How to Make the Best Marinated Olives

When people come over to my house for dinner, I like to have a few tapas ready for them to snack on while I finish cooking the meal. Any tasty snacks qualify as tapas. To get your mind thinking about little dishes you can make, you can read "Recipes: Hummus and Tzatziki." Sometimes all I have time to do before guests arrive is to set out a bowl of almonds (Marcona almonds from are best) and another one of olives. A bowl of homemade marinated olives is one of the easiest and tastiest things to offer your guests with a glass of dry sherry or a cocktail. It takes five minutes to make and people love it! You'll be impressed and so will your friends.

Olives, in are too often seen as an exotic food which is not suited to the American palate. A Mediterranean staple food, for too long the only olives which Americans who grew up outside of Italian or other Mediterranean households knew was the bland sliced black olives in the cans. You know which olives I mean - those things that you didn't want on the pizza when you were a kid. It turns out those olives were not even black, they were dyed. They were barely olives. Olives actually have a long and noble history. They are one of the first fruits to be mentioned in literature, playing a role in Homer's Odyssey, which dates to between 600 and 800 B.C. They were used by the ancients as fruit and for the production of olive oil.

Today, thanks to the broader selection of everything available in your local supermarket, there is no place where you are limited to canned sliced olives or the sterile things dropped into martinis. Today's olives come to the from all over the world, although , , and are the leading producers. Olives and olive oil have been found to have numerous health benefits, including preventing arteriosclerosis and cardiovascular disease, cancer, and promoting fetal development.

The main reason to eat olives, though, is because they are so good. There are many varieties of olives with very different tastes, ranging from the mild to the very strong, so don't just choose one kind and be happy. Experiment! Have fun! After all, it's the whole basis of western civilization that you are snacking on!

Here is how you make marinated olives:

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• Buy a variety of green olives at the supermarket, of different kinds. Olives from , or are a good choice. You should get a total of about a pound of olives.
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• Place the olives in a nice bowl or two when you get home.
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• Peel two cloves of garlic, crush them a little with a side of the knife and add to the bowl.
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• Cut a lemon in quarters and squeeze two of the pieces of lemon on the olives. Add the pieces of lemon that you just squeezed to the bowl (the fragrant citrus oils that are in the zest are essential).
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• Take a small branch of rosemary, cut it into three pieces and add it to the bowl. Also add a bay leaf cut in half.
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• Sprinkle some hot pepper flakes on the olives.
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• Add a couple of teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil to the mix. Stir well with a wooden spoon, crushing the olives a bit as you mix.
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• Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave on the counter for a couple of hours until you serve this.

  
  

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You should see the recipe above as a loose guideline. You can incorporate or eliminate items to personalize your marinated olives.

Here are some ideas of things you might want to add to your olives:

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• Some orange juice and zest instead of the lemon (or in addition to)
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• A sprinkling of vinegar instead of lemon juice
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• Slices of sweet Vidalia or Hawaiian onions, sprinkled with sea salt and vinegar
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• Some hot sauce of your choice instead of hot pepper flakes
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• Basil, dill, savory or other herbs instead of rosemary
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• A sprinkling of cumin
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• Mix in some cocktail onions and capers
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• Caperberries are also great to mix in with your olives. Caperberries are like capers but bigger and tastier.

  
  

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Try buying different kinds of olives each time to see which are your favorite ones. Even better, sample them for free at your local store if they sell them at the deli or cheese counter. Enjoy your olives!