Thinking about Olives

Lavender and I love olives and knew that our antipasto course wouldn’t be complete without them. The salty, briny taste went extremely well with the rest of our rich, cheesy appetizers. Although we simply served our olives in bowls, one of our favourite “olive recipes” is an easy tapenade that looks fancy but is really very simple so we've included it at the bottom of the post because it's easy to make and tasty to eat.  

The olive tree, olea europaea, is a slow growing, relatively small tree with an impressively long lifespan. The oldest known olive tree is the Tree of Vouves on the island of Crete. There are seven ancient olive trees in Greece and the Mediterranean but the Tree of Vouves is likely the oldest, estimated at over 3,000 years old!

An orchard of olive trees. 

The cultivation of the olive and of olive oil goes back many thousands of years with the earliest archeological evidence from Syria, Palestine, and Crete. Olive trees were cultivated in Crete as far back as 3000 BC. The burgeoning economy that their production brought to the island may very well have created the wealth and prosperity of the Minoan Civilization... until it was snuffed out by a volcano. In the mid-1500’s olive seedlings were brought from the Mediterranean to Spain and have been cultivated there and in South America ever since.

Today about 90% of all olives harvested are used for the production of olive oil leaving only 10% for our tables.

An olive growing on a tree

Lavender and I bought three different types of olives for our dinner party:

• Kalamata: A black Greek olive that is harvested when it is fully ripe and a dark black-purple colour. They have a distinct almond shape and are usually brined with the pit in.

Kalamata olives

• Sevillano: These olives are picked green and grow to be quite large, about the size of the top knuckle on your thumb. They have a nice mild taste and the ones we bought had been stuffed with cloves of garlic.

Garlic stuffed Sevillano olives

• Puglia: Like the sevillano olives, Puglia are picked green and cured in salt-brine. They have a tangier taste and quite small with a large pit.

Small Puglia olives

All olives are far too bitter to eat fresh from the tree and must be brined or cured to be palatable. Fresh olives were being sold in my local grocery stores a few years ago and convinced a friend to try one. He bit into it and then threw it at me. Apparently it was so bitter that his tongue tasted weird for the rest of the day!

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Ingredients

2 cups of black olives 
1/4 cup olive oil 
1-2 gloves of garlic
Salt 
Pepper 
Baguette
1/4 cup chopped pistachios (or any other nut really) 

Puree seeded olives in a food processor with olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper. Set aside. 

Cut baguette into 3/4 inch slices.  Add a good amount of olive to a pan (enough to properly coat the bottom) and fry each side of the bread for about 2 minutes or until it is golden brown and crunchy on the outside.

Serve tapenade on pan toasted baguette slices.  Sprinkle chopped pistachios on top. If you don't have any lying around almonds and walnuts make for a great substitute. 

Nothing says sophisticated like a plate of crostinis, some olive tapenade, and a glass of wine.

Bon appétit,

Basil