Eating Olives

Posted by CB on Nov 16, 2011 in Indoors | 0 comments

If you’ve ever tried to eat an olive straight from the tree you will have realised that in their natural state they taste like $%@!. There is a process involved between olives come off a tree and appearing on the table covered in oil, chilli and garlic. My mother has given me a recipe this year for preparing olives and I am half way through it currently. The steps are as follows:

Step 1

Pick a load of olives off the tree making sure only the perfect ones make the cut. You don’t want any olives with brown spots, green spots or wrinkles. It is important that only the most perfect specimens are chosen.

Step 2

Place a small cross or slit into each olive. This is useful for a final sorting of the wheat from the chaff – get rid of anything that looks slightly damaged.

Step 3

Place olives into a glass container of some kind (you can see the one I used in the photo) and cover with water so the olives are completely submerged. The container should have a lid although you don’t need it for a week or so.

Step 4

Change the water the following day, and then repeat the process the day after that.

Step 5

On the next day (this will be day 4) empty the water once more and this time refill it with a salt water solution. There should be 10 parts water to one part salt. Fill the container once more so the olives are submerged. Leave the olives like this for between 4 to 7 days. There is no need to change the water and the lid should continue to be left off once more.

Step 6

After 4 to 7 days, add a spinkling of olive oil to the salt water and place two olive leaves on top of the water too. Close the lid.

Step 7

Leave your covered container full of olives and salt water until mid January or so.

Step 8

In mid-January, open the container, rinse the olives thoroughly in water and down the hatch they go. You can eat them like this and they will taste nice, but you can then go further by adding some other goodies. I’m going to add oil, chili and garlic to mine when the time comes.

Although I realise people have been preparing olives for eating in this way for hundreds of years, I made the mistake once of reading about botulism which can occur when plant life is left in water for long periods of time. My mother says I’m daft to worry about it, she’s probably right but it does play on my mind. Perhaps the salt will prevent this from occurring, I’ll have to do more research.