Live For Food

The first time I tried olives was in halls of residence as a student. The meals in halls tended to be a bit school dinnerish anyway, and I thought the olive was horrible.

It was years later before I tried one again. I think I was probably offered them as an appetizer pre dinner once and tried again. I didn’t find them as bad.

Slowly they grew on me, and whilst not my favourite food I have a couple of recipes I use them in – a nice baked Italian fish recipe, and pizza recipes, and I also buy them to snack on. They make a good snack if you are eating low carb.

Where olives come from 

It took me a while to realise that an olive was a fruit that grows on a tree. They are native to the Mediterranean climate, which is presumably why the Mediterranean style diet has a lot of olive oil in it.

I don’t know how on earth the first person ever decided he could make olives edible. You can’t eat them straight off the tree, they must be cured or pickled.

Olives come in many varieties, and the colour indicates how ripe they are. They go from green to purple and different varieties are harvested at different stages of ripeness.

To cure olives you can use any of the following: water, lye, brine, or dry salt. Lye is sodium hydroxide – basically a food grade version of the stuff you clean drains with, caustic soda.

The different methods of curing affect the flavour and texture of the olive. The longer an olive is cured in brine the less bitter it becomes.

Different varieties of olives 

You will see all kinds of olives in your supermarket. You can buy them in jars, or off the deli counter.

The two types of olives I buy most regularly are Kalamata olives, which are medium sized, plump and a purply black colour, and Manzanilla olives, a small green olive.

The Kalamata olives are good for cooking with, and the Manzanilla are my favourite for snacking as my supermarket do them in little tubs of flavoured oil.

You may also see the following types of olives:

Cerignola: mild flavoured large green and black olives

Nicoise: chewy small brownish purple olives – used in Nicoise salad

Sicilian Green: large dense sour green olives

Olives are a healthy, nutritious food, but like nuts, don’t eat them in huge quantities because of the high fat content.  So if olives are something you haven’t tried, why not give them a go.  Perhaps start off by popping a couple on your next pizza, or adding a couple to your next salad, and see what you think!