Flavors, or flavours, that work together

I make a great salad with cauliflower, sliced mushrooms, sliced green olives, and a little red onion. Lots of italian dressing and let sit overnite. So to me, green olives are great with mushrooms. But maybe not so much for cooking together...

Strange...I'll saute mushrooms with olive oil, but don't really like them with olives.

Here's the thing, olives are brined, generally, and/or cured. Marinated mushrooms go great with olives as antipasto.

I agree on them together in antipasto. And that salad with the cauliflower and red onion and mushrooms and green olives sounds good to me. I suppose in some cases it could matter if the olives are tart, the ones that seem heavily pickled as they do with so many jars of stuffed olives, or mellow.

I put olives sometimes in my chicken cacciatora - that's another dish I make that involves investigation into what is lurking in the refrigerator...

Most of the time I read cookbooks, or recipes, it isn't for the exact recipe, but to see what perhaps unusual ingredients the authors are suggesting work together.

I wouldn't mix the mushrooms and olives either ossobucco

You could saute the mushrooms with parsley and serve it as a side dish.
We mostly eat olives cold - favorite dish of my 9 year old one, and
I buy them fresh at the farmers market from a greek guy, along
with fresh goat cheese *superb*

Zucchini have very little taste, so sometimes I'll grind Pistachios and
mix them with plain yoghurt as a sauce over the Zucchini.

Gosh, I'm awfully hungry now

Pistachios, yogurt, and zucchini, I can see it.
I tend to throw some zucchini in my soups, depending of course on the soup. I don't buy it for months at a time.

Pistachios... I have to watch out and not buy any of those big bags of salted pistachios. I'm a goner.. worse than potato chips.

On olives, I love olives. I have a gallon glass jar of black french olives in my fridge right now. That's besides mustapha's cumin lemon green olives.
The gallon is a lot even for me... there was a special at our grocery outlet store, the whole thing was $2.99, and they are really good olives.

The salad earlier, the one with red onion, cauliflower, mushrooms, and olives reminds me of a couple of dishes.
One was a potato salad I made once for a party that involved boiled and sliced red and purple potatoes, sliced red onion, great big green bella olives, and what else, oh yes, sweet red pepper (roasted a bit with olive oil) and probably an olive oil/garlic/wine vinegar dressing. I remember liking that a lot and have never made it again.

My exhub used to do a pasta (penne) with a sauce of cauliflower flowerettes, sliced artichoke hearts (not marinated), tomatoes, olives, sauteed with pancetta, garlic, and red pepper and some rosemary and oregano with a finish of chopped fresh parsley. Grated parmigiano on the side. That was an old Le Cirque recipe - now preserved in my cooking binder on a withered old newspaper scrap. I'll type it out if anyone's interested.
Frankly, that doesn't sound as good in description as it was, those old Le Cirque recipes really worked as blended flavors.

Most people I know think rootbeer goes well with pepperoni pizza. But I couldn't disagree more. I think they are horrible together and that this fact somehow confuses people.

I agree with you, SCoates. What do you drink when you eat pepperoni pizza?

I think it goes best with milk.

Gulp.

<Re-opening this thread with hope for more input on what foods blend nicely together, or... "play together with others">

Fresh Dover sole lightly grilled and top of the range champagne.

Osso, You mentioned olives and mushrooms together. I'd never think of that. I tend to not use olives in my cooking. With mushrooms I mix pine nuts, rosemary, sage, mace, pumpkin..... (not all together, of course). I tend to use them in the fall.

pumpkin... almost time for that little pumpkin recipe..