Green and Black Olive Spreads – The Ultimate Recipes

With the Middle Eastern olive season in full swing, it’s natural to think of cooking with those fleshy, savory olive morsels. If you’ve been lucky enough to get olives pickled on the farm, as I did at the Olive Branch Festival, most of your work has been done for you.

But if raw olives turn up at your local market, don’t just walk past them – pickle them yourself. And we even show you how to choose the best raw olives. This way you can avoid any poisons or pore

You can consider olive spreads as vegetarian alternatives to meat-based patés. But where olive trees grow, people naturally make farmhouse olive spreads for slathering on fresh bread. These recipes hearken back to centuries of olive farming and the traditional resources of the farm wife’s kitchen. Olive oil is, of course, one of the 60 must-haves of the Middle-Eastern pantry.

You can make these spreads too, even if you live far from any olive tree. Pitted canned or jarred olives work fine.

The following recipes are translated  from “The Olive Cookbook” by Ruth Keenan.

Make Black Olive “Caviar”

Ingredients:

100 grams black olives, pitted

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon olive oil

Pulse all ingredients in a food processor or blender until you have a grainy, spreadable paste. Remove to a jar and store in the refrigerator up to a week.

Make Green Olive Spread

Ingredients:

100 grams green olives, pitted

1 garlic clove, peeled

100 grams unsalted butter, softened

1/2 teaspoon salt

Pinch black pepper

1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley

Pulse the olives and garlic in the food processor until fine grains. Add the remaining ingredients and pulse until a spreadable paste. Store in glass jars, in the refrigerator. Remove from the fridge 30 minutes before serving.

Some of our delicious recipes with olive oil:

• Baked Eggplant Slices In Tomato Sauce
• Tomato Confit
• Chickpea and Spinach Soup