Our friend Stella is Sicilian and, like her mother and grandmother, she can be found curing olives each year.
I love the flavour of olives but mostly find them too salty for my oversensitive palate but Stella’s hit the spot for me. Luckily she is a very generous friend and so we are the happy recipients of her, not too salty, output.
We thought it would be great to share her recipe with you, however, a recipe is not an easy thing for Stella to produce as she doesn’t often use them. She is ‘a handful of this and a handful of that’ intuitive cook.
She has kindly ‘told’ me what she does with her olives and this I pass on to you.
Don’t worry, curing olives is a cinch.
Rosie
STELLA’S OLIVES
Slash each olive once or prick once with a fork. Stella slashes, her mother pricked.
Soak in clean water for three days in a covered container. Drain.
Soak in salty water (enough salt in the water so an egg will float) in a covered container 2-3 weeks, taste one after two weeks, if still bitter leave in salty water.
Some scum will appear on top of the salty water, you can skim it off if you want but it is not necessary. You can change the salty water if you want to. Stella doesn’t. Her mother did.
When they are ready, to your taste, drain off the salty water and put in clean water with some vinegar. About 1/3 vinegar to 2/3 water. Soak for around 2 days but taste one and if it is still too salty leave them in the vinegar water for a bit longer.
When you’re happy with them, drain and transfer to sterilised jars, cover with olive oil and some vinegar mixed with any dried herbs, dried garlic, dried chilli etc. you fancy. Stella always uses dried herbs and spices with her olives.
Keep covered in olive oil and store in the pantry. The green olives will darken over time.