Sliced Black Olives - An Ingredient For Gourmet Recipes
Sliced black olives
Sliced black olives are a fantastic ingredient to keep on hand for gourmet recipes. Oftentimes, people are not fond of black olives because they can have a bitter taste. With a bit of preparation, you can mellow the bitter taste of the olives, yielding an attractive and flavor-enhancing addition to your gourmet recipe.
Gourmet Recipe Uses For Sliced Black Olives
Using sliced black olives in your recipes not only improves the appearance but also adds to the flavor. A few recommended uses are:
For appetizers, along with cheese
As a topping for Focaccia bread
As a pizza topping
Preparing Sliced Black Olives For Recipes
Before using sliced black olives in a recipe, a mellowing process is recommended to reduce bitterness and provide the best flavor. The most convenient form of black olives is canned and sliced. The black olives are packed with color and flavor-preserving brine. Reducing the bitterness and providing an overall mellowing of the black olives makes any gourmet use more appealing to a broader range of palettes. This process does not remove the bitterness, but mellows it, retaining some of the bitterness for which olives are known.
The best method for removing bitterness from black olives is a rinse followed by an overnight acidic soak. The process below is for up to 4 oz of sliced canned olives. The mellowing steps are as follows:
Using a strainer, rinse the sliced olives with cool running water.
Fill a 1-quart culinary container with 1-1/2 cups of cool water and 2 tsp white wine vinegar.
Add the rinsed sliced black olives to the container with the water and white wine vinegar mixture.
With the lid on securely, lightly agitate the container.
Store the container with the sliced olives in the water and vinegar mixture in the refrigerator for 12-18 hours.
After the refrigeration time, agitate the container again, and the water should have some discoloration.
Using a strainer, rinse the black olive slices with cool water again.
Pat the sliced olives dry on clean paper towels.
Sliced black olives mellowing in water and white wine vinegar
Popular Recipe Uses For Sliced Black Olives
Black olives can be easily incorporated into appetizers. Pairing cheese with black olives makes for a great starter. For baked or broiled bread-based appetizers with cheese, the appearance of black olive slices provides a nice visual contrast. Many types of cheeses and black olives are a well-matched pair. Cheeses that pair well, such as fontina and mozzarella, are an excellent flavor match. For simple appetizers, consider baguette slices topped with cheese and a few black olives, then broiled.
The Focaccia Bianca, or "white" Focaccia, is made without tomatoes. Topping with sliced black olives adds to the appearance with a nice contrast against the lighter-colored Focaccia.
Topping a pizza with mozzarella cheese and sliced black olives, along with pepperoni or Italian sausage, is a classic combination. About 1 oz of sliced olives is sufficient as a topping for a 12-inch pizza.
Some History About Olives
Where did the olives we have today come from?
The appeal and appreciation of this unique fruit, with its varied varieties with colors from light green to dark black and a slightly bitter taste, is as ancient as the olive itself. This humble fruit is unparalleled in history in its longevity of value and usefulness.
The olive tree has been appreciated for millennia. Archaeological evidence suggests that the cultivation of olive trees began around 6000 BC. Well-suited to the arid regions around the Mediterranean Sea, olive trees are highly resilient to the dry environment of the Mediterranean lands. Olive cultivation flourished in what the Bible calls the Promised Land, an appropriate name for these fertile and fruitful lands. History tells us that the Minoans in Crete (3000 BC) not only cultivated but also commercialized this rich resource, followed by the Mycenaeans (1600 BC), who built extensive oil storage facilities. These little fruits were of such value that they were given as royal gifts.
Additionally, the sea-faring Phoenician traders sent olives and their oil on their famous ships, beginning an ever-widening geographical spread of this humble fruit into Northern Africa and into Egypt. As time marched on, the Greek and Roman civilizations prized the olive and its oil as a vital commodity, building specialized ships for trade and finding uses beyond just food; Rome famously used olive leaves as ornamentation for its victorious athletes.
Eventually, the vast Roman Empire carried olive products to its outposts in France and Spain. Centuries later, a Franciscan monk would bring olive trees with him to the New World, specifically to San Diego. The first olive seeds in California took root, and California now produces 80% of the world's olive oil and 20% of table olives.
This enduring trade is due to the many and varied uses of the olive tree, past and present. From earliest times, the oil contained in its fruit has been used for cooking, lighting lamps, cosmetics, perfumes, and anointing oils used in religious ceremonies. Its wood has been used for fuel and furniture - the Bible references the Israelites as using olive wood to build their booths for the Feast of Booths. Its flowers and leaves can be used in tea and as decorative elements for celebrations. And of course, the fruit itself can be eaten and used in cooking.
