Marinated Olives

On a wonderful holiday in Spain this summer (when we stayed at the beautiful villa El Noque near Ronda) one of our friends threw together a couple of bowls of marinated olives and they were absolutely delicious. I had never thought of doing this before, but they are definitely worth a try. All you need is a jar of olives in brine, some olive oil and your choice of flavourings. It is easy to prepare, so when we started to run out of time to make the pre-demo nibbles for our canapé classes this week, we made these instead.

Ingredients

1 jar 340g olives brine, black or green

Olive oil

Your choice of flavourings:

Herby

8 basil leaves shredded,

1 tsp rosemary needles roughly chopped

1 tsp dried oregano

2 crushed garlic cloves

Spicy

0.5tsp chilli flakes

0.5 tsp ground cumin

0.5 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp pink peppercorns

Aromatic

1 lemon, peel off long strips of zest,

1 tbsp coriander seeds, roughly crushed,

seasoning

........ and there are many many more combinations, we just happened to have these ingredients.

Method

Rinse and dry olives. Mix with some olive oil and flavourings of your choice. Put back in the jar and top up with olive oil. Keep in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. The flavours will enhance during that time.