The Mighty Olive!

Lewisburg.

There are all manner of foods that, upon reflection, seem unlikely or even impossible candidates to make that leap from "thing out there in nature" to "tasty and delicious comestible".¹ Cassava - also known as manioc and yuca, and which provides us with tapioca - comes to mind, since it's chock full of delightful prussic acid, or hydrogen cyanide, and requires a combination soaking and heating processes to make it safe to eat. Or the cow, which in its ancient form, the aurochs², seems a little less dangerous to hunt than a rhinocerous, and only marginally more domesticable.

Or the olive. The humble olive, fruit of Olea europaea:



Oval-shaped, speckled green, and definitely on the so-bitter-this-isn't-food side of the fence. Karl, my olive-curing partner, and I each tasted just a little bit of fresh, unripe olive, which left a lingering bitterness at the back of the mouth for at least five or ten minutes. A whole green olive, I've heard, can have enough oleuropein to keep you stocked in mouth-tingling bitterness for several hours. Even after the bitterness went, the tingling sensation lingered at the back of the roof of the mouth, the very same cough-inducing tingle that you get from good, fresh olive oil.

Incidentally, that little bite of olive tasted a lot like raw dandelion greens, or any other wild, bitter green. Not bad, per se, but definitely something to be had in moderation, and not by itself. And not as fiercely bitter as the Tylopilus felleus mushrooms I found back in July, which all but screamed not to be eaten.³ The bitterness didn't come on at first, but swelled and then faded. Neither of us felt the need to go back for seconds.

Bitterness, in olives and pretty much all other plants, is a way of communicating the message not to eat. It's less common in fruit than in leaves, for example, because an appealingly tasty fruit is more likely to find a hungry animal to help disperse the seeds. For olives, however, bitter fruit works. Their preferred seed dispersers are birds, which swallow the olives whole; we mammals chew before swallowing, which can damage the seed, especially in a fruit with just one large, central seed.

Olea europaea seems to have a rather good story of evolutionary success, due in no small part to humans. Oleasters, the wild trees, supplied occasional food for neolithic hunter-gatherers 10,000 years ago; Alan Davidson describes fully ripe olives as "relatively free of bitterness", which I suppose was good enough. Evidence of olive mills and presses, as well as cultivation, dates back to before 3,000 BCE. It's quite likely that these oily little fruit - up to 30% of the flesh - were originally used for just their oil, for cooking and for lamp fuel. Even today, 90% of the world's crop is destined for olive oil.⁴

So they're useful trees. Long-lived, too. Harold McGee notes that they're hardy, drought-tolerant, and can live and bear for a thousand years. Though severe cold will kill them - severe frosts in Provence in 1870 and 1956 did massive damage - they can survive in Mediterranean-like climates wherever they're found. I used to sit and read under them in central Arizona, and can say that they're quite possibly the loveliest, most graceful trees I've ever seen.

In addition to being useful, they've also done serious ecological damage, following overplanting - some government-forced in the ancient Mediterranean - which put olives everywhere they'd grow. To the exclusion of plenty of other plants and animals, of course.

Back to the matter at hand. Olives can be harvested anywhere from green - unripe, hard, and bitter - to purplish-black - ripe, soft, and still bitter, but not so much. To alleviate the bitterness, there are several methods that may be used alone or in combination:

• Water-curing, which requires repeated soakings and rinsings to leach out the bitter oleuropein. Repeated, as in over several months.
  
  
• Brine-curing, which is a fermentation process in salt brine that can take from one to six months to complete.
  
  
• Dry-curing, which involves packing the olives in salt to cure, much like making preserved lemons, I suppose.
  
  
• Oil-curing, which can mean soaking in oil (presumably olive) for several months, or can mean dry-curing olives, followed by a rubbing with oil.
  
  
• Lye-curing, which uses a highly alkaline solution to extract the oleuropein.

We went with the brine option, in no small part because that's what I'd read about in a New York Times article last year. Perhaps I'll try dry-curing in salt someday, but brine seems the best and easiest.

Unlike lye-curing. The Romans would sometimes add wood ash to their olive brine to speed the process, though today's processors use straight-up lye. Ask your extension agent (if you live on California olive country) about home curing, and that's the method they'll give you. I don't know about you, but high-octane drain cleaner doesn't strike me as the best thing for food preparation. After all, the warning information includes fun little tips, like:

• "Avoid all contact with organic tissue (including human skin, eyes, mouth, and animals or pets). Keep away from clothing. Avoid all contact with aluminum."
  
  
• "...may cause chemical burns, permanent injury or scarring, and blindness."
  
  
• "...may react with various sugars to generate carbon monoxide..."

And my personal favorite:

• "Solvation of sodium hydroxide and/or potassium hydroxide is highly exothermic, and the resulting heat may cause heat burns or ignite flammables."

In other words: put this stuff in water, and you risk burning yourself and your possessions. Plus, it comes with a handy-dandy corrosive warning label that shows an image of freaky chemicals eating through flesh, just like the creature's blood in Alien eating through the spaceship floor. Though that's not entirely accurate, of course. It'd be more like the scene in Fight Club where "Jack" gets a chemical burn.

Karl and I, not eager to disfigure ourselves for the sake of a martini garnish, have elected to go with the brine option. In short, it went like this: fill glass jars of various sizes with olives and flavorings; add a bit of vinegar (optional); cover in a brine strong enough to float an egg; put a layer of oil to cover; seal (but not too tightly); wait. Six months, we think, which conveniently runs from equinox to equinox. The last step, of course, is to eat them, preferably at a party with lots of olives and martinis to go around.

I should mention that we've branched out in terms of flavorings, and Karl more so than me, in part because he used a number of much smaller jars.⁵ We used citrus - lemons, limes, oranges - as well as hot peppers of various sorts, garlic, celery, herbs, ginger, and two pantries' worth of spices. I remember using bay leaves, black pepper, coriander, mustard seed, cinnamon, and possibly others. Sumac, allspice, cardamom, star anise, and cloves were others that might be flavoring one or more jars, because I remember discussing them. All options were open, and we'll see how they pan out. Fortunately, we had the good sense to label everything for our future benefit.



Will it work out? I have no idea. The jars are busy fermenting - actually bubbling away - down in the fermentarium, so I'm excited. And in six months' time, if the fickle and mighty fermentarium spirits smile down⁶ upon us, there will be much rejoicing. And martini consumption.

* * * * *

¹Not even counting things - usually animals - that are especially poisonous or otherwise deadly, like fugu, the pufferfish, where extensive training is needed to separate the edible flesh (for sushi) from the highly toxic liver. Or poisonous snakes, such as rattlesnake and cobra, which hardly seem worth the effort.

²Though I wish we called it the "Ur-Ox", since that may be where "aurochs" comes from. A much more impressive name for a giant - supposedly almost six feet at the shoulder - and aggressive beast that gave Julius Caesar and his Roman legions pause.

³I didn't eat them, of course. Just the briefest touch of the tongue was worse than a bite of olive, and immediately. Yarf.

⁴Table olives and oil olives come from different varieties, though I imagine you could interchange them if you wanted to. The result might not be as ideal, but if you find yourself in sudden possession of an olive grove, you might as well put it to good use.

⁵He had a dozen 12 oz. or pint jars, and borrowed a few quarts from me. I have a total of four quarts; two half-gallons; and one gallon jar, all packed full.

⁶Or is it up? They live in the basement, after all, so the highest they could be isn't much above eye level.

Playing catch-up.

Lewisburg.

It's been quite some time since I've posted much of anything here, though it's not for lack of interesting doin's a-transpirin'. So, I'll just cram the last month's worthwhile mentions in here all at once.

The Mighty Mighty Garden
I haven't mentioned much about the garden all summer, though it's been an overall success. There were occasional failures - the kale and leeks didn't get enough water early on; raccoons got most of the sweet corn; the Romanesco stubbornly refuses to create a head - but much of it has exceeded expectations. We had dinner for eight last weekend in a desperate attempt to use up the vast amounts of Lao eggplant and other vegetables in a fiery green Thai curry, with lots of sliced multicolored tomatoes for a mouth-cooling side dish.

It's been, as I tell myself every so often, a learning year. I'm already ankle-deep in planning for next year, with garlic arriving for planting next week. The spinach and mache should be planted for overwintering soon, too, so we'll see how they take. There's been so much food already that we'll have a thoroughly stocked basement to last us through the winter. Nuclear or not.

I was amused to note an article from the LA Times on too many tomatoes. Not a problem I'd ever expected to have, though we're toeing the line this year.

Oh, and pears, both Asian and European. More than I can even know what to do with, or even give away. Next year, I'll have to put a plan in place.

Fermentacular!
Speaking of garden bounty, I've had pretty good success with my first-ever attempt at cabbage. There's been a bit of a cabbage looper infestation in the brassicas, though the plants seem to be getting along well enough. Next year I'm planning to keep some organic Bt handy to quell the caterpillar munchies, though it seems like healthy plants can soldier on despite the pests.

I like cabbage and all, but even half a dozen smallish heads is a lot to use. And a lot of fridge space to give up. So today I've started up a first batch of sauerkraut, which will (in theory) ferment away in the basement for two weeks or so until it's sour, salty, and delicious.

Come Sunday, the cabbage will be joined by several jars of fresh olives, curing in several different types of brine. Two boxes of green Manzanillas are sitting on the dining room table at this moment, awaiting their six-month briny bath. Then, if I get off my duff and hop to it, I'll add some miso to the mix. My Japanese koji starters are here, too, with the cultures I need to make my own shoyu - a gallon at a time - as well as white, yellow, and red misos. Mmm. Moldy rice.

Speaking of tasty, tasty fungus...
Last I'd mentioned wild mushrooms, I still hadn't found much interesting, at least in the culinary sense. Well, that's all changed. After a long, dry period, the long arms of tropical storm Hanna drenched us, followed by waves of thunderstorms that gave all of the local fungi the cue to burst forth.

After an unimpressive hike through Bald Eagle State Forest, which didn't appear to get the Hanna-related deluge we did, I was able to find several meals' worth of mushrooms in the neighborhood and around town.² Agaricus campestris, the field mushroom; Lepiota americana, the American lepiota; and Calvatia cyathiformis, the vase-shaped puffball. Plus the probably-edible Lepiota naucinoides that looks almost exactly like the freakishly deadly Amanita virosa. Edible? Probably. Coming into the house? Not a chance.

All three of the edible ones are quite tasty, and different from each other. The field mushrooms are like a more flavorful version of the white button mushrooms you see in the supermarket, though less fleshy and best cooked as a whole cap (or halves) than in slices. The American lepiota is a bit deeper and richer in flavor, though still similar. The puffball, however, has a very mild flavor, and a soft, squishy texture that's almost marshmallow-like. I'd sliced it up into quarter-inch thick pieces, and fried it until browned and crispy at the edges in some butter, and they were quite good.

And speaking of fermented deliciousness...
Sometimes it's just easier to go with things that someone else has conveniently fermented (and distilled) ahead of time. Thus I have a new bottle of homemade bitters, made from apricot kernels and orange peel. I followed the same basic recipe as before, but skipped the spices. At first, it smelled only of orange, and I was getting disappointed until the amaretto-like aroma of the apricot kernels took over. Sure, they're toxic - though that doesn't keep them from sale in health food stores³ as a "dietary supplement" or even a snack food. Extracted into alcohol, and consumed as just a few drops from time to time in a cocktail, it seems, shouldn't mess me up too much.

Apricot kernels are also - so I hear - an occasional ingredient in ratafia, though I've been making mine with fruits and vegetables. Steep a cup of fruits, vegetables, herbs, or a mix in a bottle of wine, with a quarter cup each of vodka and sugar, for three weeks. Strain out the solids, bottle it up, and drink it up. Utterly delicious, and a great after-dinner drink. The first batches - apricot, plum, and peach with Thai basil - are almost gone, just in time for the next set of Green Zebra tomatoes with black peppercorns and cucumber with mint. In a few days, I'm planning to pick the first of the season's habanero peppers for an incendiary third round.

And for the extra-boozy option, there's the walnut brandy that's been steeping since early July. There was one part of the recipe that reminded me of Kim Severson's New York Times article on recipe deal breakers, which was when a line began, "At the beginning of September..."

Hasn't been a deal breaker for me, but then again, I wouldn't have gotten that far if I didn't have a pair of walnut trees in the backyard. Trees that have been feeding the squirrels instead of me, that is.

Back to school?
It's cooking class time again. This semester, it's vegetarian cooking basics. The first class, which covered knife skills while the students made hand-rolled sushi and Vietnamese summer rolls, offered up a reminder: the second class must cover recipe reading.

Sound silly? Most people seem to think so at first, but after multiple exchanges that go something like this...

Student: What do I do next?

Me: What does the recipe tell you to do?

Student: Umm... [looks down at recipe for what must be the first time] I put the rice and water in the pot?

Me: If that's what it says.

...you learn not to take basic literacy skills for granted. Misreading in one thing. I can accept mistakes.⁴ But relying on me to read the recipe to them won't cut it.

They're adults. I think they can manage to think for themselves for once. It might even be a good thing to learn.

* * * * *

¹Yet another dehydrator full of tomatoes is whirring away behind me, to add to the four quarts of dried tomatoes already done. Plus the jars of canned tomatoes, pickled cucumbers, beets, peppers, jams, and more. And the onions, potatoes, carrots, etc.

²I should note that I've been checking these mushrooms' characteristics and spore prints carefully against the several mushroom guidebooks that I own to be certain they're safe for eating. And even when I'm sure they're edible, I make sure to eat only very small portions the first time to see if I have an allergic reaction. Hasn't happened yet, but I don't want to find out after a plateful of mushroom ragout.

³They're called bitter almonds, too, because of the bitterness caused by small amounts of amygdalin, which the body converts into toxic cyanide. Eat enough of 'em, and you can kill yourself. Though since I could almost see and hear the smell of almonds after eating just one, I can't imagine how one would do that. Ugh.

⁴It isn't as though I don't make enough on my own. Without mistakes, I wouldn't know how to cook.