KREBS, Okla. — With the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics happening this weekend, it’s the perfect time to host a viewing party.
With the Olympics taking place in Italy, there’s no better cuisine to celebrate with than authentic Italian food.
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A little Italian grocery in Krebs, just outside McAlister, sits in a building built prior to indoor plumbing and statehood. It began life as a meat market. Over time, it began making types of sausage and cheese craved by Italian immigrants who settled in Pittsburg County to work the coal mines in the early 1900s.
But the Italian community craved more.
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“What could we not get — our olive oil, our semolina flour, our double zero flour to make our pasta,” said Domenica Lovera, the market’s owner.
So Lovera’s began importing essential ingredients Italian families needed, including olive oils, pasta, vinegars, and more, from Italy.
“Every Italian family usually came in here, and it just morphed and grew and grew,” Lovera said.
Now, along with its wide variety of Italian specialties, Domenica Lovera dishes about how to use them. Check out her advice on picking the right pasta and making salad dressing.
Italian Cooking Tips From Domenica Lovera
Today, Lovera’s packages its house-made sausage and cheese alongside dozens of imported Italian delicacies, and the market’s own line of sauces and vegetables to sell in-store and by mail-order.
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The market’s cheese even gained international recognition, though not without some controversy. Lovera said they received a letter from Italy stating they couldn’t call their cheese caciocavallo because it wasn’t made in that specific Italian region.
Her creative solution was to blend names.
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“Instead of caciocavallo call it caciocavera,” Lovera said. “We entered the international cheese competition and beat out Italy with our smoked caciocavera.”
The prize-winning cheese and house-made sausage make perfect ingredients for Super Bowl and Olympics viewing party dishes, including a show-stopping lasagna that brings authentic Italian flavors to your celebration.
And if you don’t know how to make a particular Italian dish, Dominica Loverea is delighted to guide you through it.
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