Olives

March is the time to harvest olives in this part of the world.  My husband used to have a prescribed date but we have had many years of no olives due in part to drought.  This year the olives seemed a bit small on the prescribed date so we let them go a couple of weeks longer.  Then when we realized Easter was looming in the not too distant future we decided we better pick so that we would have them processed before Easter.  There are many methods of making olives palatable.  We use one of the fastest methods and it still takes about 13 days.  Here is how it works:

Picking:

Pick the olives green and take care not to bruise them by dropping them hard into the bucket.  Most instructions say to sort them by size but I don't do this mostly out of laziness and justifiably due to thrift.  The small olives fill up the empty spaces between the bigger olives in the jars.  I think though if you want consistent flavour and texture it is best to sort them.  After picking wash them.

Processing:

The old fashioned way is to soak and rinse the olives in plain water morning and night until the bitter taste has been leached away.  This can take a two to three weeks and uses a lot of water which we find problematic living in a region with water restrictions.  Some people cut the cut the olives to the pip in four places to speed up the leaching process.  This is a bit of work and destroys the lovely intact look of the olive.  So I don't choose to do this.  We use the caustic soda method. Remember to follow the instructions on the bottle of caustic soda.  Caustic can burn you so you must wear rubber gloves.  Use plastic or stainless steel containers and utensils when working with a lye solution. The caustic soda (aka lye) reacts with the bitter components in the flesh of the olive and extracts it.  Mix 15-20g of caustic soda per litre of water.  Also add the equivalent amount of salt, they say this prevents the fruit from becoming too soft. Place a plate on top of the olives to keep them submerged otherwise they will turn brown. Check the olives every 2 hours by pulling out a large fruit with a spoon, rinse it and then cut a wedge out of the side of the fruit piercing all the way to the pip.  When the caustic soda has worked its way to 1/2-2/3 of the way to the pip the olives are ready.  The caustic soda infiltrated flesh is a darker green.  This year it only took 4 hours in the caustic soda for the olive.  In years past it was more like 8 hours.  Now rinse the fruit in fresh water repeatedly until the fruit no longer feels soapy.  Let the fruit sit overnight and rinse again in the morning.  You want to get all the caustic soda out of the fruit so allow plenty of time for this phase.

Next the olives go into a series of salt brines as follows:

25g of salt per litre for 1 day

30g of salt per litre for 3 days

40 g of salt per litre for 7 days

Place a plate on top of the olives to keep them submerged in the brine.

Bottling:

Wash and sterilize your jars.  You should pack them in a brine of 40g of salt per litre.  If you are going to put them in a hot bath to vacuum seal them this is enough.  Otherwise the instructions recommend putting in 4 parts brine and one part of vinegar.  I only add enough vinegar to taste because one year the vinegar I used was so strong it rendered the olives nearly inedible.  I put in a prig of rosemary, cloves of garlic cut in half and hot chilies cut in half to add a bit of flavour but this is purely up to you.  If you are not going to vacuum seal the jars leave enough head room to ensure the olives are submerged and top off with a layer of olive oil.  This will protect the olives from spoilage.  Wait a week or two and the olives are ready to eat!

I also made four jars of what I call the "Smashed Olive" technique.  You smash each olive with the but end of a beer or wine bottle and throw it into a bucket of water.  Once the olives are all smashed you need to sort through them to remove the pips.  This is harder than it sounds and left a brown stain on all of my finger nails.  My thumb nail was the brownest and a bit sore after I had finished.  Soak these in water changing the water morning and night for 3 to four days.  You can taste the olives to know when they are ready.  Once the bitter taste is gone drain them and salt them to taste, add whatever herbs you want and drizzle a bit of olive oil on them.  Pack into sterilized jars and top with a bit of olive oil.  These are great in salads, meat dishes and kneaded into Ciabbatta!  Yum!

Black olives:  My friend Sabine told me how to do these and I will try a couple of jars when the fruit on the tree ripens.  She mixes the black olives with rock salt and then packs them into sterilized jars.  Once a day she cracks the lid and drains off any liquid which has been drawn out of the olives by the salt.  Once the olives stop weeping they must be washed to remove the salt and then can be repacked in the jars with olive oil.  I will try these later and let you know how they turned out.  Cheers!