Olives as a Starter

Whenever I’m in Portugal, I go looking for the local starters. Interestingly, and not everyone knows this, in Portugal they bring you starters without asking (that’s normal enough; here in Poland, as in many European countries, it’s simply a complimentary offering from the restaurant), but you usually have to pay for that starter (not always, but in most cases). You can of course decline it, and importantly, that’s not a faux pas.

If you type „starters in Portugal” into Google, you’ll get plenty of results and learn that sardine pâté is a typical starter. Yes, that’s right. That pâté is very good. But I’m always on the lookout for olives.

I’ll admit it plainly and without beating about the bush: I didn’t discover the true taste of olives until my first visit to Portugal. That was around 2007, and the memory of those olives really stuck with me. They were perfect.

I’ve always liked olives, generally speaking, but here the ones in brine dominate, often used in what we call Greek salad with feta cheese. I completely lost my taste for those olives (well, perhaps apart from Greek salad and the ones on pizza) after coming back from Portugal.

So whenever I went back there, I always looked forward to the starter so I could experience that flavour again. Fragrant olives, not watery, softened, salty ones. Olives with an intense herbal, distinctly „oily” flavour. Sometimes spicy, sometimes wonderfully herbal and mild. Usually served with their stones in. Green, black or red, it didn’t matter. Quite simply the best in the world.

Even a year ago I thought you couldn’t find olives like that in Poland. After all, the Portuguese have fresh olives straight from the trees and can prepare them themselves at home. But then olives sold loose by weight appeared here. They gave me hope, yet despite prices almost like those of lightly fermented cucumbers in the middle of a freezing winter — in other words, prohibitive — they never blew me away. I lost hope. Luckily, about half a year ago, one of the fairly large shops in Warsaw beginning with L (not the cheap one competing with the Portuguese insect) started stocking Fragata snack’n olive olives in olive oil and various herbs (no, this isn’t an advert; nobody’s paying me). There are four versions, and they’re brilliant. Of the ones you can buy here, they’re the closest to the flavour of those beloved Portuguese starter olives of mine. Besides, everyone who comes round and tries them feels the same. They vanish in no time.

Yesterday, though, I decided to make some myself and see whether I could come up with something similar. And that’s how these black olives, perfect as a starter, came about. Rinsed free of that horrible brine, covered in olive oil and seasoned quite generously. They turned out pretty good. I think they can easily compete with Fragata’s. So I really recommend them, because apparently they aren’t calorific, and they’re devilishly not just spicy but healthy too. Give them a try 🙂

Recipe at a glance:

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Waiting time: 20 hours

Serves: as many people as you like

Calories: no calories

Ingredients for somewhat Portuguese-style olives:

• black olives (pitted, ordinary ones in brine)
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• half a red chilli
• freshly ground black pepper
• 1 clove garlic
• dried red paprika
• salt
• olive oil

Recipe for olives with herbs and hot chilli:

I rinsed the olives and put them in a bowl. I peeled the garlic clove, crushed it and cut it into thin slices. I added it to the bowl of olives. I washed the chilli, cut it in half and then into strips too. I added it to the olives and garlic. I seasoned everything with freshly ground black pepper, added a teaspoon of dried oregano, half a teaspoon of dried red paprika and a pinch of salt.

I covered everything with olive oil, covered the bowl with aluminium foil and put it in the fridge for 20 hours. That was to let the olives take on the perfect aroma. Before serving, I drained off some of the oil. The olives make an ideal starter served with fresh bread. Enjoy!

BTW, I think you could prepare green olives in exactly the same way, but they need to be plain (here, green olives are usually sold with additions, while black ones are generally plain).