Somewhere, deep in our family archives, there’s a photo of me sitting on a picnic blanket, about age 6 or 7, with my 10 fingers splayed, each one festooned with a pitted Lindsay, black olive.
Fast forward seven years to my 13th birthday… My girlfriend gave me a gift-wrapped case of canned, black olives. The trend was surely set.
Now, all these years later, I swoon at the array of green, black and seasoned olives that I discover in my travels. I eat them all. I devour them large and small. I flirt with the olive sellers and sample each olive before buying a bagful to take home to my apartment across the world.
And of course, there’s olive bread with just enough dough to hold the olives together. There’s warm octopus and potato “salad” with taggiasche olives at the Carlotta Café in Milan. And Sandra’s homemade sardenara, a type of focaccia with tomato sauce, garlic, anchovies and olives. Baked orata with olives. Or when have you ever eaten freshly-picked-and-simmered olives and sausage… in the town of Cerignola, an olive name?!
So far, I’ve never met an olive that I didn’t like.
(…and then there’s olive oil… in my mind, the elixir of life. Don’t get me started…)
“Knock knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Olive.”
“Olive, who?”
“Olive you, too.”
Click on the photos to view them plate-sized.
Black cerignola, each a mouthful.
Freshly-picked olives, stewed with sausage and potatoes, in the town of Cerignola…an olive name.
Sandra’s homemade Sardenara.
Octopus and potato salad at the Carlotta Café in Milan.
Olive kebabs.
Pane con olive.
Aperitivo at Bugande.
Baked orata with olives.
Pane con olive.
Olive appetizer.
Olives at the Saturday market.
Cerignola olives.
Nibbles in Naples.
Olives with garlic. Fantastic!
Cerignola olives.
Gaeta olives.
Olives with orange peel.
Olive selection at the market.
Sautéed friarelli with olives.
Portuguese olive selection.
Saturday market haul.
Mmmm, spicy olives.
Pane con olive.
