My olive harvest
I had too many olives on my three mini trees this year to ignore. I called a friend over to help with the harvest; it was more of an excuse to drink wine and natter. The trees had a mix of green, mauve-tinged, purple and black fruit. The olives were tiny. A friend had pickled a similar tiny variety that was delicious, so I was motivated to turn my olive fruit into something edible. If you have bigger fruit, slitting each olive so the water can penetrate will speed up leaching out the bitterness, but with tiny olives, that’s unnecessary. You’d be at it all day and will have consumed far too much wine by the time you finish.
After picking the olives, check them for any shrivelled or damaged fruit, then wash them in cold water. When you have a small harvest, managing the soaking process in your kitchen/laundry is easy. Put the olives in a bowl and cover with cold water. Change the water every day for two weeks. Just pour it off (or use it to water your garden). As the days pass, the olives will become slightly slimy, and the bowl will have an oily feeling after draining the olives. This is normal. Just wash the bowl, rinse the olives and carry on with the process.
After two weeks, drain the olives and weigh them so you know how much brine to make. The following is sufficient for 1 kg of olives.
Put 1.5 litres water in a saucepan and add 150g coarse rock or sea salt. Bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve salt. Bubble gently for 10 minutes, turn off the heat and let the brine cool.
Transfer olives to clean jars and pour over the cooled brine. Cover with lids. In the beginning, some olives may float on the top. They should sink within a day or two. If they don’t sink, discard them. You can also cover the brine with olive oil if you want to store the olives for longer. Store the olives somewhere cool and dark for 2 months. Have a taste – hopefully, they have lost excessive bitterness and have a fruity flavour with a hint of salt.
You can then drain the olives, or as many as you need, rinse, dry them off with paper towels and store them in oil and flavourings. Use within two weeks. Or gently warm drained olives in olive oil with flavourings and serve them warm. Keep any remaining olives in the jar of brine in the fridge for up to 12 months.
