[Sca-cooks] Curing olives

Jim and Andi Houston jimandandi at cox.net
Fri Nov 23 06:11:21 PST 2012


Galefridus,

I just found out that there is an olive grove about 45 minutes south of me
near Ocala, FL. I'm hoping to buy some olives and try my hand at curing them
this fall! Thank you for the inspiration.

Madhavi

-----Original Message-----
From: sca-cooks-bounces at lists.ansteorra.org
[mailto:sca-cooks-bounces at lists.ansteorra.org] On Behalf Of Galefridus
Peregrinus
Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2012 11:19 PM
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Curing olives

Seems to be my night to report on food and cooking projects --

Also several weeks ago, I posted that I had five batches of green olives in
the process of curing. These cures have now been running for about seven
weeks, so here's a summary of the recipes and where they now stand.

1. Abu al-Khayr, 11th century Seville. Olives in brine. Bruise, then scald
the olives and immerse in brine. Add leaves of bay, fennel, and citron; a
few days later, add a bundle of thyme and a bit more salt.

Pretty much fully cured. Notwithstanding the saturated brine solution, a
greenish mold managed to grow on the surface. Nice herbal flavors, but very
salty. Will try diluting the brine to see whether I can reduce the
saltiness.

2. Abu al-Khayr, 11th century Seville. "A third method." Uses white (very
pale green) olives. Sprinkle with salt and oil, then add leaves of mint,
thyme, coriander, fennel, citron and bay. Immerse in oxymel syrup; pack air
space with leaves of fennel and sumac, then seal.

I've only just packed these olives in the syrup -- I wanted to wait until
they were pretty much fully cured before taking this step. I had intended to
find some sumac leaves locally, but hurricane Sandy intervened, so I just
used fennel leaves. In any case, prior to the oxymel syrup step, the olives
were nicely cured -- not too salty, very pleasant flavor. I'll have to wait
a bit to see what the syrup does to the flavor.

3. Ibn Razin, 13th century al-Andalus. Layer olives with bundles of thyme
and slices of lime, add water and salt. As with the other brine cure, a
greenish mold grew on the surface.

This one is proving to be the slowest cure -- many of the olives have barely
changed and are still quite bitter. Those that have cured have a pleasant
citrusy flavor from the lime slices.

4. Al-Warraq, 10th century Baghdad. Prefers black olives, but green olives
are OK. Mix sprigs of thyme and salt with the olives. After olives are
cured, add olive oil to cover.

This is the simplest cure. I added the olive oil a bit too early and found
that it was blocking the cure (no air exposure), so I've been stirring the
olives daily to bring still green and uncured layers up to the top. Good
flavor, but still a little undeveloped.

5. Geoponika. 10th century Byzantine. Cut the olives, lightly salt. After
salt has dissolved, transfer olives to a fresh vessel and add honey, citron
leaf, seeds of fennel, caraway, and celery, plus dill.

In my opinion, the most interesting cure. Who but the Greeks would have
thought of curing olives with honey? I couldn't tell whether the dill was
supposed to be the seed or the leaf, and went with the leaf. The honey
started out very thick, but thinned out after a few day because it was
drawing water from the cuts in the olives. It's also been fermenting a bit
-- the olives currently have a slightly winey smell. And the flavor
combination is a total surprise -- the mix of sweet and olive flavors really
works.

Right now I have a LOT of olives and will probably be giving some away -- no
way my wife and can eat all of them. But it's been a successful experiment
so far. And I'd like to know whether any other SCAdians are fooling around
with ancient and medieval olive cures.

-- Galefridus
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