Olives

[Alice Abbott]

I have just been given a bucket of fresh-picked ripe olives. They are small, bright green, a little bit pointy and, according to the almost incromprehensible old Frenchman who gave them to me, called Lucs.

I love olives and know I have to prick these and steep them in salted water for a while but I have no real idea. I wouldn't like to ruin/waste them so does anyone have a clue about the strain I have and the best way to deal with them?

I don't think he actually preserves them green and these are just a few windfalls (very windy here today) he gathered up so that he could swap them for some of the many green tomatoes I still have on the vine. I planted 20 plants and they all came up and flourished so I have far more than we could ever put away to ripen/turn into chutney etc. I think he might actually use the olives for oil or bottle them when they are black so any windfalls now aren't much use to him. He and a few of his friends produce a little walnut oil so I suppose doing the same with the olives once they are ripe would be more or less the same.

He's a dear old soul who seems to be the epitomy of self-sufficiency, it's a pity I can't really chat to him more. He did manage to show me how to pickle walnuts, braid garlic and shallots and made me a pan for chestnuts out of an old tin frying pan though, so I think he has adopted us. He taught Pia and Luca how the old wooden sabots used to be made during the war years so I imagine he's at least 80 to 85, perhaps more.

[Millymollymandy]

Hi Alice, sorry I can't help with the olive question but I'm surprised that where you are you've got olive trees around - or is it just that your neighbour has a few? Do they actually grow big enough where you are? Thought they really only grew right down in the south of France!

[Alice Abbott]

I too thought they were mainly found in the "Mediterranean basin" where they might be more or less guaranteed mild winters. I do remember Mack's Mom telling me about a time when she was a child growing up in Italy when there was a severe winter. Some very young olive trees her family had just planted died but most of the old ones survived without any problem at all so I imagine they are pretty hardy overall.

Our neighbor has them in a courtyard which is almost completely walled, right outside his house. I was initially surprised to see them but these are very old trees and have obviously been around for many years. On the other hand I've seen lots of quite large olive trees in the garden centres too, obviously intended for planting out in an orchard. We looked at one but it was REALLY expensive and I remember the label said something about a mature tree withstanding a frost of around -10 degrees. So perhaps it isn't unusual. Just as a comparison, it's still mainly Tshirt weather here in the Charente Maritime during the day (we just lit the fire a few minutes ago as the evenings are chilly).

[Millymollymandy]

Oh, it's been well and truly winter here for the last week or so - just turning back to more autumny temps now, with rain! T-shirts all put away for the winter.

Walled gardens do help I think - I can spot a banana tree in the corner of a neighbour's walled orchard - this is a totally overgrown, he doesn't do anything to it space, so he never protects the banana like I see them do in parks and on the TV yet it has survived the last few harsh winters!

Our garden centres have olive trees too. Like all semi tender/tender/tropical plants I think they are intended for keeping in pots on terraces and I'm sure they are quite happy for you to buy one at a ridiculous price, let it die then go back and buy another....

[123sologne]

I never ever given any thought to the strength of the olive trees against cold weather, but on the hills where they grow best in the South of France, they do get some cold weather too, so it makes sense that they should survive a bit of archness. In Brittany, maybe they would survive on the coast as it does not get that cold, just very wet and windy, no? In Sologne where I come from, it would simply be impossible, so far from the sea, the winters are very cold and minus 20 is a regular even if not every winter and only for a few days, normally... I do not know either how you would deal with your green olives, but there must be some sites telling us how; even in Italian or Spanish, just let Google do the translations. Even if it won't be perfect, that should give you an idea of what to do. I love olives too and can easily eat a bit pot in front of the TV if left to it I hope you succeed in your task

[oldjerry]

I've got a notion that olives NEED a period of cold nights in order to fruit,or I may be hallucinating again.Bananas,on the other hand(and here I'm wide awake as the nusury I worked at produced them by the thousand to sell at the Eden project) survive fairly well outside in the far SW of the UK,only needing protection in the worst winter.Never seen one fruit though.

[Millymollymandy]

I think the problems with a lot of plants like citrus and olives is that they cannot withstand winter wet which is the problem in a lot of places in winter! They can all withstand a certain period of frost and even in the south of France right on the coast it can be bitterly cold in winter - I once spent a Xmas in St Tropez (NOT glamourous in winter!) and it was bloody freezing!

I live in a very cold bit of NE Brittany, not the far west coastal area which has a temperate climate. Unfortunately I live in frosty hollow as I've discovered this last week driving around, and seeing everyone else's annuals/dahlias/ivy leaf geraniums still in full flower whilst ours are dead as dodos. And my mature mimosa tree has been frosted the last two winters and is now a shadow of its former self whereas in February/March they are flowering all over the place, just not chez moi!

So the banana surviving here is quite a freak of nature (or proof that a walled garden makes a difference.... )

[Alice Abbott]

In desperation, and because I knew Bertrand would be back for his bucket today, I Skyped my mother in law last night for ideas. She says they are Lucques, originally from Tuscany and that they are really beautiful to eat. I did some surfing and found various bits of information, then cobbled a couple of recipes together. The kids spent hours last night splitting skins and this morning I divided the olives into two bowls and did my best to start off the process of curing them, one lot will be brine cured and the other will be lye cured (apparently better for this type of olive).

For the first bowl I am just going to soak them in water until the bitterness is gone, then I'll soak them in brine for a few months, then bottle them. The second bowl will be sorted this afternoon, I'm just a bit wary of starting on them! I went to the local farmer cooperative this morning for lye. I eventually gave up on searching the shelves and asked the old man behind the counter. I didn't know the word for lye but he finally understood what I wanted when I described the "Lucs". So he shook his head for a minute with that purse-lipped "the woman's mad" sort of look then disappeared out back, coming back with a little box, slapped it on the counter and charged me 89c. On checking the label I find it's 100% sodium hydroxide, ie old fashioned drain cleaner! I'll report back later, I need to read the recipe REALLY carefully.

As I typed that last but Bertrand DID arrive for his bucket, picked up the box of lye, said "oui, c'est bon", dumped a lovely little punnet of fresh-picked field mushrooms on the table and sidled out. A man of few words...

[Millymollymandy]

Good luck Alice! I'd go for the brining myself. I've never even thought about how you turn an olive off a tree into something that is edible so please let us know how it goes.

[DeneciePie]

Well, I turned here in hopes one of you would know how to cure olives. My little tree doesn't produce many so I have pierced them with a blunt fork and popped them into brine in a quart jar. My internet info says to change brine weekly. We'll see. We have a lot of olive trees in the neighborhood and If I can figure it out I recon I can avoid buying olives. Glad for any advice. Really curious how you do with the lye bath ones, as I am told that will produce best results, but it hardly seems worthwhile for 2.5 cups of fruit!

TIA

DeneciePie

[contadina]

Olives can withstand up to eight continual days of frost, after that they begin to really suffer. People near us still talk about a big freeze over 20 years ago which caused many trees to die. The same period applies to trees in scorching (45 degrees+) temperatures, so it's probably not an exact science, but you get the picture, they can survive in extreme temperatures but not for too long.

I think your mum is right about the olives, they are called Oliverolle in Italian and the favoured way of curing them is using caustic soda. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucques

I recently blogged about a few olive curing methods http://contadina.wordpress.com/2010/11/ ... g-methods/ you just need to find out from your neighbours which olives are best cured green and which are best black.

[Alice Abbott]

These are two of the jars of olives I cured using lye. I must admit I was very wary (caustic soda would not be a food source of choice) but they have turned out beautifully - nutty, slightly fatty and luscious. We have 16 jars altogether plus half a bucket still being brine-cured.

I crave a large slab of cheese to go with them but will have to wait until we see how things work out with bills now we have to contend with electricity for the first time. We now have the French equivalent of Child Benefit. Very welcome it is too as the back-dated payment paid our two annual "council tax" type bills and the monthly amounts should cover power and water in future now we have such luxuries. I am so into this self-suffieciency thing now that I begrudge dipping into savings for anything. Basically if we can't grow it, make it, forage it, swap it or trade it we tend to do without these days. So it's home-made cottage cheese with the olives for the time being!

[frozenthunderbolt]

The look luscious alice!

[Millymollymandy]

Well done Alice!

[Green Aura]

They look fabulous.

home-made cottage cheese with the olives for the time being!

Have a go at making a hard cheese - I've only tried it once but it was easily done and turned out pretty well.

The one I tried was No. 4 on here

http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Fankhauser/Ch ... course.htm