As autumn whispers into our days and nights, olives, somewhere, are ripening. And that makes my mouth water in anticipation. Oil-cured olives await. My olive-curing adventures began this cold January, when I was gifted a tiny, fresh crop of ripe black olives by Rachel Prince, a talented professional gardener and friend who lives two blocks west of us in Brooklyn. Rachel grows her three-foot tall Arbequina olive trees in pots that overwinter indoors in our USDA growing zone 7b (-ish). I had always wanted to make oil-cured—versus brined—olives, whose meaty, concentrated flavor can be addictively good, for anyone who loves savory flavors. The results, a couple of weeks later, were surprisingly delicious, and the process could not have been easier.
All you need to make oil-cured olives are salt, olives, and time. And maybe a pillow slip.
As I read about how to make oil-cured olives (starting with this delightful tutorial) I learned quickly that the term “oil cured” is a misnomer—no oil is involved in the curing process. It’s more accurate to describe these wizened treats as dry-cured, or salt-cured. But the description seems to stick.
Rachel’s little cold-bletted olives were less bitter than most, but I still soaked them overnight, then mixed them with an equal weight of sea salt before hanging them in a cloth from the ceiling (right beside the annual hoshigaki), to cure. Snow fell on the skylight above. After a week, I tasted one. Still mildly bitter. But just one week more and the tiny olives were ready. I was delighted to discover that they tasted—at least to me—exactly as oil-cured olives should: savory and succulent, in a wrinkled way.
A few months later, in April and a hemisphere away, I found myself outside Nieuwoudtville, South Africa, standing awed beside three 12-foot olive trees whose silver-leafed branches were weighed down with plump green and black fruit. They were planted around our accommodations, a 200-year-old farmstead that was our base for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to see the annual and breathtaking autumn display of Brunsvigia flowers in the veld around the town. Pomegranate trees grew beside the olives, their ripe-to-bursting fruit splitting to expose juicy red gems. Rosemary in bloom clambered over a stone wall. In a word, heaven.
I remembered those dead-easy oil-cured olives in wintery Brooklyn, and I began to pick.
Oil-cured olives recall two formative meals. One, where, as an impressionable 20-year old waiting for a waiter-friend to finish his shift in a Turkish restaurant in Cape Town, I found myself the surprised recipient of two plates, sent from the kitchen to me by the intimidating chef. On a small plate was a slab of unadorned sheeps’ milk feta. The second plate contained nothing but glossy, oil-cured olives. I had never seen any before. A diminutive carafe of red wine arrived. It seemed shockingly austere, and I have never forgotten it (the chef went on to become a friend and food mentor; now 85, he lives in Istanbul).
The other indelible memory is from Café Gitane, an indefatigable restaurant in Manhattan’s Nolita, where, ten years after that light night snack, I ate for lunch a startling salad of orange segments, oil-cured olives, and chile. It was served with a hunk of baguette, whose purpose was to sop up the complicated-tasting and soupy juice at the bottom of the bowl. I have made that salad ever since, recently with shatta as well as some mint, from our little terrace. The addition of house-cured olives makes it an even more satisfying pleasure.
