Mediterranean Egg Salad with Green Olives, Pancetta and a Touch of Gorgonzola Cheese
Everyone loves a great classic egg salad! And every now and then, we enjoy something different, with a little twist of ingredients and flavor. This Mediterranean Egg Salad satisfies both . . . and deliciously! Here it’s served in a bread bowl, but you can also serve it scooped on top of small toasts for small bites or appetizers, or placed inside a lettuce wrap, and even stuffed inside pita bread. Served on top of a hollowed out tomato is classic!
Green olives are everywhere in the Mediterranean! In fact there are so many olives in Italy, that you might step on them (if you’re not looking down on the ground) after they fall from the olive trees! We just love huge, colossal, pimento, garlic or blue cheese-stuffed green olives. If you can get your hands on some freshly jarred green olives from Italy, you won’t believe the difference in taste, especially added into an egg salad!
olive trees growing in the tiny garden of our villa on the Amalfi Coast, Italy
watch where you step, the ripe olives fall on the ground everywhere!
Green olives enhance the flavor of this egg salad in addition to olive oil, freshly snipped garlic chives, Italian parsley and dill straight out of the kitchen garden!
But that’s not all!
Pancetta and gorgonzola cheese take this egg salad to a new level (of course you can decrease the amount of gorgonzola or eliminate it altogether, as my husband does)!
Always add in the freshest herbs that you can find . . . my garden is directly outside of my kitchen, so I just walk outside with a basket and a pair of kitchen shears and bring the herbs in just minutes before using them in my cooking.
Now that’s pretty fresh!
PrintMediterranean Egg Salad with Pancetta, Green Olives & Gorgonzola
- Prep Time: 0 hours
- Additional Time: 0 hours
- Cook Time: 0 hours
- Total Time: 0 hours
Ingredients
- 8 thin slices of pancetta
- 9 jumbo eggs
- 1 cup celery, chopped, including any leaves
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 4 garlic cloves, minced
- 9 large, colossal, pimento-stuffed green olives
- 3 Tbsp. fresh chives, chopped
- 2 Tbsp. fresh Italian parsley, minced
- 1 tsp. fresh dill, minced
- 3 Tbsp. Gorgonzola cheese, crumbled
- 1 cup olive-oil based mayonnaise
- freshly cracked sea salt and black pepper to taste
- Lettuce
- Ciabatta bread
- Garnish: green olives
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
- Spray a baking sheet with olive oil cooking spray.
- Lay the pancetta slices in one layer on the baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes until brown and crispy.
- When finished baking, allow pancetta to cool and then chop it up into small pieces.
- Gently place eggs in a medium pot.
- Fill with water.
- Bring to a boil.
- Boil for 10 minutes only so that the yolks do not develope a greenish-blue outer ring color.
- One by one, crack eggs and run (individually) under cold running water while peeling off the shell.
- Cool eggs in sealed container or plastic bag in frig.
- Chop/dice all eggs, celery, onion, garlic, green olives, chives, Italian parsley, and dill; mix well.
- Mix in the gorgonzola cheese.
- Gently mix in mayonnaise, salt and pepper.
- Blend in the crumbled pancetta.
- Serve with lettuce on very fresh, soft white bread for a sandwich or on a bed of lettuce for a salad.
- Garnish with green olives.
.
If you are thinking of creating something traditional, yet with a twist for Mother’s Day or any luncheon celebration, Easter, or any get-together, your guests will simply love this wonderful egg salad!
Another awesome egg dish Roz! You know I’m going to have to make this one as well. I can’t keep olives in this house. I bring them home and within a day, they are all gone. š Love the picture of the laundry with olives on the tiles. What a nice problem to have. š
MJ, those pictures were taken on the Amalfi Coast. Yes, doing laundry al fresco was indeed a problem! LOL!
Ciao,
Roz
So beautiful post Roz ! Thank you for wonderful salad idea !
You’re so welcome! I appreciate it so much!
Ciao,
Roz
Oh Roz, this salad is fantastic and looks so delicious! Can’t wait to make it. Beautiful post! Love your photos!
Hi ZaZa,
I hope that you’ve been doing well lately! Thank you for your sweet thoughts about my recipe for Egg Salad -Mediterranean (style). I adore it and so does my husband who loves gorgonzola and green olives. You can eliminate either or all of those if they don’t agree with your taste preferences. Thanks again! It’s so nice to hear from you!
Ciao,
Roz
Gorgeous salad – and all your photos are beautiful!
Thank you so much Beth! I appreciate your king thoughts!
Happy Sunday!
Roz
wow…favolosa!!!! Molto gustosa š
Un bacio
Grazie mille cara Daniela! Buon giorno!
Ciao,
Roz
It’s a shame you don’t have a donate button! I’d definitely donate to this brilliant blog!
I suppose for now i’ll settle for book-marking and adding your RSS feed to my Google account.
I look forward to new updates and will share this site with my Facebook
group. Talk soon!
Dear Roz, What a beautiful way to prepare egg salad. I love the ideas of the green olives…I know this is something I would enjoy. Perfect Spring dish! Blessings dearest, Catherine xo
What a gorgeous plate of food, Roz! I love that you’ve added Gorgonzola and olives to your egg salad…totally irresistible! And my chives are about a week or two behind yours…no blossoms yet. I can’t wait till I don’t need to go to the grocery store for herbs.
Hope you’re enjoying some time off between semesters! I’ve missed stopping by! xo
The garden harvest days will soon be upon you Liz and will reward your patience with a beautiful and flavorful fresh bounty!
xo
Roz
I have always, always done my egg salad with green olives and dill. Love the tang. The tangy cheese and pancetta bring it to new heights. Hoping to plant fresh herbs in a week. Oh how I miss my garden!
Just saw on the news that snow and ICE were STILL in northern Minnesota! Crazy weather this year….temps down to the 40’s tonight here, unheard of in a decade! But maybe that’s a good thing for us ‘down here’ for a more mild summer! I can only hope, Claudia! Hope you had a beautiful Mother’s Day!
Baci,
Roz
What a lovely, out-of-the-box salad! I love how much flavor it has from all of the ingredients you’ve mixed into it!
Tremendous flavor, this egg salad has, that’s for sure Joanne! Thanks for stopping by with your busy schedule in school!
Roz
You have taken egg salad to a whole new level. I can’t wait to try it with olives now.
You are so sweet Linda! With green olives is my husband’s favorite way to enjoy egg salad. It’s pretty good, but I like the pancetta! If you add some gorg. you need to go light on it so it doesn’t overpower everything else that makes egg salad so delicious!
See you over on your blog!
Roz
What a wonderful post. Your photos are beautiful, and the salad looks so tempting. This is my first visit to your site, having comer form CiaoChowLinda. I willl surely return!
I am honored to have your visit once, twice, or forever Adri! I will certainly stop by your blog and follow back!
Blessings,
Roz
How fabulous that olives are so abundant that one can easily step on them! Great idea, Roz to incorporate olives into egg salad. Thank you!
BTW. The Italian Tourist Board should give you a commission for all the good words about Italy and Italian products. Case in point, you’ve motivated me to buy Italian olives to add to my egg salad =)
P.s. Gorgeous photos as always. Bravo!
Kim,
You’re so funny! Yes it would be so cool if the Italian Tourist Board paid me a commission wouldn’t it? =)
Love ya,
Roz
Your egg salad sounds divine. I’m envy that you get the freshest green olive everywhere, any time. I might step on green toys on the floor left behind by my kids…but not green olives! hahaha….I can’t wait to try your egg salad recipe, perfect for mother’s day celebration. And those chive blossoms are gorgeous!
Hi Amy!
I hope that you had a wonderful Mother’s Day! I’d rather step on a child’s green toys than green olives any day! I miss having children around and now that I’m going to be a grandmother, I think I’m going to have another level of happiness in my life! Thanks for stopping by with your sweet comment!
Roz
What a delicious salad Roz , I love it! have a great week…
Thanks Chiara! I’ll be right over to your ‘cucina’ to see what’s new!
Roz
Wow! What an amazing view and beautiful garden. Iām going to have to try really hard not to be jealous Everything we grow here in the Phoenix desert are in pots and pretty small.
Wonderful ingredients in this salad. I am pinning it to make very soon, perfect summer dinner.
Your fish tacos are amazing Gwen! Love the recipe that I’m printing right now!
Roz
Wow! What an amazing view and beautiful garden. I’m going to have to try really hard not to be jealous š Everything we grow here in the Phoenix desert are in pots and pretty small. š
Wonderful ingredients in this salad. I am pinning it to make very soon, perfect summer dinner.
Hi Gwen,
I know your pain! I live in Phoenix for 5 years (and really loved it), and couldn’t grow very much of anything besides cactus! So many great things about the Valley of the Sun, of which one thing that I miss the most is the mountain hiking within the city!
Thanks for stopping by!
Roz
Oh Roz, I adore eggs in any way, egg salad my fave, this is an awesome recipe. Love your villa on the Amalfi coast, I wish I could just zap myself there right now, xo
Hi Barbara,
It was a sweet villa on Amalfi that I sadly do not own; and I too, would zap right back myself if possible. Next visit to Italy will be more in the central and northern areas though.
Baci, xo
Roz
I love egg salad and this one sounds and looks so delish! I love how your dishes match your food…definitely makes for an appetizing dish! And those lavender flowers atop the chives are so cute. Perfect combination of flowers & useful spice all rolled into one. Have a lovely day Roz
Thanks so much Mitzi, for your kind comment! I’m so glad that we’ve met through our blogs! I’ll be right over to visit to read about what you’ve been up to!
Have a beautiful day too!
Roz
You have a way of really bringing out the beauty in food.
Egg salad with olives, dill, gorgonzola……stunning.
Velva
Thanks Velva, although I love all of these ingredients, I’ve got a husband that wants only eggs and mayo, period. Opposites attract!
Roz
Delicious looking salad and great shots Roz. I’m a fan of egg salad. olives, and Med. flavors in general so I know I would really enjoy this.
This is a good egg salad, but go easy on the gorgo cheese so that it doesn’t overpower the eggs!
Roz
Love your olive trees and all the fresh herbs! The salad looks fabulous, Roz.
Thank you Angie! I hope that you received my message that I sent to you!
Hugs,
Roz
What an array of great photos today Roz. Your egg salad sounds fantastic. We are big olive lovers at our house. I’ll have to check your link. We saw a lot of olive groves in Provence when we were there.
Hope you have a lovely weekend and that your weather is better than ours. All we have is rain, rain, rain and a lot of wind. Very chilly here for May.
Sam
The sun finally came out to say hello here today Sam! On a positive note, it certainly is green and we are 6 ” above normal, which hopefully will help us get through summer!
Thanks for stopping by and I hope that you’re feeling well!
Roz
I loved wandering through olive groves draped with nets to catch all the olives before they hit the ground. Picking olives and watching them press them at a local mill was one of the highlights of time in Italy. I never saw them picking for eating in the area I stayed but that would be an experience as well.
I agree Val. Thanks,
Roz