Making the inedible edible, part 2: olives.

Following on from my success in the quince jelly department, another friend gave us these fresh black olives from her tree- about 8 cups. Fresh off the tree, they're incredibly bitter, as Little Bro discovered when he thought they were grapes... :-P

My friend hadn't manage to turn her olives into anything edible (they went mouldy or were too salty) so we were left to our own devices as to what to do. A quick google took me to the Olives Australia website which has heaps of recipes. With an authoritative name like that, I put my faith in OA and put most of my olives into their "favourite method", in which the olives are soaked in 1:20 vol:vol brine (10 cups water + 1/2 cup salt) for two weeks, changing the brine daily and then matured in 1:10 brine in jars. That's where we're up to I'll report back in a couple of months about how they go!

Out of respect for Gardening Australia I saved a cupful of olives for their factsheet recipe, where olives are salted in a perforated container for a week, then rinsed free of the excess salt and frozen until use.