Tim's Doing The Olives - May 13, 2010
A couple of weeks ago I went for a haircut. As I walked into the shop the barbers were in a serious conversation about
"doing the olives ".These guys are all Italians so I was very interested to learn how to pickle olives from the experts.
They told me they buy green olives from the fruit shop for around $40.00 a box. Green olives will turn black if you leave them on the tree to ripen. The variety they like the best is Manzanillo. This is a Spanish variety and it is the world's most popular table olive. To marinate the olives they use fennel, whole chillies and cloves of garlic . They collect the fennel which grows wild beside railway lines. Fennel has a fern like leaf with an aniseed fragrance. Wild fennel has a much stronger taste than commercially grown varieties.
They put the unprocessed green olives into storage jars and place the fennel leaves, chilli and garlic on top.
Next start adding table salt into a bucket of fresh water. They place an egg in the bucket and when it floats to the top, the water has the right salt content. They take the egg out next and then fill up their jars with the salted water. They seal the lids and put the jars in the pantry. The olives are ready to eat in 6 weeks.
I have now "done the olives" myself and for $41.00 (the salt cost 99 cents) I have over $200.00 worth of olives. I will save even more money when my home grown Manzanillo Olive tree starts to bare fruit in a couple of years. Thankyou to the boys from Trevi's for sharing their recipe.
Tim Pickles is a CNP horticulturist and Director of Tim's Garden Centre 2 Queen St Campbelltown 46267022.