of pickled capers and olives in the same jar. Was there a connection of some sort here? The very next day, waiting in a long line to pick up milk and seaweed-wrapped rice crackers -- we had run out of both of these essential ingredients of modern life -- I asked the woman in front of me in line about the caper-olive connection.

Her recommendation ("What I do...") was to put them together as garnish to a tomato salad, with basil covering the tomatoes. You have to arrange the olives and capers very carefully around the perimeter of the salad plate, as a decorative presentation. As a variation she recommended seaweed, with lemon drizzled on top to moisten the usually-dry seaweed sheaves.

Another idea from the same conversation: when you make pizza dough, work in some pesto as you're going. You'll have pesto-flavoured pizza, from the dough on up.

Sounds good, si?

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