The search for the delicious black olive

Puspawarna

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I'm not complaining, because many wonderful foods and cooking ingredients are available in Indonesia, though not always exactly what you want.

A case in point is olives. In my life I've had really exceptional Greek black olives, packed with salt and herbs, slightly dry and wrinkled and intense...and they are to die for. I never found anything that good in Jakarta.

Now I've left Indonesia for another food-restricted location, and the olives I get aren't that great here on Hawai'i Island either. I'm eating a ginormous pimento-stuffed green olive from Costco right now, which is why I thought of it. (It's in the martini I just made, so that helps.)

I can get not-bad black olives from the Safeway deli, and I suspect a browse through Amazon would lead me to some good, though expensive, mail-order options. So my Hawaii olive selection is probably slightly better than when I was in Jakarta, but on a day to day basis it feels about the same.

How do you feel about olives in general, and about your local options more specifically?
 
when i was still in Canada, Safeway used to have these queen olives pickled in white wine and stuffed with jalapeno ...... pretty damn tasty
 
Yeah it used to be one of those things to take in the suitcase ..... but then I read this (copied via Google Translate):

“ Black olives do not exist, sun-ripened dark (mostly purple) olives do exist. Unripe olives are green, but ripe when they turn dark, we call them black olives, but they are anything but black. Black olives on the tree is rather purple, then they have to go through a process to make them edible and then the color varies from red-brown to purple brown, so that the Greek Kalamata olives and the Italian Taggiasche olives get their color. Risks: they can fall or spoil and you also have to wait and time is money. "

" To speed up the process, the olive farmers have found a trick. They harvest the olives nice and early and green and color the green olives artificially with a product called ferrogluconate (E579). It is not very dangerous stuff - it is used with iron deficiency in the body - although you can get too much. "

" The result of this addition is that the green olive turns black. Not with the dark tones of a real ripe olive, but pitch black, as if the olive is colored with shoe polish. The taste is that of a green olive with the characteristic bitterness and a often metallic flavor, compare that with a Kalamata or a Taggiasche olive, where the trick is not allowed.It is a world of difference: the taste is fuller, sweeter .. So: real black olives are not black. "

There are so many food scandals in countries as Italy, Greece, Spain and Turkey. Think of Parmesan and olive oil.
 
Come here puspa.
We do have lot of selection of olive pickles here green, grey, dark purple and black, local and import from Jordan, Greece, and Italy.
I don't know much about olives. Some taste better than other but I can't explain more.

Note - so lazy this morning, so I cooked indomie with stuffed olive and bakso. Taste great.
 
Some taste better than other
The result of this addition is that the green olive turns black. Not with the dark tones of a real ripe olive, but pitch black, as if the olive is colored with shoe polish. The taste is that of a green olive with the characteristic bitterness and a often metallic flavor, compare that with a Kalamata or a Taggiasche olive, where the trick is not allowed.It is a world of difference: the taste is fuller, sweeter

I think that explains a lot...
 
I still don't know, can't explain the difference in detail. I keep simple. I taste it, if I like I buy and eat it.
Here, from the daily menu at our field canteen.
1097
 
The local market in Albania had hundreds of types of fresh olives....mm mm.
 
And talking about kalamata,
1100


But this pic remind me of bad experience in Athena,
This pic taken with mobile since my camera with thousand pics of meteora was stolen from my backpack.
 
I love olives too, but tend to mostly eat the green style.

The huge variety like you get at Costco, stuffed with pimento are edible, but not my favorite. I like the garlic or jalapeno stuffed kind.

I don’t know if the islands has a Business Costco, but my local branch had some oil packed varieties in a large plastic bucket.

I’d love to try the variety that Wisnu shows.
 
I like Popeye's work, but never cared much for Olives.
 
@Wisnu ... yes, olives in Egypt are good. I'm not sure why I didn't pay more attention when I had the opportunity.

@waarmstrong ... olive ya, despite your bad puns
 

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