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When you come to think of it, olives have seeped in to become a part of our grocery shelves for longer than we can give credit for. From salads, pizzas, cocktails and cheeseboards, olives have carved a space in most foods we enjoy as the small but mighty element with a mouth-puckering sourness that tastes good in just about everything. Although not delicious enough to eat raw, fresh off of the tree, due to their bitter taste, olives take well to brining in vinegar or oil. This process, known as curing, changes the bitter compounds in the olives and make them softer, thereby enabling flavour to be absorbed. Here is a list of some delicious varieties to pick up, the next time you go on a grocery-shopping spree.
Niçoise
Hailing from Nice, along the south-eastern coast of France, these egg-shaped purple-brown olives taste delicious when added to salads and tapenades. They’re also available in a brown-black colour, depending on the ripeness and have a mildly bitter aftertaste. Whether you add them to antipasti small plates or pair it with seafood, these olives have complementing flavours with what they are added to.
Cerignola
Large and bulbous, with thick, meaty flesh, these olives from the south of France are usually picked when they have hardly ripened. Known for their size, these olives are primarily used to produce oils or brined with some vinegar. Due to their fresh and fruity flavour, they also make a great addition to salads.
Kalamata
One of the key ingredients in Greek salad, the kalamata olive is a dark purple, oval-shaped fruit that is extremely saline in taste. With a creamy flesh and earthy flavour, these olives can be eaten just as they are or used in cooking, to add savouriness to stews and pasta.
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Arbequina
Considered to be one of the fruits that produce the finest quality of olive oil, this Spanish olive variety is also eaten as an accompaniment to drinks, at pub tables. Due to its fruity flavour, the olive oil tastes rather fantastic when used to make desserts or simply drizzled over a bowl of ice cream, with a sprinkling of sea salt; as is traditionally eaten in California.
Manzanilla
Produced in parts of Spain and California, these are the most commonly found variety of pimento-stuffed olives. These olives have a meaty flesh and a light bitterness that works on top of almost everything from pizzas, salads and even to place on a cheeseboard or add to a martini. These olives are brine-cured most often and come in small jars and usually pitted, in order to make them easier to consume.
