Curing Home-Grown Olives

When we moved into our new place a couple of years ago, we hadn't considered what type of trees were on the property. We'd been away over the fruiting season in the previous year, so it wasn't until last year that I paid attention to the fruits ripening on the tree through the kitchen window. All these lovely green and purple fruit weighing down the lean willow-like branches of the tree, some of which were already starting to drop. It looked kind of olive-like, but we weren't entirely sure.

The local nurseries seemed a little vague on this sort of thing, so I took a few photos and sent them around to various garden centres and local olive places to see what could be made of them. After describing the leaves, the sap from the cut branch, and clarifying when the fruit started to ripen, the consensus came back "Yes, that's an olive", but one local blogger (Passionfruit Garden) who writes comprehensively about home preserving from her own gardens suggested that the variety was Mission (WA).

From her information and a little more research about this variety, Mission (WA), or New Norcia Mission olives are a common variety in WA that was cultivated near the Benedictine monastic community of New Norcia[1] (wiki). Its arrival is similar in origin to the California Mission olives, but more closely related to the Tuscan Frantoio. This variety is high in oil content, so great for oils[2], but is also good for pickling.

Once we'd determined that these would be safe to tinker with and ingest, I ordered some olive rakes (from The Olive Centre) (similar), grabbed a ladder, suspended a clean drop sheet, and started raking these beauties down. As we had no idea what we were doing, this activity occupied us over a few weekends and we harvested around 10kg of olives. Sadly, we had to leave quite a bit on the tree as it was too high to reach, but we'll be pruning the tree down to a more manageable height before the next season.

Olives fresh off the tree are nothing like the olives you'll find bottled or at delicatessens. Raw, they're unpalatably bitter, and need to be brined to draw out that bitterness. This process normally takes months, but it can also be done in a couple of weeks if you're impatient.

After collecting and washing all the olives, they were sorted. Any bruised ones were discarded, because the bruising will make the olive taste off. And the green ones were separated from the ripened ones because they'll cure at different rates. In the end we didn't end up having many green ones, and the ones we had were small, so we kept them mixed in.

The sorting process also identified bug-munched fruit. Although the fruit is bitter, it's still pretty popular with birds and insects, and without pesticides, the olives will have little blemishes that indicate something has either burrowed or munched into the olive. Being fussy, I inspected every olive and cut out the blemishes to ensure there weren't any surprises left inside. In most cases, the blemishes were only skin deep, but there were a few that had to be discarded because the munching was too severe to simply be cut out.

If we were using the regular slow curing process, we'd have just dropped the olives that passed inspection into fresh water to prevent the exposed surfaces from oxidising, but for the speedy process, we also added vertical cuts to each olive to increase the surface area for brining before we dropped them into water.

Once sorted and cut, the olives were put into containers with salt and boiling water (1 cup salt : 10L water), with the boiling brine replaced daily (source Sue's Olives, Better Pets and Gardens). After the first few days, the olives lose their vibrant colour and start to actually smell like olives. At about the 8-10 day mark the bitterness was gone.

For reference, the container in the foreground is 1-2 days old, and the containers in the background are about 5-6 days old.

Once the olives lose their bitterness, they're then placed in sterilised jars with finishing brine and red wine vinegar, and topped with olive oil so that they're completely submerged.

The bulk of our olives were just kept in finishing brine, but we also experimented with some flavoured marinades:

• Vanilla and white wine vinegar Mild in flavour. The vinegar masked the vanilla.
• Coriander seeds, lemon juice, lemon zest and bay leaves The coriander was alright, but not particularly interesting.
• Rosemary, thyme, fennel, garlic, chili and red wine vinegar Not bad, but not extraordinary.
• Orange, orange peel, garlic, chili The absolute best. A++ would do again.

I still have plans to try out some warm olive appetiser recipes, and once I get my sourdough game more solid, I have aspirations to replicate that New Norcia olive sourdough.

A year on from that first harvest, we still have a surplus of olives, but this is definitely something I think we'll continue to do. We've been told by an arborist that the harvest we had from this one tree was definitely heavy for a single tree, and to expect that there'll be alternating years of heavy and light yield. This year was definitely much lighter, but still significant (we let this one pass because of our surplus), but we'll be pruning the tree to a more manageable height ready for next year's hopefully more abundant harvest.

The process is somewhat labour intensive, but there is something incredibly gratifying about home-preserving, and growing and making your own food in general.

[1] Our Year 7 school camp many years ago took us to New Norcia. As a group of 12 year olds, I certainly don't recall that we had an appreciation of this destination or activity plan. My memories of this camp involved staying in the Old Convent, a ghost story about a nun who would roam the sleeping quarters, an early morning run in cold, cold mist, picking up litter allegedly from a rival school's camp the previous week, a swimming pool, and the most amazing olive bread and olive oil I had ever eaten.

New Norcia is famous for their bakery and their olive oil and breads are Known Throughout The Land(TM). This is serious business. Their fruit bread is more fruit than bread, and while all their sourdough is generally excellent, I continue to dream about their olive sourdough. I wouldn't have been surprised if the announcement that they were opening outlets in the city years ago was heralded by a choir of angels.

Now that I'm no longer a whiny 12-year-old, and have a better appreciation for history, I wouldn't mind visiting New Norcia again and get a little local learning in. But I digress...

[2] I had considered trying to press our own oils, however the process seems a bit more involved for a first attempt at olive tinkering. You can rent time with a commercial press, but you need 50kg minimum, and provide your own transport and containers. This is great for hobbyists and small orchards, but no good for single tree yields. But perhaps I'll try to set up an improvised DIY press next year.