Produce & Preserving | Live For Pizza

September 3, 2013

How To Dry Salt Cure Olives

I love having lots of homemade olives around but I have to confess that sometimes I’m a bit slack with changing pickling liquid every day. Luckily there’s a method that suits my temperament very well – just chuck the olives and dry salt into a bucket and stir once a week. You don’t have to slit each olive or change the water or anything like that and best of all I think these are my favourite tasting olives too – they are kind of leathery and wrinkly, surprisingly they don’t actually taste all that salty though! Most of the salt draws liquid out of the olives and then runs away. Theres a really noticeable flavour of olive oil that I don’t get from brined olives. The method & equipment I’m using for this years batch is below. I bought 2 large plastic buckets with lids, and drilled holes in the bottom of one. The olives and salt go in the bucket with holes, which sits inside the other bucket to catch the juice. In previous years I’ve used a colander, anything that holds the olives and lets a bit of liquid drain out is fine.

Dry Salt Cured Olives – The method

1. Use bucket (or a large colander, large basket etc) with holes in the bottom so liquid can drain out. I sat a clean tea in the bottom of the olive bucket to stop too much salt falling out. Set the bucket over another bucket or tub to catch the juice.

2. Layer olives with salt in the bucket – about twice the weight of olives to salt. A 20 liter bucket holds up to 10kg olives with 5kg salt. Cover all of the top with a layer of salt.

3. Stir the olives around once a week so that they all contact salt evenly – it’s easiest to empty the outer tub of liquid, tip the olives into it then back into the strainer, and finally add a fresh layer of salt on top.

4. After a few weeks, start tasting. Continue the cure until bitterness is gone. This might take from 4-6 weeks, depending on the olives. When they are ready, remove olives from salt – I shook them through a big colander. Then rinse off remaining salt and let them dry.

The cured olives can be stored in a 3% salt brine, or brine+vinegar but I like them best just kept in olive oil in jars or vacuum sealed bags. This year I mixed up chilli, garlic powder, fennel seeds and paprika to marinate the olives that were then vac-packed in serve-sized bags. They keep pretty well but I’ve seen recommendations to freeze them when vac packed to keep them fresh for even longer.

July 10, 2013December 10, 2019

It’s Olive Season!

I spent a day recently with a few eager family members picking olives for oil, and a few for eating. This might sound a little sadistic but I really like picking olives. It’s a much easier job than picking grapes and you end up with nice soft skin at the end of the day because of all the oil that rubs off. It was a good day, sunny bar a few heavy showers that had us sheltering in the car. Peter, the farmer who sold us the olives, had a refreshing outlook on life. He said he does what he does because he loves it – the growing, picking, pruning, and of course fishing on the beach that is visible from his olive grove. “You don’t need money to be happy.” Not a new sentiment maybe but Its rare to hear someone say it and so obviously mean it.

We ended up with 500kg of olives – looking forwards to getting oil back from the press this week! I posted about the general method for picking olives last time and nothing new to report – a few nice big bits of shade cloth spread out under trees to catch the olives, and little rakes to strip the branches. The rakes are sold by Italian stores like Gaganis Bros and Constante Imports in Adelaide and Melbourne respectively if you’re looking (I know Constante ship interstate, not sure about Gaganis).

Last time I cured some olives for eating, the dry salt cured were the most delicious so I’ve made a much larger batch this year – Now that they are ready to eat, I’ve written up the whole method here.

May 27, 2013May 27, 2013

Quince Paste – an easy(ish) recipe

With their rich perfume and deep red colour when cooked, quinces are one of my favourite fruit. They are fantastic simply stewed and served with thick cream, or in a crumble or pie, but the bulk of the roadside quinces we pick every autumn go to making quince paste. Quince paste (Membrillo in Spain or Cotagnata in Italy) is a ruby red slab of stewed, pureed and dried out quinces that is absolute heaven paired with any cheese with attitude – like parmesan, gorgonzola or goat cheese. It costs an arm and a leg for just a little chunk in the shops so the few hours spent simmering and stirring pay off quickly.

Quince paste sets primarily because of its high pectin content. Pectin forms a gel when cooked with sugar and acid (lemon juice here) and if you get it just right, the paste will set as soon as it cools. If it doesn’t set quite right, simply drying out the paste helps it become stiff enough to slice. Drying can be accomplished by leaving the paste in the oven on the lowest setting overnight, door open a crack, or leaving it anywhere warm like a car until dry enough.

Ingredients

8-10 medium quinces, peeled and cored. The apple peeler I described here works surprisingly well. Just a note – in On Food and Cooking, Harold McGee says the skin can be left on for more aroma. I haven’t tried this yet so proceed with caution as quince skin can be furry. I’d scrub it well at least.
Raw or white granulated sugar
Juice of 1.5 lemons

Method

Roughly dice the peeled and cored quinces. Add to a large saucepan with 2 cups water. Adding half the cores can help the paste set even better, but you have to either pick them out or ignore the odd grainy bit in the finished paste (not objectionable). Bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes.

This next step is a little fiddly but it helps get the sugar quantity just right so the pectin sets properly. Tip the cooked fruit into a colander set over a bowl to catch the juices. Weight the fruit alone and then weigh 3/4 of that weight in sugar. Add sugar, fruit and juices back to the saucepan. If you can’t be bothered with all that measuring, just add 4 cups of sugar and hope for the best.

Here’s where you need to get comfy – the mixture needs to be simmered over low-medium heat for 2-3 hours, stirred every few minutes. I settle in with a book in one hand and a spatula in the other. Scrape the bottom as you stir, and consider wearing a glove or mitt as the mixture can spit globs of molten fruit and sugar.

The lumps of fruit need to be pureed till they are smooth at some point but if you leave it as long as possible, the mixture doesn’t spit and stick quite so much. I remove any obvious cores and then puree after about an hour of simmering, with a stick blender, food processor or food mill.

The goal here is to reduce the mixture to a thick paste and get that lovely deep red colour. The colour comes with time more than anything, so if the paste is looking very thick but not yet the colour you want, add half a cup of water at a time and keep cooking. When the paste is quite thick and starting to stick together when stirred, add the lemon juice and keep cooking.

It’s ready when the mixture can stand up in peaks when stirred, and it might be pulling away from the sides of the pan when stirred. You can flick a drop onto a plate and see if it solidifies a little as it sets.

Line a baking tray with baking paper with a drop of oil rubbed over it and pour the mixture in. Use the back of a wet spoon to smooth down the top, cover and set aside to dry. A smaller pan will yield a thicker slab of paste obviously.

When completely cool, prod to see if it is solid enough to turn out. If not, dry as above. When solid enough, turn out onto a chopping board and cut into slabs. I cut different sizes for different occasions – little ones for a cheeky nibble and big ones for entertaining guests. The pieces keep best wrapped tightly in cling wrap, then bagged. They last for a long time – after 9-12 months you might find some of the sugar starting to go crunchy round the outside, but this doesn’t affect the flavour.

Heaven!

Variations

I sometimes add a star of star anise, or a stick of cinnamon for another layer of flavour. Recipes for Membrillo, the Spanish version, often add 1 scraped vanilla pod. Recipes for Cotagnata, THe Italian version, sometimes call for a few bay leaves.

Green Tomato And Apple Relish

Tomato season is over, just a few stragglers on the vines plus a few that will never ripen now. Yesterday I helped pull down the plants and trellis from my mums tomato patch to make room for something else. I came home with a big box of green/orange/red tomatoes for making delicious green tomato relish. Its great having a few jars of homemade chutney and relish around – they keep well in or out of the fridge because of the vinegar. A sandwich made with this relish on good bread with a nice sharp aged cheddar is heaven!

I based my recipe on Stephanie Alexander’s indispensable The Cooks Companion, but I added apples too since I have some nice ones to use. This is a spicy relish with lots of subtle flavours, but you can change the spices around as you like. Cumin is great in chutneys and relishes so often I use that too.