[Sca-cooks] Curing olives

[Galefridus Peregrinus]

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