The Dirty Blog

Meet Lola. The face of Dirty International. Lola is kind, adventurous, has sass, sets goals, and puts her fears aside to reach for her dreams. Lola believes that a girl should be two things: who and what she wants, and backs sisterhood 100%. She loves food, cooking, and a good dirty martini, so she found NZ-made 100% olive brine, put it in a bottle, and offered it up to the world (well New Zealand to begin with anyway).

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When the kids are hungry and I want something to give them real quick I whip up some spiral pasta (we go through boxes of the stuff) and chuck a little bit of mayo with pesto in it. Ten minutes you’ve got happy kids with minimal stress. I was up at our local Mitre 10 buying veggies to plant for autumn the other day and saw they had these huge Basil plants that had gone to seed on sale for $5. Immediately thought of Pesto and grabbed one of them. When I got home and pulled out my go-to Pesto recipe I was missing a couple of important ingredients. Pine nuts and lemons. Given I’ve been experimenting with Dirty International Olive Brine a lot I decided to give it a go in my pesto. It turned out a-ma-zing! Definitely one for the win!

Back in the 90’s you could get the best bagels from the New York Bagel Company in Greenlane. They had this amazing salmon and cream cheese spread to go on the bagels and I made the trip into Greenlane often to get my fix. Over the years I have tried to replicate the deliciousness of their spread to no avail. After getting a bottle of Dirty International and using it in lots of cooking I decided to give it a go with the salmon and cream cheese spread. It elevated the flavour to the next level and I think it is pretty close to the original 90’s spread. It is now a constant in my fridge and it keeps as long as the cream cheese does (if it lasts that long!).

Meet Sue, known to many as the real-life Wonder Woman. Despite her never-ending to-do list, she still takes time to play in the kitchen. Active relaxing is what they call it, so experimenting with fresh seasonal produce, kick-ass appliances (Sue owns a thermomix), and Dirty olive brine, which resulting in recipe success, takes Sue to her happy place. Check out Sue's recipes of the month; definitely worth a crack! Long live her playground kitchen!