Olive Season 2012

Loaded with Olives

Early October is the start of the new olive season for us.  That is to say, we have started picking green olives for curing and eventually for eating.  It is still too early to pick olives to bring to the press for their oil.  That will happen sometime in November.  We have been fortunate this year for at least two reasons; the olive crop is huge and infestation of them by the Mediterranean Fruit Fly is almost nonexistent.  Because of the absence of the fruit fly, picking olives in good condition has been easy: a pleasure I did not have in previous years.

Center Green Olive is a Halkidiki the One Euro Coin is for Size
 and the Black Olives to the Right are Kalamatas 

On our 4,000 square meter (1 acre) plot of land, we have 69 small olive trees and all of them are loaded with fruit.  We have one Kalamata tree and the other 68 are Halkidiki trees.  I suppose that most people are familiar with Kalamata olives which are very tasty, but probably few have heard of the Halkidiki olives which are a large size table olive and grow to be considerably larger than the Kalamatas.  Olives, whether green or black (ripe olives), need to be cured to remove their bitter, unpleasant taste.  There are different ways to cure olives.




Cutting a Cross in the Blossom End

 The Water Cure:  Now we are curing the green olives using the common water cure.  The olives are picked, washed, and a single cut or cross cut is made at the blossom end of the fruit.  The cut olives are placed in a 5 liter (1.32 gallon) container and filled with tap water.  The water is changed daily for a period of about 30 to 40 days.  This water treatment essentially removes the bitter ingredients, but even after 40 days it is necessary to sample the olives for taste to be sure that most of their bitterness is gone.  If this is not the case the water treatment is continued until the olives pass the taste test.

Changing the Water

A slight variation which considerably decreases the curing time involves crushing the olives instead of cutting them.  Crushed olives will generally cure by the above method in 10 to 16 days.


Black olives are cured by the above method and it works well, too; but, black Kalamata olives are neither cut nor crushed, they are simply left whole.

Don't Strike so Hard as to Break the Olive Pit

After curing the olives we place them in a 5 L container together with one or two cups of vinegar, 1.5 cups of salt, one tablespoonful of citric acid, and we fill the container with tap water.  We let them stand for two to three months before serving.  After this time we wash them of the salt and acid solution and place them in a container covering them in olive oil and oregano.  We serve the olives directly from this container.


Salt Water Cure:  The salt water cure is simple enough.  We place uncut green olives in a 5 L container, fill with clean sea water, add a tablespoonful of citric acid, cap the container, and let it stand for 3 to 4 months.  At the end of this time the olives are washed and prepared for serving as described above.


Salt Cure:  It is still too early to do this, but we will be doing it soon enough.  A ripe olive is black and bitter.  Like the salt water cure, the salt cure is simple but faster taking no more than a week or two, and what you get are wrinkled, black olives that have a great taste.  The uncut black olives are placed in a porous bag along with coarse salt (food grade sea salt).  The bag is tied and placed on boards to slightly elevate it.  A rock on top of the bag to act as a weight and the bag is turned daily.  When no more water is released from the bag, the olives are removed, washed, and placed in a container with olive oil and oregano ready for serving.


An Important Note:  The oregano that we use grows wild on our 1 acre plot, and we usually harvest it in August.  The olive oil that we use is ours as well, and I will talk about it in a future blog.