Olives Trencades Mallorquines

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Nonreactive soaking container, at least 3 litres
• •Smooth stone or wooden mallet
• •Sturdy chopping board
• •Clean tea towel
• •Nonreactive saucepan
• •2 clean glass jars with nonreactive lids, 1.5 litres each
• •2 glass fermentation weights or small food-safe glass dishes

Instructions

1. 1

   Sort the olives

   Choose hard, fully green olives without soft patches, insect holes or broken skin. Rinse them twice in cold water and drain. Set a 3-litre nonreactive container of cold water beside your board so every cracked olive can go straight under the surface.

   Raw green olives are supposed to be fiercely bitter. Firmness matters more than size, but olives of roughly equal size lose their bitterness at the same rate.
2. 2

   Crack each olive

   Lay a clean tea towel loosely over one olive to catch the spray. Strike its widest point once with a smooth stone, wooden mallet or the flat side of a sturdy wooden utensil. You want one or two splits through the flesh while the pit remains whole. Drop it immediately into the water and repeat. Don't pulverize them; crushed flesh goes soft in the brine.

3. 3

   Draw out bitterness

   Keep the olives beneath the water with a small plate or glass weight and refrigerate. After twenty-four hours, drain away all the darkened water, rinse the container and cover with 3 litres of fresh cold water. Repeat every twenty-four hours for seven days. On day seven, rinse one olive, cut off a small piece and taste it. It should be pleasantly bitter, not so harsh that the taste clings to your tongue. If it is still fierce, continue for up to three more days, using 3 litres of fresh water each day.

   The water may turn greenish brown during the first changes. That's expected. A rotten smell, slimy fruit or fuzzy growth is not; discard the batch if any of those appear.
4. 4

   Mix the brine

   Heat 500ml of the brine water in a nonreactive saucepan just until hot. Add the 120g salt and stir until completely dissolved, then mix in the remaining 1 litre of cold water. This is an 8 percent brine by the weight of the water. Pésalo, no lo adivines, weigh it, don't guess. Let the brine cool completely before it touches the olives.

5. 5

   Pack the jars

   Drain the soaked olives well. Divide half the fennel, lemon and hot pepper between two freshly cleaned 1.5-litre jars. Add the olives without crushing them, tucking the remaining aromatics through the middle and over the top. Pour in enough cold brine to cover the olives by at least 1cm, leaving 2.5cm of empty space at the rim. Slide a clean chopstick around the inside to release trapped air, then add glass weights so every olive and lemon wedge stays submerged.

6. 6

   Cure them cold

   Fit the lids and refrigerate the jars for at least seven days. Check them daily during the first week to make sure the fruit remains under the brine. If pressure builds beneath a lid, loosen it briefly over the sink and close it again. Taste after seven days; the fennel should be clear, the lemon bright and the olive firm with a clean bitter finish. They become rounder after a second week.

7. 7

   Serve and store

   Lift out only what you plan to serve, using a clean fork or spoon, and let the excess brine drain away. Don't rinse them unless your own batch tastes too salty. Return the jar to the refrigerator at once and keep every remaining olive submerged. Serve cool rather than ice-cold so the fennel and lemon can be tasted.

Chef Tips

• •Buy the olives during the green harvest, while they're hard and entirely green. Softening fruit or olives already turning purple won't keep the same crisp bite. Ask an olive grower or produce market for untreated fruit intended for home curing.
• •Fresh Manzanilla is the best widely available substitute for a Mallorcan olive. It stays firm but gives a milder, cleaner flavor. Hojiblanca also works and is slightly fleshier. Canned, jarred or lye-cured olives are already past the stage this method requires.
• •If wild fennel isn't available, use 30g cultivated fennel fronds with 2g lightly crushed fennel seed. The result is sweeter and less resinous, but still belongs at the table. Don't forage any umbrella-flowered plant unless you can identify wild fennel with certainty.
• •Keep the brine ratio when scaling the batch: 80g salt for every 1 litre of water. Iodized salt and salt with anti-caking agents can make the liquid cloudy, so plain sea salt or pickling salt is the better choice.
• •This is a refrigerator preserve, not a shelf-stable canned food. Keep it at 4°C or colder, keep the olives submerged and use them within eight weeks. Discard the whole jar if you find fuzzy growth, sliminess, a swollen lid that repeatedly builds pressure or a rotten smell.
• •Set them down before a meal with country bread, toasted almonds and a dry Mallorcan white wine or a small glass of vermut. The olives need no oil and no extra herbs; their own brine has already done the work.

Advance Preparation

• •Plan on seven days for the water cure, with one complete water change every twenty-four hours. Very bitter cultivars may require up to three additional days.
• •The salt brine can be mixed one day ahead, covered and refrigerated. It must be completely cold before it is poured over the olives.
• •Pack the olives at least seven days before serving. They taste fuller after fourteen days and keep for up to eight weeks under brine in the refrigerator.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 60g)