In Focus: The Ascolana Olive
If you have eaten olive all’ascolana — plump green olives stuffed with meat, breaded and deep-fried — you have met the Ascolana Tenera, the famous large, soft-fleshed table olive of Ascoli Piceno in Italy’s Marche region. It is one of the country’s grandest eating olives, and one of its most painstaking to prepare.
The variety
Ascolana Tenera del Piceno holds a PDO covering parts of the Marche and Abruzzo around Ascoli Piceno. The fruit is among the largest of all Italian olives, with pale-green, exceptionally tender flesh and a flavour that is mild, sweet and lightly bitter when cured green. Traditionally it is given a slow natural or lye cure to tame the bitterness while keeping the delicate texture. The same softness that makes it so pleasant to eat also makes it fragile and labour-intensive to handle, which is part of why true Ascolana fruit commands a premium.
The famous stuffed olive
The variety’s claim to fame is olive ascolane: each large olive is pitted in a continuous spiral, packed with a seasoned meat filling, then breaded and fried until golden. It is fiddly, festive food — a labour of love made in batches for holidays and feasts. Beware the imposters: industrial versions sold frozen often use cheaper, larger foreign olives or a paste rather than the genuine tender Ascolana. The real thing, made with PDO fruit and a proper meat stuffing, is in another league entirely.
Mass-market “ascolane” are frequently made from big Spanish or Egyptian olives, not the true Tenera, and stuffed with filler. For the authentic article, look for the Ascolana Tenera del Piceno PDO on whole table olives, or buy stuffed ones fresh from a Marche delicatessen rather than frozen from a supermarket freezer. Fried at home from good fruit, they are worth every minute of the work.
From Italian PDO records and the kitchens of the Marche.