Olives

You win some and you loose some. Usually at this time my friend John and I purchase raw, uncured fresh olives from Pennas, in California, by mail (actually UPS). Green a bit earlier and black into first two weeks of November. I have been using a recipe for green olives I was given by a Turkish boat captain. He had a small farm/homestead outside of Bodrum and would put up his olives using a water cure method. A former diver assisting archeologist in studying and sorting antiquities on the Mediterranian bottom. He was a good fellow with a dead-on preparation.

I actually stumbled upon the green olives at my local super market. Several trays in the produce department. After not too much work I put up a case of 1/2 pint jars of the olives. In addition to eating them as I wished they made a great gift for olive lovers. 10 Nov 09: I'm going by on the way home on the off chance they are (still) there. Not likely, but it's worth a stop.

After some years John suggested we try the black olives. I trolled literature for some time before arriving at a simple salt-cure. I found the results to be beyond my wildest imagination. Deep rich earthy flavors with hints of all those words they use to describe amarone or even classic clarets. So simple, coarse salt packed above, around, and over the olives. Keep raking it up and adding more salt as necessary to keep it covered. I've done it in an orange crate and in a burlap sack (John's favorite) but it all works. The time is the only thing: not quick, but all I did was check it often. I will reduce them to a thin covering of a pit, which while it tastes great, is not so satisfying as a plumper outcome, pulled from the salt sooner rather than later.

While I have probably eaten pounds of lye-cured olives I never thought it a path worth following. Apparently it is a fast trip to cured olives. Bitter from the tree the taste will leave your mouth only slightly sooner than your memory.

I think part of the secret is to cure the olives and then flavor them before serving. Rosemary or orange or lemon zests, the durable garlic, hot and spicy touches. The more delicate scents appeal to me but a green olive scented with cracked red peppers is intoxicating. My last pass a curing the olives and scenting with lemon and mildly hot peppers didn't work for me; the flavor was off. I reviewed all I did but couldn't understand what made them turn off in that direction.

If you have ever eaten Canard Chez Allard, memorialized in Patricia Wells book Bistro Cooking, you can almost feel the urge to get to Chez Allard in Paris and compare your to theirs. Mere Allard was certainly not living when I first went there; her hayday being around 1940. The history and gravitas sweats out of the wooden paneled walls. The olives impart their scent and an ephemeral spin to the fowl. Slow cooking at it's best and regional ingredients. I think this one is coming to the table before the year is out.

All of these olives are so far distant from the gigantic, pimento stuffed, green things that were never, ever properly washed of their packing brine. I know that brine made it into "Dirty Martini's" for some reason I can't fathom.