What nonna never told you

I am a firm believer in fate. I hadn’t read, let alone reviewed the book for Monday’s deadline for the local paper. Seeing a new cover sparkling at me from the cookbook section with proscuttio and other yummy things on the cover, I grabbed one to take home, thinking it would be easier than reading another 200 pages of a novel.

What a wonderful surprise! How come I hadn’t seen this book before? It had first been published in 2006 and 16,000 copies later it is in its fifth incarnation. Being self published, in another state, we had never heard of it until a customer asked us to find her one. Postage being expensive, we ordered a few extra.

I wish I had discovered this book earlier in the year when we had an abundance of summer vegetables and olives.  Stepping into the pages of Pietro Demaio’s book is like being invited by a neighbour for a hearty lunch accompanied by good red wine and conversation.  In the 60’s Pietro began collecting traditional recipes from his family and friends, and still does, each edition larger than the first as he incorporates recipes and food stories sent to him by readers.

 Drying, salting, bottling, pickling, preserving in oil are some of the method preserving that also includes  sections on cheese and salami making, preserving fish, and making wines and liqueurs. There are eighteen different ways to preserve olives, how to make bread and build the oven to bake it in. The clearly laid out recipes are interspersed with hilarious stories and traditions, including a section on avoiding the evil eye!

 My enthusiasm for the book must have been obvious, we sold all copies and had orders for two more within 24 hours of the review being published – the most successful review ever! 

It felt like you should have been given a jar of something to take home with you when you reach the end of the book...that didn’t happen and unfortunately  I have to wait for the next lot to arrive before I can have a copy to take home so I can dive into a preserving frenzy.

You won’t have to.

Here’s the link to his site:

http://preservingtheitalianway.com.au/my_weblog/home.html

Happy preserving, I have another review to write!

Cold weather dipping

The promised birthday fondue happened this week, with a minimum of traditional style fondue eating guests in attendance. The quandary I had was what to serve as appetisers and desserts. My old fondue book, published in 1970 (in Australia) recommends cherries ‘a la kirsch,’ and various other fruits in combination with other types of alcohol. No mention of appetisers but it is recommended that you drink a glass of kirsch halfway through the meal. Only in the 70’s could you get away with thinking that bread cheese and alcohol was a balanced meal! Knowing Amita would heartily endorse this philosophy, I quickly hid the cookbook.

Poking around in the pantry, I pondered that as fondue was a cold weather meal, it would make sense to pair it with seasonal produce. Pecans, olives and Granny Smith apples are abundant at the moment. Warming food seemed to be the order of the day so I started with olives baked in red wine - a recipe I posted here this time last year. With the pecans I tried a recipe I had been told about by my friend Tova. It was one of those that had been enjoyed by her family for years. It didn’t really have quantities or times but sounded easy.

Here is what I did:

Roasted pecans in their shells

Pecans in shells

Sea salt

In a mortar and pestle or with a rolling pin, gently crack a split in the shell of each nut while preheating the oven to 180C.

Dissolve about 2 tsp of sea salt in a litre of warm water. You need enough brine to cover the nuts.

Soak the nuts, in their shells, in the brine for 5-10 minutes.

Drain.

Place the nuts on a baking tray.

Bake until the nuts have begun to toast, they will give off a nice toasty smell. Shake them once or twice during cooking.

Serve warm and let people shell their own.

These are really delicious as the nuts are soft, sweet and warm. Next time I would add a little more salt but you could have some on the side for serving.

For dessert, I stuffed some of the apples with some more pecans, processed with butter, home dried figs and brown sugar with cinnamon, baked and served with double cream for those too weak to refuse it!

It was a lovely meal and quick to prepare, the longest job was washing the greens for my salad which I had to make to reassure myself that everyone had eaten wisely as well as generously. I am happy to report there were no fondue fork injuries suffered!

Eat well,

nirala

Lessons on the river and in the garden

It's hot, its been hot for quite a few days in a row now. The gum trees, and some of the deciduous trees around us have responded by dropping copious amounts of leaves that soon build to a fire hazard if I don't rake them every couple of days. The garden is suffering, what hasn't been scorched has been attacked by mildew and fungus.

I went with some trepidation to look at the fig and the olive tree who grow near the back fence and receive little or no water all summer. They were thriving - it was near perfect conditions for them! Big juicy figs that you can barely get your hand around and branches beginning to bend with the first pickable crop of Kalamatas.

They were planted six, maybe seven years ago but were always overshadowed by the neighbours Marri trees. Sadly, last winter they cut down all the trees on their block, changing the conditions and the views for us. Azaleas and hydrangeas, clivias and violets all shrivelled in the bright and exposed conditions but the two slow and sickly trees began to pick up.

I had been planning to write about drying figs today but as the story of the trees emerged my mind began to think about the effects of change. Two days ago I stood on a barge and watched Nerys' ashes float downstream accompanied by a flotilla of roses. I stood with Nerys' eldest daughter, she had lost her Ma and I had lost my best friend and mentor. Everyone there was missing a huge part of what made them who they were.
It's always hard to grow up. How much harder is it when we lose our wise elders and have no magic touchstone when we need direction? We become the older generation so shockingly suddenly that we feel totally unprepared for the job. What we need to treasure is those facets of them that we have admired and take them for our own. We can call on the wisdom we know they would have applied to life and help each other remember.

Still, thanks to the neighbour who let the light in, the figs are ripe. Thanks to Nerys and my mother, and all the wise women in my life, I know how to pick and preserve them and how to cook with them too. I know about sticky fig sap and itchy fig leaves and what happens when you eat too many. This I can pass on to my grand daughter and hopefully I can learn to become her wise elder as we grow up together.


nirala

Green Ones and Other Stuff !

Okay, this is my take on pickling olives. . .

We have just opened the last of the olives from 2007. I don’t use vinegar at all but stop the process at the brining stage and store them like that. I can’t be bothered with floating eggs and other witchery but use a 10% solution of brine in boiled and cooled rainwater. I do the whole process in the jars in which I will store them so the chance of bruising is less. I usually get 1 kg jars, fill them to the brim and screw the lid down between rinsings. I have never kept my olives in the dark, that’s why they are always a little pale coloured.

When I come to use the olives I rinse them and discard any that are bruised or feel a little slimy. Often a raft of slime will develop beneath the oil ( it’s a bit like “Mother of vinegar” ) and that is rinsed away too. I then either put them in fresh brine or marinade them in olive oil with herbs and garlic, always only making a small jar at a time and storing them in the refrigerator.

I know that there are issues around the growth of bacteria in olives, but the oil on top is designed to keep out air which seems to prevent anything too nasty from happening. I haven’t killed anyone yet. The best thing to do is throw anything away that seems at all suspicious, smells odd or fizzes when you take the lid off. Throw these in the compost and every worm for miles will come visiting.

You need to separate green olives from black

The Green Ones…

Nerys floats eggs and I stir up messes…we make a good working team, I am always ready to do the dirty jobs!

Wood Ash Method

Commercial olives are processed really quickly using a 3% solution of caustic soda. They keep their lovely colours and crunch. The CWA Cookbook will show you how to do this if you are interested in playing with dangerous substances, then eating them. Wood ash also creates lye in a much more gentle form. Green olives can be processed by rinsing alone but they do take a lot longer than the black ones and we don’t all have water to waste (rinse your olives onto plants, they love it.)

Sieve your ash on a day with out wind to remove lumps then mix to a runny paste with water and mix in your olives. Wear gloves if you have sensitive hands. I don’t and stir it with bare hands to help remove ground-in garden grime. Stir very gently each day, don’t use a spoon or you will bruise the olives.

When they have changed from bright green to khaki, they are ready to rinse and brine. These olives don’t keep as long as the rinsed ones, so don’t leave them more than two months. They may still look good but turn to mush when you touch them… definitely NOT for eating!

Salt Curing

In the drier Mediterranean areas where water is scarce, olives are preserved by salting.
I first came across this method in a book about Sufi masters and just had to try it.

This is lazy man’s olive preserving. Simply mix your olives with an equal weight of cooking salt and place half fill an old pillow case or flour bag. Tie the opening shut and hang in the shade. The olives will gradually become tiny, wrinkled little prunes. You simply reconstitute them in warm water. They have a delicious smokey taste. Be warned, this process can take a few months so if you have wet winters after harvest, you need to hang them in doors so they don’t absorb moisture from the air. Put a container beneath them in case they drip.

I did a variation of this last year by storing my already soaked and rinsed olives in a 50% salt and lemon juice solution. They have become wrinkled and taste too salty to eat with out rinsing but have a delicious flavour.

Preserving Your Black Treasures

Ready for eating

I pickled eggplant today and put a recipe and photo on our other blog http://gypsysoul-au.blogspot.com/ and today it's the turn of olives that are coming up to Kalbarri from Perth as I write.

My first childhood memory of olives was of a jar that lived for months in the refrigerator gradually growing a white scummy film over the top of the salty liquid inside it. The olives in the jar were a browny-green and filled with a rather unpleasantly slimy and to me, mysterious red vegetable matter. The jar and its contents were eventually thrown out and replaced at Christmas or whenever there seemed to be an occasion where a little sophistication was called for. Olive oil was also an enigma to me—the robust, earthy flavour seemingly at odds with rather bland British cooking.

A few years later I became friendly with an Italian restaurateur and his team of Spanish and Italian chefs and waiters. I also met Signor Bertolli who introduced me to Chianti--without which no meal of Spaghetti Bolognese is complete. These Mediterranean men undertook my education with enthusiasm—introducing me to all the wondrous varieties of prepared olives and to the subtleties of the oil from the dark, heavily perfumed and flavoured virgin oil to the light, golden oil that carries the memory of the warm sun.

PRESERVING OLIVES
Olives straight off the tree are hard and bitter. Curing is what removes the bitterness. Olives can be preserved green or black. A black olive is a ripe olive. Take care not to bruise the olives while collecting them or they will spoil.
There are many ways to preserve olives but the following are two that I have tried successfully.

Method One

Soaking the olives
1. Make two cuts in each olive running from top to bottom and equidistant or prick them with a fork---both work well and allow the water to penetrate the fruit and help to release the bitter juices.
2. Fill your containers (glass, plastic, earthenware or steel not aluminium as it will react) ¾ full with olives and fill to the top with water. Use something to ensure that the olives stay submerged, this can be a plate, a plastic bag containing water or anything else you may devise.
3. Cover the containers to exclude light and leave them in a very obvious place in the kitchen, as it’s important that the water be changed daily. If the weather is very hot you can add a little salt to the water after the first week to help to avoid bacterial spoilage.
4. The above procedure will need to be done for anything up to two weeks but after 8-10 days begin to test the olives by biting gently to test for bitterness and when it feels right then you can proceed to the next stage.

Brining the Olives
When you have determined that the olives are ready you will need to sterilise some large glass jars and prepare the brine.
1. About 1 cup (250g) of cooking salt to 8 cups (2 litres) of water is probably about right but the other way of determining the salinity is to half fill a bucket with water (or judge how much you will need) and place an egg in the water. Begin to add salt a cup at a time. Stirring to dissolve. When enough salt has been added the egg will pop to the top and float. Make sure that the salt is thoroughly dissolved before adding the drained and rinsed olives.
2. Three-quarter fill the jars with olives, pour in brine to 2cm above the olives and finish with 2cm olive oil to exclude air.
3. Cover with well fitting lids and put the jars in a cool dark place. The longer the olives stay in the brine (6 months or more) the better they will be but you can move to the next stage after 8 weeks if you like.

Final Stage
1. Rinse the olives well, put back into the jars filling them only ¾ full.
Make a mixture of ¼ cup coarse salt, 4 cups water and 4 cups of malt vinegar (you will obviously need to adjust these amounts depending on the quantity of olives you are preparing).
2. Add a few crushed cloves of garlic if liked and pour the liquid over the olives.
3. Finish by topping up with olive oil, fastening down with tight fitting lids and leaving in a cool dark place where they will keep for about 12 months but may be used when you can’t bear to wait any longer!

Method Two
This uses less water as the olives aren’t rinsed each day.
1. Make cuts in each olive running from top to bottom and equidistant or bruise them gently with a rolling pin or prick them with a fork---all work well and allow the water to penetrate the fruit and help to release the bitter juices.
2. Place fruit in a big glass jar and cover with three cups brine solution made of ½ cup of cooking salt to 4 cups of water.
3. Pour a light film of cooking oil over the surface of the brine. Cover with a close fitting lid. Store in cool dark place for 2- 3 months testing occasionally for bitterness and when it tastes right then you can proceed to the next stage. Rinse the olives well, put back into the jars filling them only ¾ full.
4. Make a less salty mixture of ¼ cup coarse salt, 4 cups water and 4 cups of malt vinegar (you will obviously need to adjust these amounts depending on the quantity of olives you are preparing).
5. Add a few crushed cloves of garlic if liked and pour the liquid over the olives.
6. Finish by topping up with olive oil, fastening down with tight fitting lids and leaving in a cool dark place where they will keep for about 12 months.
7. If they are too salty for your taste take just as many as you will eat in a couple of weeks, drain off the brine and fill the jar with cold water. Refrigerate for 24 hours. If after this time they are still too salty fill the bottles with hot water and refrigerate again for 24 hours.

Now for the Yummy bit
Once the saltiness is to your taste you can use a marinade to add extra flavour. The marinated olives are ready for use after a few days and are good for up to a month.

Lemon and Thyme Marinated Black Olives
Use a vegetable peeler to remove thin strips of just the yellow part or zest of the lemon peel. The flavour of this appetiser improves over a couple of days so don't be tempted to rush the marinating time.
Orange peel may be substituted for lemon peel if liked.

500g brine-cured black olives
4 pieces [each 1 x 4cm] lemon zest, cut into long thin strips
6x1cm sprigs fresh thyme
¼ tsp ground coriander seed
2 cloves garlic, bruised or thinly sliced, not crushed
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/4 cup extra light olive oil
In a container with a tight fitting lid combine the olives, lemon zest, thyme, garlic, pepper and olive oil. Cover tightly and shake container vigorously. Marinate in the refrigerator at least 2 days, stirring contents occasionally, before serving. Serve at room temperature.

The following photos are of green olives being soaked in wood ash water (lye) to leach out the bitterness. Nirala is very adventurous in her food preparation!

I haven't ever preserved green olives so I might leave it to her to add another entry on preservation of green olives.

Green olives in wood ash solution. On the right are the same olives after settling...the remnants of the sieved ash are in the strainer.