Crepuscule with Olives

by Gustav

“These trees so fresh, so full, so beautiful; when they display their fruit, green, golden and black, it is among the most agreeable sight one might ever see.” Miguel Cervantes

Already December, and dusk. That most peaceful time of day, of year, the sun an amorphous pale gold radiance in the tarnished silver sky to the west. The elongated and gentle rays are filtered through the hemlocks on the west side onto the frozen back yard, where all is shrouded in every tonality of gray and white. The birdbath, sundial, grill all thickly frosted. My pair of cardinals, who seem to go away for the summer, are visiting their birch tree, and the squirrel is doing whatever he does before he goes up into the woods for the night. Quiet now, but for the lush harmonies of Shirley Horne on the stereo. Shirley with other angels now, and her beloved Miles… These winter days if I am to be at home for any length of time I put five of her CD’s in the carousel and listen for notes that I may have missed- they are always there, those perfect tones delivered at that most exquisite moment, always new, rare, eternal. I bake as the snow blues out and my birds think about getting in for the night.

Such delicious peace outside, but my house is jamming with warmth and aroma and sound this late afternoon. I have just taken two of Michael Chiarello’s olive oil cakes out of the oven, and they are redolent with anise, orange peel and vanilla. Yesterday was a red sauce kinda day, when you know that a big bowl of linguini with marinara is a key way to nurture the grays away- cheap, comforting, sleep inducing, real. Earlier in the day I roasted some Kalamatas with shallots, thyme and balsamic vinegar, and their dark bouquet haunts the corners, underlying the brighter tomato, garlic, and oregano of the sauce. None of this would be conceivable without olive oil, a blessing as crucial and constant as music.

So many of our favorite victuals would be unthinkable without olives or their oil. Torta Espaňol, gazpacho, pretty much any tapa, cioppino, linguini alio olio, sauce puttanesca, bagna cauda, aϊoli, good mayonnaise, salade Niςoise, vinaigrette…. Caponata, tapenade, good canned tuna or anchovies…

As far as the health benefits of olive oil, it’s crucial to the Mediterranean diet, being high in oleic acid and vitamin E, which lower the levels of the bad cholesterol, raise the levels of the good, and help with healing and bone formation. Arles native Jeanne Calment, when asked how she lived to be 121 years old, replied that she owed it all to olive oil. She uses it in every meal and rubs it on her skin, and pronounces, “I have only one wrinkle, and I am sitting on it.” Enough said.

Try those roasted olives: Deftly toss your rinsed Kalamatas or other brine-cured olives with olive oil, a good splash of balsamic vinegar (not necessarily upper end), as many peeled whole shallots or garlic as you want, and an intense wintry herb like rosemary or thyme. Roast slowly at 200º for a couple of hours. The flavors will concentrate deeply, your kitchen will smell like bistro heaven, and the flesh of the olive will slip easily from its pit. I do this in an old iron frying pan, cause I dig the black on black thing. You can use your heavy red ceramic ramequin if you wanna, dear. These are irresistible as a little something to put on the table before dinner. Or try my old method of marinating, which I’ve been extolling for about a decade now. Use any variety of brine-cured olives. We offer several. Empty them into a colander and run hot water over them to get rid of some of the salt. (The salt has done its job at this point, leaching the olives of their bitter glucosides. Olives need the hand of man to thrive and become edible, like some other favorite indulgences: coffee, vanilla, cocoa. Greek Kalamatas are enhanced further by adding wine vinegar to their briny bath, and other olive curers add lemon, garlic and spices to the procedure. Our Catalans are a brilliant example). Alternatively, if you don’t want to waste the water, you can cover your olives of choice with cold water in a saucepan and bring them to the simmer, then let them cool. Either way, drain them very well, even blotting them with a towel if you have the time. Then prepare a marinade of good extra virgin (that’s all we purvey or advocate here) olive oil and appropriate herbs. I like thyme on most any variety, and rosemary, and fennel seed on Kalamatas works beautifully. (Again, if you have the time, toast your fennel seeds in a dry frying pan ‘til they are fragrant: it will greatly enhance their flavor and the atmosphere in your airless wintry kitchen). Little Niςoises olives cry out for herbes de Provence, for sure, and Moroccan varieties like cumin and hot pepper. Little, resinous Nocellaras, which our pal Fabio brings over from Sicily, are great with fennel seed and lemon peel. We carry them in both green and black now. Big cracked green olives (these can be soaked overnight in cold water to rid them of their salt) are excellent with crushed red pepper (or whole chiles), and some fresh herbs like parsley or cilantro. You can slather little black olives with harissa if you want something spicy to accompany a wintry vegetable stew, or cut up a preserved lemon (we have them, 50 cents a piece) and add to whatever olive you like. Put the olives in a festive jar and tuck your seasonings around them, then cover with the oil. Add a few caperberries if you like them. Leave the olives out for a few hours to get the flavors working. Serve, or refrigerate for up to a month. They will get better and better. Take a jar of them to a dinner party with a piece of Moliterno and guarantee that you’ll be invited again, if you behave. Moliterno, a favorite Sardinian sheep’s- milk cheese, goes particularly well with olives, perchance because its deeply incised rind is rubbed with olive oil as it ages, and there are nuances of olive in its crumbly flesh. When you marinate your olives this way, you are extending their shelf life substantially, ridding them of excessive salt, improving their taste, and infusing the oil that you will be dipping your bread in, if that’s your style. It’s mine, and with a handful of arugula and whatever sheep- or goat-milk cheese, you have supper. Dry- cured or sun- cured olives, with their deeply concentrated flavors, need not be washed, but do benefit by a good toss in olive oil. And they are magnificent in a glistening mound in the center of your antipasto or salad.

Dondi Ahearn from Provisions International told me about that roasting method, and he also gave me that little ceramic cruet of Frantoia (“olive mill”) that’s in my special cupboard filled with special culinary stuff-from-very-special-culinary-characters. That oil is reserved for when such characters come over or when I need a little rivulet of green and gold to perk something up on a somber evening. The many varieties of olives give us a vast array of oils, of course, and when they are harvested is crucial to the oil’s flavor as well. The Tuscans harvest their olives quite under-ripe, and the resulting oils are peppery, even a little bitter…that little catch in the back of your throat that they call pizzica. That is also present in some Spanish oils, and some people really relish that experience. I gravitate to the butterier, olive-y oils of Liguria, Catalonia and Provence, but love having the options. The Frantoia (from Sicily) has hints of that pepper, too, but is remarkably fruity. The oil I used in the new cake, “Onesto” is from Fabio: all fruit, butter and a hint of grass - perfection with the anise and orange peel in the cake. Both Senores Dondi and Fabio know volumes about olives and their oil, and have introduced me to many spectacular varieties over the years. They have a remarkable acumen for the oleaginous, as it were. I don’t know much, but I do know I love the colors of olives, which range from a pale, curious tan, into every possible verdant tone of chartreuse and moss and pea, through pale mauves and speckled violets to the inky blacks of the fully ripened. Check out the color of our Alfonsos- a cloudy blue purply black, the outrageous integument enclosing an equally intense, meaty, vinous olive…a flavor unlike anything else I know. Lawrence Durrell, an avid advocate of all things Mediterranean, intoned in one of our favorite olive quotes, “ …all of it (the Mediterranean) seems to rise in the sour, pungent taste of these black olives between the teeth. A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water.” Indeed.

My cardinal friends have moved over to the evergreens on the west side, creating a little shower of the snow that fell on the branches around dawn today. They will sleep there, or I hope they will, safe in the thick green branches. Their scarlet, the deep greens, the now- pewter of the sky and snow- we are so far from the Mediterranean. Shirley is the only sound in this, my fragrant cocoon. There is not death. I have some forced narcissi that are about to bloom, sprightly yellow green, in their traditional pot, upon which Babylonian charioteers race in their eternal circle. The olive tree, when cut down to a stump, or burned, sends out myriad shoots and rises triumphant. Its oils were integral in the history of the civilizations of the Mid East, the Near East and the Mediterranean, and I nonchalantly use prodigious amounts as I cook and bake. I could scribble away about the olive’s health benefits and its place in culinary history, but you’ve read it all before. I only suggest embracing it some new ways, as well as the old. Bake that cake (I will give you the recipe), roast or marinate some olives and give them away. Visit us and try an “Olivade” one of those little cylinders of young chēvre and tapenade. Both components are of the highest quality and the presentation is exquisite-the stark whiteness peculiar to goat cheese enveloping a layer of ebon olivade, or ground Niςoise olives. There’s a delicate olive leaf and a lilliputian Niςoise on the top. We used to only be able to get them during the winter holidays, but fortunately they are more readily available all year. Take a couple to a party or share it with someone who sparkles…

Those new Tortas de aceite (aceituna and aceite-olive and oil- derive from Arabic, as the Moors who had conquered Spain got going on cultivating olives [and saffron] right away) that we are proud to purvey are a treat from Andalusia. They’re made with a generous amount of good Spanish oil. Their initial crispness dissolves sumptuously on your tongue because of all that oil. They are available in savory and sweet, the latter dusted with crystal sugar and fennel seeds, and sometimes a scattering of crisp slivered almonds. The savory variety is a treat with cheese, particularly Spanish sheep’s-milk varieties like Iberico or Roncal, and, of course, a few olives- those fat, brilliant chartreuse Catalans or those mysterious little Farga Aragons, coal black and bursting with deep, resinous flavor. The sweet tortas make a delightful breakfast on the road, as I do, with a big cup of Italian roast or some bitter black tea. You’ll feel kind of Euro trashy and won’t care if you get crumbs all over the front seat.

The sun is gone now, and the first narcissus opens, a perfect white star this late afternoon…

Zeus’ son Herakles sank his staff forcefully into a barren rocky ground once, and it flourished and gave us olives. Or maybe Athena granted us the olive tree, just for the kicks. Ever since we see the olive tree and its fruit as symbols of peace, bounty and immortality. We are such indulged mortals. In these short silver days of the dawning year, the unexplored could delight you, be it a new bass line in a favorite tune, an angelic frieze on the Capitol building, an olive oil cake, or a new love for an old friend…We wish you all of those and more in the year ahead.