Srbrenka from Living Museum of the West gave me this recipe for olives. It’s a very simple, quick method of preparing black olives. The result are olives that taste sweet!
Ingredients
Fresh black olives either picked straight from the tree or bought at market.
Sea salt
You’ll need these implements/tools
a calico, muslin or cotton bag big enough to hold your olives in a container of water
a large 9 litre cooking pot
enough containers with lids, such as icecream containers, to hold all your olives. You can also use ziplock plastic bags that are suitable for use in the freezer.
Recipe
Put your fresh black olives into your cotton bag. Close off the top of the bag so that the olives can’t come out of it; either tie a knot or use some string.
Fill your cooking pot with water and boil it. You’ll be putting the black olives in once the water is boiled so don’t fill the bucket to the top.
Once the water is boiled, remove it from the heat. Place your bag of olives into the pot, and leave for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, take the bag of olives out of the pot. Leave the water in the pot, and let it cool down to room temperature. Once the water has cooled, place the bag of olives back into the pot and leave for 24 hours.
After the 24 hours, take the bag of olives out of the pot, take the olives out of the bag and drain them.
Once well drained, place enough olives into each container, give it a light sprinkle of sea salt and thoroughly mix through. The amount of salt you use is personal taste. I use maybe 1 teaspoon of salt for an icecream container.
Then place the container of olives in the freezer. And that’s it! The olives can be used after they’ve been in the freezer for 2 days. It’s just a simple matter of thawing them a couple of hours before you use them.