Olive Oil Divine Podcast

Priest Stranglers and Rooster Crests: The Quirky World of Pasta

• Greg & Shirley Mueller • Episode 11

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 Let's Check Out The 28 Pastas And Six Pasta Sauces You Have Available...How Do We Best Select From Those?

Pasta enthusiasts rejoice! Greg and Shirley Mueller take us behind the scenes of their remarkable pasta collection at Olive Oil Divine, showcasing a world of shapes, flavors, and textures waiting to be explored.

What began as a modest selection of ten pasta varieties has evolved into an impressive array of nearly 30 different options. From the innovative "nest pastas" that serve as perfect individual portions to playful shapes like radiatori (resembling tiny radiators) and prestigallo (named after rooster crests), each pasta offers a unique eating experience. But there's science behind these whimsical shapes – as Greg explains, the ridges and crevices in shaped pasta hold sauce significantly better than traditional string varieties, resulting in more flavorful bites.

The conversation dives into specialty flavors that will tantalize your taste buds: Chesapeake Bay seasoned linguine infused with Old Bay, spicy garlic fusilli, and mushroom fettuccine, all made without GMOs or preservatives. Complementing these pastas are small-batch sauces ranging from classic tomato basil to their best-selling creamy vodka and adventurous Calabrian chili varieties. Shirley highlights how these premium ingredients maintain their vibrant colors and authentic flavors throughout cooking, unlike artificial alternatives.

Most fascinating are the cultural stories woven throughout – like the centuries-old tale behind "Strazapreti" pasta, which translates to "priest strangler." These heritage connections remind us that pasta isn't merely food; it's a culinary tradition with deep historical roots. Whether you're looking to elevate weeknight dinners or explore Italian cuisine more authentically, this episode offers invaluable insights for creating the perfect pasta experience. Ready to transform your pasta night? Visit Olive Oil Divine online or in-store to discover these treasures for yourself!

To learn more about Olive Oil Divine visit:
https://oliveoildivine.com/
Olive Oil Divine
2517 N. Roan Street
Johnson City, TN 37601
423-707-7087

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Olive Oil Divine podcast, your go-to source for culinary inspiration. Join Greg and Shirley Muller, owners of Olive Oil Divine, as they share tips, stories and insights to make you a kitchen hero. From authentic extra virgin olive oils to rich-aged Italian balsamic vinegars, We've got everything you need to elevate your cooking. Live divine.

Speaker 2:

From hand selected premium pastas to rich, authentic sauces. Olive oil divine offers an incredible variety, but how do you choose the perfect pairing? Let's explore flavors, textures and top tips for creating the ultimate pasta experience. Welcome back everyone. Skip Monty, co-host slash producer, back in the studio with owners of Olive Oil Divine, mr Greg and Ms Shirley Muller. Guys, welcome back to the show.

Speaker 3:

Skip Brothers, good to see you.

Speaker 2:

All right, all right. I like that kind of excitement. So, speaking of excitement, shirley, I hope you're doing well.

Speaker 4:

Doing fine.

Speaker 2:

All right, very good, very good. Well, I know in past episodes we've talked about this enormous selection of pastas and pasta sauces that you have. I think you told me you had 28 different types of pasta, so let's check them out. Tell us about all your different flavors of pasta and pasta sauce, and how do we select from those?

Speaker 3:

Skip, who doesn't love pasta? Let me tell you what. When we opened up our business 10 years ago, we had these kind of pastas Rainbow pasta, butter squash, linguine, roasted garlic, parsley I know these are nice string, got some angel hair, nice string, straight, typical everyday pastas. And we have gosh 10 of these I think about like that but different flavors, everything from basil and garlic spaghetti to fettuccine, roasted red bell fettuccine, and those really did great. But you know we learned that people really love pasta, so much me that we just we were missing the boat.

Speaker 3:

So this year we have expanded from almost three times what we had before. So now we got cool little things like nest pasta. Have you ever heard of a nest pasta that comes in little nests? These are, these are little individual servings and each one of these will serve about two people. You know, maybe maybe one person if it's me, but you know it would be two Shirley's.

Speaker 3:

For me you know, but these nest pastas. This is a tagliatelle aglio e volo and this is angel hair. You ever seen little? I don't know if you can see on the camera there or not, but my goodness, tagliolini. Of course we got fettuccine and pappardelle pastas. These are all the nest pastas. So these are awesome. These are awesome. These are good for everyday, like spaghetti or fettuccine, you know, without some Alfredo sauce. But who doesn't like to play with their food? Why not play with some shells?

Speaker 3:

There's some shell pasta here, or some organic prestigallo? You know what that means? Rooster little rooster crow. You know the little thing on the top of their head? Oh wow, didn't you play with it like that when you were a kid? How about tomato basil radiatory? You know why they call it that? Yum no, because it looks like a radiator.

Speaker 2:

Really no, kidding, no kidding. Well, I'm curious with the I'm sorry, the nest pasta. When you cook it, does it stay in a nest like that?

Speaker 3:

Or that's just how it's delivered. It does, it separates and becomes a nice, nice, creamy clump of noodles. But you know what happens. You know, when you get these nest pastas or these string pastas, what are you always doing At least I did as a kid You're slurping it up and you're sucking that last noodle in and it flips everywhere and you don't get a whole lot of sauce on them. But you know what? Things like this radiatory, those little crevices. They hold the sauce much better.

Speaker 3:

So you get a saucier pasta, and here's, here's another one, here's an organic radio tori. So we got all kinds of flavors. Oh, one of my favorites is, uh, spicy garlic facility. Yeah, there's the garlic lovers. And then and then, oh, spindle, can't see, see, there, that looks like a spindle doesn doesn't it? It does. These are really cool. Then, of course, you got the ones who don't like to play with their food, like I do, and play with radiators and crow's nest. They just want flavors. So then we've got this little nice line here Roasted garlic and basil linguine. These are the more sophisticated type pastas that people love. The odd flavors, mushroom, fettuccine.

Speaker 3:

Nice fettuccine there. Oh, one of my favorites. Who didn't grow up liking the Old Bay seasoning? Right? Chesapeake Bay seasoned linguine Made with Old Bay and it's flavorful, oh nice, you don't need any pasta sauce with this. And it's flavorful, oh nice, you don't need any pasta sauce with this. But you know, any of these you could put with a nice marinara sauce or an Alfredo sauce. Gosh, I think I used. I believe I used the rainbow fettuccine when me and Paula did our pasta at her house a couple months ago. That was the pistachio pasta. You can find that on our website. It's delicious.

Speaker 3:

And it used a balsamic, yeah, pistachios with ground, a little bit of ground meat. And go to the website. It's on the website. It's a beautiful recipe. You can even watch me and Paula make it for real.

Speaker 3:

Oh, wow, but it was delicious and it used the balsamic lemon, balsamic vinegar as part of the flavoring sauce. We made our own sauce. It was kind of like an Alfredo sauce, but it was a creamy sauce, delicious, but anyway. Who doesn't want to play with pastas? But of course all these pastas have got to have something to go over top of them, so I'm going to let Shirley play with the toppings.

Speaker 4:

Oh yeah, well, not only did we bring in new pastas, we also brought in some pasta sauces.

Speaker 2:

Nice.

Speaker 4:

Yes, we have a tomato basil pasta sauce and this will go with any of those pastas.

Speaker 2:

Love some tomato basil.

Speaker 4:

We have a creamy vodka pasta sauce Best seller. Oh, this is really good. We also have a roasted red bell pepper with artichokes in it for all of you artichoke fans out there and skip.

Speaker 3:

You know what's cool about these sauces that she's showing you is they're, they're, um, they're good, they're good ingredients, they're. They're a small batch made. She's got several more to show, but while she's showing them, I just wanted to let that. Let you know that that, and the pastas themselves are also non-GMO. There's no preservatives in our pastas. We try to find nice, organic, healthy foods to offer.

Speaker 4:

And then we also have a roasted red bell pepper with ricotta in it.

Speaker 2:

Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 4:

Oh, this is real good.

Speaker 2:

You're killing me.

Speaker 4:

And then we have a Calabron Chili Vodka Pasta Sauce. Wow, now we also on top of the sauces and the pastas. You could always get our spaghetti seasoning to go on top of that to add a little bit more flavor. Even our Tuscany bread dipping would be very good over that.

Speaker 3:

Skip. You know what's cool about that? You can put that spaghetti seasoning that she's got right there on a piece of cardboard and it makes it taste like spaghetti.

Speaker 2:

Does it really? What's in that it?

Speaker 3:

does it does. I don't remember the ingredients offhand, but if you want something to taste like spaghetti or enhance that flavor, there's your go-to right there.

Speaker 2:

Try it on cardboard.

Speaker 4:

And another thing that we have in our store is an olive wood spaghetti spoon.

Speaker 2:

Nice.

Speaker 4:

We carry a lot of olive wood also, and those are made from the trees that are no longer producing, so you can also pick up a spaghetti spoon. We have a pizza sauce that is made with olive oil too. One of the pasta sauces that we have that we're currently out of that we carry is the Tuscan sun-dried tomato pasta sauce.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

That is a very popular sauce.

Speaker 2:

And you said you're sold out.

Speaker 4:

We're out of it right now. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Oh wow, we'll have some though.

Speaker 3:

We'll have some more. Must be very popular. Yeah, pasta, you want pasta for lunch? We got it right here 28 flavors 28 flavors?

Speaker 2:

well, interesting. I was going to ask how the the shape of the pasta helps with, or does it affect, the flavor? But I guess it was interesting that you said that that one type of pasta holds the sauce better. So it does change the flavor depending on the shape, I guess.

Speaker 4:

You know, let's skip a couple of these pastas that have unique names. Greg researched to where the name originated from, so you'll have to let him tell you about that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, there's organic Straza Preti. Right here Straza Preti is Italian for priest strangler. There's a history to this. You can go online and find out.

Speaker 2:

Priest strangler, is that what you said?

Speaker 3:

Yes, it goes back centuries ago. It's an old story that happened over in Italy. You can go to our website and find this and we talk about that on our website. But, yeah, there's some neat names to some of these pastas the Radiatore Like I told you, the Radiatore is shaped like a radiator. Here's a radiator. In front of me, you've got the Granite Crestigallo, which is the rooster crest. So yeah, it's fun and delicious.

Speaker 2:

Fun and delicious. Well, Shirley, did you have something else you had to add?

Speaker 4:

No, I'm fine, no, okay.

Speaker 3:

I'm sure I'll still cook and have some pasta for breakfast.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I do too, man, I do too. You guys are killing me every episode, especially when you're in the kitchen. I love pasta and I love pasta sauce. I think, pasta is a weakness for everybody. It is Speaking of. Everybody loves pasta. How long can you store that pasta? If you pick that up at Olive Oil Divine, how long would that be good in your cabinet?

Speaker 3:

oh gosh, they'd last longer than they. I mean, you would eat them faster than you. You would keep them in your cabinet very good, you know pastas. Pastas don't have any liquid in them, so they're they have a very long shelf life, yeah I think at least a couple years, several years, yeah awesome, good to know, but, like you said, it's not going to last that long.

Speaker 4:

It's not going to last. And I will say this too Skip, when you cook the pastas, even the ones that are that like the red, like this one that has sun-dried tomato basil in it, it actually has sun-dried tomato basil in it and it does not lose its color. Yep it stays true to the color. Every one that we've had that, uh, butternut squash.

Speaker 3:

Real flavor, nothing artificial, no artificial colors in these foods.

Speaker 2:

Wow, wow.

Speaker 3:

We're making America healthy already. We started a long time ago.

Speaker 2:

That's right, you're, you're ahead of the game. Well, the tomato basil I got to try, so that that is definitely on my shopping list the next time I can see you guys, because I love some tomato basil Absolutely. Well, guys, I really want to thank you for guiding us through the world of a pile of pastas and sauces that you guys have. It's an amazing selection. If you like pasta, guys, go to the Olive Oil store, go to Olive Oil Divine and check them out because it just looks delicious. So we'll have to try that and Greg Shirley, looking forward to our next episode as we continue to explore the flavors that make every meal extraordinary Same here, Skip.

Speaker 4:

Same here, Skip Come in any time.

Speaker 2:

All right, thanks so much.

Speaker 4:

Uh-huh.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for tuning in to the olive oil divine podcast. Don't forget to visit us online at oliveoildivinecom for our exceptional olive oils, aged balsamic vinegars and more. If you're local, stop by our store and discover how we can make you a kitchen hero. Until next time, live divine.