A bag of olives - help!

A few weeks ago we had an invitation to join our farming friends in the country to pick (and take away) some olives. And of course we gladly accepted. Yesterday was the day.

It was a beautiful if pretty cold day so a good day to do this. But I had no idea! Armed with our little rakes, provided by our hosts, we set off to their mini olive orchard. I say mini but there were two longish rows of trees - not all bearing olives of course because I think they only bear fruit every two years - in my case probably nearer ten. I have four olive trees in my garden, none of which are exactly shooting up. One of them had a few olives once upon a time, but nothing since. But then I, of course, do nothing to them. I'm sure Beth looks after hers properly. I should have taken some photographs but didn't - too busy picking olives like these - well ours are a bit more oval.

This is sort of what you do.

David did this bit. I stood underneath with a crate to catch them. On a commercial scale they have nets underneath the tree to catch them. Anyway at the end of the little adventure we ended up with half a supermarket green bag full of little black olives, looking much like the ones in the picture at the top - leaves and all - which, of course, had to be removed later on. Half a grocery bag might not sound very much but when you think about it in terms of jars, it's actually a huge amount - and really far more than I need. A few kilos anyway.

We were provided with instructions on pickling them, which, of course, I promptly lost so I resorted to my books and the internet. Well - another Pandora's box of tips and tricks and advice and nonna recipes.

In the end I decided to try three different methods. The first, and, I suppose the simplest, is courtesy of Stephanie Alexander and you will find it in her massive Cook's Companion. I knew that you are supposed to deal with the olives within 24 hours, so when we got home I decided to do this first batch almost straightaway. Basically, what you do is put them into a big bowl of water, making sure they stay under the water and change the water every day for 40 days. I'm not yet quite sure what you do at the end of that - but I think you then make a brine and put them into jars with the brine. I had to remove all the leaves and twiglets of course but otherwise this was pretty quick and simple. I had heard somewhere that you had to prick all over every individual olive, but Stephanie didn't say to do this, so I didn't. Who am I to argue with Stephanie? (Yes, this is why I chose this recipe - it's easy and relatively quick.) Of course overnight I worried that I might have included some rotten olives, but decided that I could remove them today when I changed the water (which I did). So there they are under the window next to the sink soaking. I put a piece of baking paper on top and a plate on top of that to keep them under the water. They look a bit like this, but are just in a very ordinary looking plastic mixing bowl.

For method number two, I had also found a recipe from Stephanie's friend Maggie Beer for dry salt curing olives. This results in wrinkly olives - which I rather liked the idea of. However I had no suitable container - plastic and she suggested holes in the base so it could drain. So I set this aside for today.

Today I googled it all and in the end found a recipe from Good Life Permaculture which sounded a little less messy (no holes). I rushed to the shops to buy my plastic box - thank you Coles - and some more salt and then sat down to cut a slit in the side of every olive - yes every one. But it didn't really take that long, and I didn't cut all the way round - just one side. I reasoned that Maggie Beer didn't do this at all so I was in front. I layered them in salt (a mix of rock salt and ordinary old table salt) in my new box, and they are now sitting alongside the water soaking ones.

These need to be drained every few days and maybe topped up with salt, rinsed when done - hopefully in two to three weeks time, and put in a jar with olive oil, or on their own. I'm really crossing fingers on this one. Well all of them I suppose.

"It’s infinitely easier and just as tasty as pickling, in short it’s life changing" Good Life Permaculture

My last method is courtesy of SBS and is a variation on method 1. First you do the same water thing, but after a couple of weeks you change to soaking in vinegar for a few days, and then you leave them in salt for a day or so. So sort of a combination method.

Of course it could all go horribly wrong. But I'm going to give it a try. I don't really like to eat olives myself, but I do like to be able to offer them to others, and I really do like to cook with them.

My friends really wanted to make olive oil with their olives - they have done this in the past, but it seems it is no longer possible to find a press that will deal with their comparatively small quantities. Hence the invitation to friends and family to come join in the olive picking. It was a huge amount of fun and we had a lovely lunch afterwards, at which my leftover schiacciata all'uva was a bit of a hit.

Hopefully in a month or two's time I shall end up with jars and jars of classy looking olives like this to give to friends.