Moroccan Style Black Olives

When I told my mother in law that I had just made 10 kg of olives she was a bit shocked. What on earth are you going to do with them all? she asked. Well, I suppose you can always give them away as gifts. Right – great idea. Except  that they are disappearing so fast that there aren’t many to give away anymore. Both the green and the black came out brilliantly.  We can’t stop eating them.

I’d made green ones before so I knew they would be OK but I’d never tried making the wrinkly Moroccan black ones and had no idea if they would work. Well, they did and if anyone reading this has access to fresh black olives and and a few kilos of salt, here’s how you do it.

First I poured boiling water over them then packed them into salt. Yes, you cover them completely. I did two batches and in the first I just packedthem all into a big bowl and in the next I layered them in a flat wicker basket between muslin and allowed them to drain. As you see, I was getting professional!  I just left them like that for a few weeks, rolling them around occasionally. It took so long that I actually thought nothing was going to happen but one day, after about 3-4 weeks I noticed that the wrinkling had begun! Slowly but surely, liquid started seeping out and the salt turned damp and slightly purple.

It was hard to know how long to leave them and we kept trying them to gauge the progress. When they got to a point where they tasted really good and chewy I rinsed them all and put them to dry in the sun. That’s not always possible in the middle of December but I was lucky that we had a few good consecutive days of dry bright weather. I left them out for 3 days -sampling them regularly of course  to see how things where going – and then finally put them in a jar and covered them with olive oil.

The taste and texture was amazing – as good if not better than any I’ve ever bought –  but I was shocked to realise how few there were. Obviously the volume goes down with the drying but it also goes down with the continual tasting! So, here we are, what remains of my 2kg of black olives. So much for gifts…!  I’m off up to the mountains this weekend to see if I can still find some more. These are clearly not going to last ……