Food I'm Eating: Olives 2022

Olives are on my mind. This year I was able to procure some good fresh olives from a friend. They've been in brine now for about three weeks (the brine changed out once a week) and will probably require another month or so before I'll start adjusting the final salinity and adding some flavorings. I like to finish them off by adding a little vinegar, a little lemon juice, rosemary, and crushed garlic cloves.

If they turn out this year, they should be tasty. Over the years of occasional olive brining I've had some go bad before they were finished, but this batch seems to be making good progress. 

Foods I'm Eating: 2019-2020 Season Homemade Olives

Just about 100 days ago (November 10, 2019) I started a batch of olives curing. Yesterday I was finally able to bottle them. These took much longer than any I've made in the past, but, by going through my own posts here about olive-making, I see that I started these much earlier than any I've done in the past. Presumably, the riper the fruit, the faster they cure. In the past, it's taken six to eight weeks for the olives to finish curing, but using olives harvested as late as mid-February—that is, harvested right about now.

Anyway, after more than three months, we have fresh homemade olives again. As in the past, I've done them up with rosemary, a bay leaf, a quarter lemon, and garlic. I like to put them in a shallow dish to soak a little in olive oil with more garlic, lemon, and rosemary before eating them, too. Delicious.

Food I'm Eating: Brining Olives (November 2019)

Olives! For the first time in several years I've been able to get my hands on some healthy, ripe olives for brining. It's a pretty easy process, although a bit tedious at the outset because you have to break the skin of each and every berry. That means scoring each olive with a knife blade before soaking them in brine. I use 1/4 cup of kosher salt to a quart of water and change the brine every two to three days. It takes about six weeks for the bitterness of the just-picked olives to disappear. Towards the end, I add vinegar, garlic, and rosemary to the brine to finish them off. These should be ready for Christmas. I started them on November 10.

Food I'm Eating: Curing Green Olives (January 2017)

I've cured ripe black olives in the past, olives from the tree in our yard and from a neighbor's tree, but never tried to cure green olives before. Usually olives are starting to ripen here as early as October, depending on variety, and nearly all are fully ripe by December. I had access this year to a number of trees at a winery tasting room where I work part-time. One of the trees has green fruit even now. I don't know what variety it is, but I decided to try green olives.

Recipes for curing black olives with brine always start with salt water from day one. Most green olive recipes, however, recommend soaking the olives in fresh water to start and then finishing them in brine. Recommended water soaks seem to range from four days to a month, with many recipes recommending 10 days. I'll probably seek a middle path and try waiting about two weeks before switching to brine. We'll see what happens. In the meantime, large ripe olives from another tree at the tasting room were already looking good in early November. Those olives are now finishing in brine with a touch of vinegar, lemon juice, rosemary and several crushed cloves of garlic. They are just about ready (below).