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Wednesday 4 September 2013

GREEK OLIVES

Good Morning to you,


Life is returning to normal after the Summer Break.  Children are returning to school after their long summer holidays and I met with my good friends from my sewing group yesterday.  It was so lovely to see everyone, as  we all had lots to catch up on.

When I returned home,  it was lunch time.  George had gone for a swim and a sauna, so I was on my own for lunch. I was hungry when I arrived home and I needed  to assemble my lunch very quickly, before I reached for the biscuit barrel.  I found some olives, Feta Cheese and I had some fresh crusty bread.  Simple food but full of flavour and it certainly hit the spot.

I think you either love olives or you hate them, there seems to be no in between..... personally I love them. 

As you know, we used to grow olives when we lived in Cyprus. We would harvest some of the olives during November, whilst the olives were still green and before they turned into rich black olives. I would then preserve them by turning them into cracked olives (tsakistes).  George discovered a great way of cracking the olives, he would use a large flat stone as a base, where he would place the olive and then he would use a smaller flat stone to carefully crack open each olive, these two flat stones were perfect tools.  Mind you, it did take a long time, as he had to avoid cracking open the olive stone and one word of warning if you try this yourself, olive juice stains, so don't wear good clothes. After George had finished cracking the olives, I then soaked the olives in water for 2 weeks, making sure, each day, I changed the water, until the olives lost their bitterness.  When they were ready, I placed the olives in a large container, I then made a brine to cover the olives and  we enjoyed olives all winter long and into the spring.

Today I am going to show you how I jazz up plain olives, it is the same method as I used to do for the cracked olives (tsakistes) when I removed them from the brine. Now that I am living in England, I do not have  olive trees in my garden, so if I don't have the time to go to the market, then I will buy a jar.  Normally I buy olives with their stones intact as I feel they give a much better flavour, but I could not find any..... isn't that always the way, so on this occasion, I settled for some Greek olives stuffed with pimento, and this is what I did,


don't they look appetising.


So it is on with the apron, yes even for this small task, as I have my nice clothes on and I don't want to be splattered with olive oil. There is no music for you to enjoy today, as I am listening to Radio 2 and The Steve Wright Show.... he plays lots of old and new songs and he has a fabulous sense of humour.

INGREDIENTS


350g  jar of olives in brine


1 lemon


1 clove of garlic
1 tablespoon of oregano


1 tablespoon of wine vinegar
3 tablespoons of olive oil

METHOD


Drain the olives and rinse under cold water


Place in a bowl and set aside


Thinly slice a garlic clove


Quarter the lemon
then


thinly slice one quartered lemon


Remove the oregano from the stem and crush a little
as you do not want large pieces of oregano.
If you are using shop bought oregano then add
1 1/2 tablespoons and there will be no need
to crush the oregano  as it will be very fine.


 Add  the lemon, garlic and oregano to the olives in the bowl


In a separate bowl mix together the 
wine vinegar and olive oil


and add to the olives, garlic, oregano, 
then toss together

I then put the olives into a larger glass jar and I keep them in my store cupboard until needed.  Try not to eat the olives on the day you make them, give them a day or so, for the flavours to develop.

If you prefer you can keep them in the fridge, but remember to take them out a couple of hours before you want to eat them, as you certainly do not want to eat cold olives.

In place of oregano you can use crushed coriander seeds, you can also add chillies if you like a bit of heat.

The amounts I have given you for the olives, are personal to our taste, you might like to increase the amount of wine vinegar or olive oil, you might like to use one of the quartered lemons to add extra lemon flavour. It is really up to you, but what I would say, is try the way I have shown you first, then you can add or subtract as needed.

Oh and by the way...... I thought I would reassure you,  yes, there were the odd one or two olives left for George to enjoy when he returned home.

On Sunday, I will show you how I used the three remaining quartered lemons.

Take care and I will see you later in the week. 

This week I will be joining,


and




17 comments:

  1. I love olives, all kinds. Great!

    Marina

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  2. That looks absolutely wonderful, now I want olives!

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  3. Thanks for the recipe. I will have to try that. Hubby loves olives and eats them with everything! HA!

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  4. This lovely post made me think about when we used to have our own olive grove, happy and sad emotional memories.
    Thanks for your recent add as a follower to my Travel Tales blog, I hope you will enjoy it as much
    as News From Italy.

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  5. I adore olives, too, Daphne and yours look scrumptious... thank you so much for the recipe. I'm definitely going to try it. I frequently find myself having suppers like that in the evening... olives, a bit of cold meat, some cheese and perhaps some sliced tomato, and a glass of wine with crusty bread. Thank you for talking about your time in Cyprus and the method you used for harvesting the olives. It was fascinating!

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  6. Hello Daphne
    from an olive crazy household minus 1......that is all the family are crazy about olives here except me and it is not for lack of trying.Sr P ,daughter Nº 1 and grand-daughter (the only one) are born olive eaters. They relish them! I just don't get it! My father used to love olives too so it isn't because they were not present when I was a child. tch!!!
    My husband would agree with you where you say the olives which have not been pitted are better tasting. He always repeats that to me.
    He is the one who always prepares them so I am going to suggest he tries your recipe.


    keep well

    Amanda :-)

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  7. My dear Daphne,it was a pleasant surprise to
    read about "tsakistes" olives !!!!! I love
    olives, too !!!!
    Best wishes
    Niki

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  8. Dearest Daphne,
    You certainly have a wealth on knowledge about culinary things! This is great and I for one could LIVE on olives...
    Hugs,
    Mariette

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  9. Love olives! I will have to give this a try!

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  10. as you can imagine, I am an olive lover. My parents own about 400 olive trees in southern Italy, so we have plenty of olives

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  11. Talk about gilding the lily. I have been on an olive binge. I bought some tapenade and made a fish dish and a savory clafoutis, now I can seem to pass up an olive recipe.

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  12. Dear Daphne,what a surprise to see a recipe with green (tsakistes)olives!
    I have in my garden my olive trees,and i'm waiting in October to collect them!!!
    I really like your recipe!Thank you for sharing!!Have a happy Autumn!!
    Dimi...

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  13. Yum...I love olives! What a great, simple snack! This would be great to link-up to Create It Thursday for this week…it's live now! Hope you'll join us!

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  14. Thank you, dear Daphne to think of me. We also prepare our own olives.
    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

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  15. Thank you for visiting my blog Daphne and leaving such a lovely long message, I have left a reply on my blog. I love sisal and said in my reply I would have it throughout my whole house if it wasn't so expensive. In NZ sisal costs an arm and a leg as I recently had a quote which shocked me. I am going to have a large piece bound for my living room. I must add though it is not very forgiving if anything spills on it as you cannot get it wet. The look though is fabulous and can truly finish off a room. On your tiled floor it will look fabulous.

    I am very interested in this post on olives as we have some neighbors that have a row of olive trees at the front of their garden, about 5 months ago it was laden with black olives and I picked some. Gosh! they were terribly bitter, I didn't know about soaking them so am going to try to do this next year when they are ripe again and ask them if I can pick a lot and try to bottle them.

    I will come back and read more of your blog. I used to live in York in England.

    Lee

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  16. I have you saved so I can create OLIVES in my iPad Paprika recipe app file. I also have you saved now in my Bloglovin reader and hopefully I will be notified when you post. I love the creativeness of your Ivy, Phyllis and Me . . . wish I was sitting with you enjoying olives and feta . . .

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  17. These look delicious! I LOVE olives, and I'm going to try your recipe. Thanks so much for sharing it. Wish I had some right now.:) YUM!

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Dear Friends,

It is so wonderful to know you enjoy reading Ivy, Phyllis and Me! Thank you so much for taking the time to leave me a comment. I really do appreciate it.

Best wishes to you.

Daphne

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