Linda Bladholm
food@MiamiHerald.com

Sarah Freedman-Izquierdo has spent her professional life in food -- as a chef, caterer, chocolate

 maker and, for 16 years, the gourmet-food and cheese buyer for Miami Beach's Epicure Market.

In January, the 49-year-old took the big leap, combining her professional and personal loves by

opening her own business, Olive Tree International Specialty Market, with her husband, artist

Jaime Izquierdo.

Their compact warehouse space in North Miami Beach is lined with shelves of oils, olives, pastas,

sauces, mustards, preserves, salts, spreads, sweets and other delicacies Sarah has sourced on

trips to Italy, Spain and France. It also houses Jaime's oil paintings, creating a lovely realm of

art and edibles.  The market is an outgrowth of Olive Tree Marketing International, a wholesale

company Jaime started in 1999,importing gourmet products he found on frequent trips to Europe.

(The couple kept an apartment in Florence for several years.) Since joining the business full-time,

Sarah has put her stamp on the inventory. ''If it's not my favorite, it's not here,'' she says.

One of her most sensational finds is the Fondo Montebello balsamic vinegar from Modena. A

traditional 12- to 25-year aged balsamic vinegar can cost hundreds of dollars. Hers -- made from

a mixture of Treviano grape must and a high-quality red wine that's aged in oak casks -- sells for

$44 for 8.5 ounces. With its syrupy texture and lush, fruity flavor, it's delectable drizzled over

radicchio and frisée (curly endive) with a little sea salt and olive oil -- especially her Cassina

Rossa extra-virgin with pure lemon ($13.99 for 500 ml or 17.5 ounces).

Other finds include whole-grain French mustard with cognac made in Les Meaux ($18.99 for 9

ounces); preserved lemons; hot cherry peppers stuffed with tuna, capers and anchovies in olive

 oil; Tuscan white beans in olive oil with sage; small, buttery black pitted taggiasca olives from

Liguria (great tossed with pasta); silky French sardines; capers in salt (rinse, smash and sauté

with shallots and white wine to make a sauce for seafood or meat); red pepper chutney made

with espelette (hot, sweet chiles grown in the Basque region of Spain); sweet and spicy confit

of baby onions and unrefined pink salt crystals from the Himalayan foothills.

The Fattoria Sant Ambrogio durum wheat pasta is a private label made for Olive Tree in Sienna

using bronze dyes that create dense but porous pasta that holds sauces well. Most have added

wheat germ and come in flavors like porcini and truffle. Other pastas are flavored with saffron,

squid ink and salmon.

Sweets include candied French lemon and orange peels, dragées (toasted almonds in a thin candy

 shell) and French caramels with figs and walnuts. And something to look forward to: a line of

truffle products including a divine truffle sauce and white truffle sea salt. Imagine sprinkling that

on your french fries.

Linda Bladholm's latest book is Latin and Caribbean Grocery Stores Demystified.

Place: Olive Tree International Specialty Market.

Address: 1970 NE 153rd St., Warehouse No. 3, North Miami Beach (east of West Dixie).

Contact: 305-788-3093, 305-725-4116, theitaliangourmetshop.com.

Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday, by appointment Saturday.

Prices: Pastas $6.59-$7.99, olive oils $8.99-$35; complete price list on website.