Lye Curing Green Olives

Olive Boy says -

Always lye-cure green olives. If air bubbles through the lye solution, those green olives turn black; the California black olive is born. Pick and clean the olives. Immerse the olives in a lye solution (2 tablespoons flake lye in 1 quart water) for 12 hours. Dispose of lye solution, immerse olives in new lye solution for 12 more hours. Cut into some of the largest olives to see if the lye penetrated the olive (olive will be soft to the pit, easy to cut to the pit, and the flesh will be yellowish green when ready). Soak olives in water for 3 days, changing the water at least 3-4 times/day. Taste an olive on the fourth day. It should taste sweet and fatty, with no bitterness, a little like a tiny avocado. Immerse for 1 week in a light brine, about 6 Tbs salt in gallon of water.

***Lye is caustic! Remember to wear rubber gloves. Use lemon juice or vinegar to neutralize lye burns.***

You can also make marinades for your cured olives! Good flavors/herbs to use in various combinations are: garlic, bay leaf, oregano, thyme, dried chiles, fennel seed, peppercorns, coriander seed, orange peel, lemon peel, lemon slices, cumin seed.

Thanks! - Olive Boy

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- Scott Patton


Olive Oil Tasting in McLaren Vale

Brine Curing

Olive Boy Says:

Brine-cured red-ripe or black-ripe olives are Greek-style; brine-cured green olives are Sicilian style. The red-ripe olives generally turn a grey green to pink, while the black-ripe ones keep their color, becoming a Kalamata-deep purple. Deeply slit each olive using a sharp paring knife, then place them into a brine (1/4 cup canning salt in 1 quart water). Weigh down the olives, making sure they are fully immersed. Cover the olives, stir once in awhile, wait one week. Rinse, and change the olive brine once/week for at least 3 weeks. Taste, if still too bitter, keep changing brine 1/week. The scum that forms on top of the vat is harmless if olives are immersed, but get rid of it when you see it.

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Picking Olives on the Croatian Adriatic

Pasta with Black Olive Sauce: Stringozzi Alle Olive

Olive Boy says, "Try this recipe featuring olives!"

Pasta with Black Olive Sauce: Stringozzi Alle Olive

Ingredients
1 recipe basic pasta dough, recipe follows
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1 pound white mushrooms, cut into thick slices
2 cups pitted black olives
1 bunch Italian parsley, finely chopped to yield 1/4 cup
1/2 cup butter
1/4 teaspoon red chile flakes
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Parmigiano-Reggiano, for grating

Directions
Prepare the pasta dough according to the recipe and roll it out to the fourth from last thickness on a pasta rolling machine. Cut into 1/4-inch thick ribbons and set aside.

In a 12 to 14-inch skillet, heat the olive oil over high heat until smoking. Add the garlic and mushrooms and saute over high heat until the mushrooms are browned. In the bowl of a food processor, combine the sauteed mushrooms and garlic, the olives and the parsley and puree. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

Bring 6 quarts of water to a boil and add 2 tablespoons salt.

In the same sauté pan, heat the butter over high heat until it foams and subsides. Add the olive puree and chile flakes and cook 5 minutes. Season to taste.

Cook the pasta in the boiling water 1 or 2 minutes. Drain and toss in the saute pan with the sauce. Divide evenly among 4 warmed pasta bowls, grate Parmigiano-Reggiano over, and serve immediately.

Basic Pasta Dough
3 1/2 to 4 cups all-purpose flour
4 extra large eggs
1/2 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
Mound 3 1/2 cups of the flour in the center of a large wooden cutting board. Make a well in the middle of the flour and add the eggs and the olive oil. Using a fork, beat together the eggs and oil and begin to incorporate the flour, starting with the inner rim of the well.

As you expand the well, keep pushing the flour up from the base of the mound to retain the well shape. The dough will come together when half of the flour is incorporated.

Start kneading the dough with both hands, using the palms of your hands. Once you have a cohesive mass, remove the dough from the board and scrape up and discard any leftover bits. Lightly reflour the board and continue kneading for six more minutes. The dough should be elastic and a little sticky. Wrap the dough in plastic and allow to rest for 30 minutes at room temperature. Roll or shape as desired.

Shop The Olive Hut! The Olive Hut features an excellent assortment of olives, olive oils, olive products, nuts, fresh produce, and specialty items.

Be certain to check out our Free Recipes!

- Scott Patton

Eating Green Olives

Olive Boy Says -

Harvest has been steady as we go! With lighter than normal harvest tonnage, labor has been plentiful. Pickers has great attitudes about harvest, because the olives are abundant in the orchards that have olives. 2008 brought the April 20th freeze—24 - 27 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on your location. Then May saw temperatures of 100+ degrees, with north wind, for a month. The culmination of harvest is about two weeks away.

Thanks sincerely! - Olive Boy

Shop The Olive Hut! The Olive Hut features an excellent assortment of olives, olive oils, olive products, nuts, fresh produce, and specialty items.

Be certain to check out our Free Recipes!

- Scott Patton

The Pimento

The Pimento, Pimiento, or Cherry Pepper is a variety of large, red, heart-shaped chili pepper (Capsicum annuum) that measures 7 to 10 cm (3 to 4 inches) long and 5 to 7 cm (2 to 3 inches) wide (medium, elongate). The flesh of the pimento is sweet, succulent and more aromatic than that of the red bell pepper. Some varieties of the pimento type are hot, including the Floral Gem and Santa Fe Grande varieties. Pimento or pimentão are Portuguese words for "bell pepper," while pimenta refers both to chili peppers and to black peppercorns. It is typically used fresh, or pickled and jarred.

Pimento as an olive stuffing

Green Spanish olives stuffed with pimento visibleThese sweet pimento peppers are also the familiar red stuffing found in prepared Spanish green Olives. The pimento was originally cut into small pieces and hand stuffed into fresh green olives to complement the strong flavor of the olive. For ease of production pimento is often pureed and formed with the help of a natural gum (such as sodium alginate or guar gum) into strips. This allows the olive stuffing to be completed by a machine and increases the availability of the olives by lowering their cost of production. However, it also makes the olives less accessible to consumers with peanut allergies, as those individuals may have a cross-reaction to guar.

Rachael Ray Makes Her Mom's Olive Spread

Olive Boy Says -

The Olive tree is an evergreen tree or shrub native to the Mediterranean, Asia and parts of Africa. It is short and squat, and rarely exceeds 8–15 meters in height. The silvery green leaves are oblong in shape, measuring 4–10 cm long and 1–3 cm wide. The trunk is typically gnarled and twisted.

The small white flowers, with four-cleft calyx and corolla, two stamens and bifid stigma, are borne generally on the last year's wood, in racemes springing from the axils of the leaves.

The fruit is a small drupe 1–2.5 cm long, thinner-fleshed and smaller in wild plants than in orchard cultivars. Olives are harvested at the green stage or left to ripen to a rich purple colour (black olive). Canned black olives may contain chemicals that turn them black artificially.

Olive harvest began August 25th for fresh olives. The large (Bell-Carter, Musco) canneries opened on September 8th. Harvest found us with plentiful help—fewer olives than pickers. But we shall survive! Warm summer temperatures sized the fruit and ripened it to perfection. Thanks! - Olive Boy

Shop The Olive Hut! The Olive Hut features an excellent assortment of olives, olive oils, olive products, nuts, fresh produce, and specialty items.

Be certain to check out our Free Recipes!

- Scott Patton


Olive Picking