Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] I hate olives...

[lilinah at mail.earthlink.net]

The quality of olives depends NOT on whether they are canned or
bottled, but on, well, the quality of the olives...

The olives in the fancy specialty stores that are out on the floor in
plastic tubs, adorned with various oils, herbs, and other added
delicacies (hot pepper, preserved lemon, almonds, etc.) had to come
from *somewhere* and they didn't just toss themselves into those
shops direct from the brine barrel. Often they come out of cans and
are "dressed up" by the grocer.

I hated olives as a kid because all we had were those rubbery black
ones (colored with iron) or pimiento stuffed green ones (and i really
really dislike preserved pimientos as a kid - i hated Chicken a la
King, too, and finally figured out it was the flavor of the bottled
"gourmet" pimientos to which i most objected).

I discovered real olives when i was living in France in the 70s, at
an outdoor market in Grasse - i had never seen so many different
kinds of olives before - the vendors made their own - i don't know
what they stored them in.

Nowadays, while i often buy olives out of those fancy-dancy bins at
the gourmet grocer, i also often buy them in bottles or cans and
fiddle them up myself. The smallish green olives i used to make the
smoked-spiced olives for the Persian feast came in a weird screw top
plastic barrel (held about 1-1/2  or 2 quarts of olives) from Greece.
I also made another batch from canned smallish green olives from
Morocco (again, around same quantity). (in both cases they were sold
by weight, but i don't remember that, just the size of the containers)

We grow olives here in California. There are both nasty nasty rubbery
tasteless ones, and olives to rival those from elsewhere - just gotta
know which brands to avoid - i don't know what you have where you
are, but the generic supermarket olives tend to be uniformly awful
(mushy, rubbery, tasteless - i think one icky California brand is
"Mission").

I also get - not period, for personal use only - green olives stuffed
with pickled garlic cloves and jalapeno peppers and green olives
stuffed with (yum-yum) anchovies - from California.

On the other hand, just plain really good olives are, well, really
good. I prefer greens to blacks, even to the North African and Greek
ones.

Anahita, olive-eatah