The box of olives that were shipped to us from California. We had to sort through the box and get rid of any damaged olives. The darker colored olives are more ripe and we separated them out to as they needed to be cured separately from the ones that were still very green. Half of the good olives went to me and the other half went to Baron Erec. These are all manzilla olives. We taste tested the raw olive and it was so very bitter.
This is my batch of raw olives after they were sorted to get rid of the "bad" olives. After sorting I gave them a good rinsing. I decided to try 3 different olive cures. All of the cures and information I have listed below came directly from the handout that Galefridus gave to us.
Very Fine Conserved Olives
Taking large perfect olives, picked by hand, cut them round with a sharp reed and put them in a new jar, not yet pitched, sprinkling on top a very little salt, and when it has dissolved have ready another jar, with honey if available, if not, hepsema [concentrated grape must] and a citron leaf, and put the olives into this marinade so that it covers them. Some add fennel seed,caraway, celery seed and dill to this marinade, and make a quite a remarkable olive conserve, which is unfamiliar to many
Instead of a sharp reed I used a pairing knife to score my olives. I also had a covered casserole dish that I am using to cure this batch of olives.
I sprinkled about 2 table spoons of course sea salt over the top of the olives and let them sit covered for 4 days. In this step the salt is drawing out the water and bitter flavor of the olive.
This is the olives after 4 days in salt. The salt has all dissolved and there is a small pool of water at the bottom of the dish. the olives are noticeably smaller and some of them look a little wrinkled. They are also starting to get darker, especially around the cut.
I rinsed the olives and the casserole dish and then returned the olives and covered them in honey. I did not have citron leaves so I only added fennel seeds and dill seeds. I did not have caraway seeds or celery seeds in house, so I am going to see if my local supermarket has them and then add them in. It will take several weeks for this to cure, so i think adding the spices in late won't really matter.
In this step the natural yeast present in the olives will react with the sugar in the honey and fermentation will occur. When the curing is complete I should have olives soaking in mead.
Preparatons of Olives in Brine
The next 2 cures come from Abu al-Khayr al-Shajjar al-Ishbili, Kitab al_Filaha which is an 11th century Seville farm manual. The English translation is availible at filaha.org
Take green olives that have been lightly crushed and scad them with boiling water. Then put them in a container with well-salted water and cover them with the leaves of bay, fennel and citron. a few days after this add a little salt and a bundle of thyme.
I placed olives in small batches into a plastic bag and "lightly crushed" them using a rolling pin. Raw olives are very hard so I was not afraid to really bang on them with the rolling pin.
I then placed the olives in boiling water and scooped them out as they floated to the top, which only took about 30 seconds to 1 minute for most of them.
I added course sea salt to warm water. The recipe calls for "well salted water" so I just went by taste.
Leaves of bay. I did not have citron leaves so I omitted them and I was unable to find fennel leaves so I went with fennel seed and hope that will work out.
salt water brine with spices on day one.
After 3 days I added a few sprigs of fresh thyme.
The salt water brine on day 5. you can see that the olives are getting darker and there is definitely a reaction happening as there is some foam on the surface of the salt water. The olives are also starting to feel a little softer.
Another method is to take olives in autumn and pit them with a pointed reed. Ten wash them with plenty of water. then put the fruit in a jar with leaves of thyme, mountain balm, may, citron and mint. Fill with liquid composed of one third drinking water and 2 thirds vinegar, well mixed, then seal the container until the olives are preserved.
Coring raw olives is a LOT harder than you would think. The olive is so hard and it was really difficult to find something to pit it with that was sharp enough to get into the olive but that wouldn't break the whole olive apart. After several tries I found the top of a sharp old fashioned potato peeler worked best. It was really hard to work the pit out of the olive and some of them split down one side, but that shouldn't effect the taste of the olive,
A close up picture of the pitting. This was a very messy job. I had to keep wiping my hands off on a cloth otherwise i would get the olives to slippery to hold.
This small amount of olives took over an hour for me to get the pits out. The had to be rinsed several times to get all the brown juice off of them.
Here is my stained brown hand from all the pitting.
pitted olives with spices. I added thyme, and bay leaves only. I did not have mountain balm (also I didn't really bother to find out what that is). I do not have citron leaves so those were omitted. I left out the mint as well because I am allergic to mint.
I prefer to use apple cider vinegar for pickling since white vinegar can sometimes contain corn products (and I am very allergic to corn). Apple cider vinegar has a milder flavor than white vinegar, the usual downside is it can discolor what you are pickling, so I am hoping that will be the case with olive curing as well. I added 1 cup tap water and 2 cups of apple cider vinegar
vinegar brine on day 1
Vinegar brine on day 5. you can see that olives are the darkest of all the three cures. I am thinking this is due to the vinegar and the fact that the pits were removed.
I will add updates on the olives every week or so to see how it progresses.
No comments:
Post a Comment