OLIVE PICKING TIME

 

A 13th century Andalusí cookbook* gives several recipes for how to cure olives. In one version, you are directed to slit the olives with a knife, “but do not go deep to the stones.” In another, you should “crack them on a board so that the flesh breaks but does not separate from the stone.”  After incising or cracking, the olives are soaked in fresh water until the bitterness is gone then transferred to brine for the curing period. They are sometimes finished with herbs. 

That text appears in the headnotes for Herb-Marinated Olives in my new book, FLAVORS OF AL-ANDALUS, The Culinary Legacy of Spain. The method described in the old text is exactly the same as the way table olives are prepared in the pueblo where I live—cracking, sweetening in water, then curing in brine with thyme, fennel, and garlic.  

Home-cured table olives.

We pick a small quantity of olives, mainly fat Manzanillas and small, fleshy Moriscas, for curing. The rest go to the mill to be pressed for oil. 

You do not have to have an olive tree to make the olive recipe in Flavors of al-Andalus. The recipe shows you how to marinate store-bought olives to give them the flavor of herb-flavored Andalusian olives.) 

This year we're trying out a "new-fangled" contraption for cracking the olives. Place it over a bucket with the flat piece of wood braced against your body. Put a handful of olives in the well, use the clapper to crack them lightly, and release them into the bucket. The old-fashioned way was to split them, one by one, with a mallet or stone. I've cracked thousands that way in my time! 

*The directions on how to prepare olives comes from The Best of Delectable Foods and Dishes from al-Andalus and al-Maghrib: A Cookbook by 13th Century Andalusí Scholar Razīn al-Tujībī (1227–1293), translated by Nawal Nasrallah (Brill, 2021).

Yes, that's a clothesline tied between two olive trees. My house is nestled in the midst of 18 olive trees. Not all of them produce in a single year. After spring rains, the trees are really loaded this year. We pick about half the crop in one go in order to get them to the mill within a few days. The remainder will wait on the trees until after we get some rain (fingers crossed). 

Olives loaded in Ben's car, we're off to the mill. The local mill (featured in this post) is no longer operational, so we're headed for Molisur, a big one in the next town.

Once in the bin, the fruits of our five days of picking don't look like much. There is a tense moment when the jefe scrutinizes some shriveled olives--those picked de suelo, off the ground, are paid at half the price as those de vuelo, from the tree. But most are fresh and plump, so we get the highest rate, this year 60 centimos per kilo. He advises us to keep them in containers like the one shown so air can circulate and the olives don't deteriorate. 

In a booth above the olive reception floor, she tracks the weights (posted on the display screen facing us) and fills out the administrative papers. Our olives weighed in at 90 kilos (almost 200 pounds).  

Off they go, up the chute to the hopper where the olives are tumbled to separate leaves, twigs, and other debris before crushing and extraction. 

We take the receipt to the front office. 

The mill doesn't yet have new oil available. So we collect Euros for our olives—€54—and buy a liter of last year's oil in the shop for €7.20. Hopefully, when we return with the rest of our olives we can take away fresh extra virgin olive oil.

Photos were taken at Aceites Molisur, Alhaurin el Grande (Málaga). The mill offers guided tours:

We are located in a unique environment, at the foot of the Sierra de Alhaurín el Grande, where you can enjoy nature and at the same time learn everything about the extra virgin olive oil that we produce at Aceites Molisur. We offer guided tours accompanied by the specialized staff of the oil mill.

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FLAVORS OF AL-ANDALUS 

The Culinary Legacy of Spain

This new cookbook has recipes for olives and helpful information about cooking and frying with olive oil. Ask for Flavors of al-Andalus from your favorite bookseller or click below to order. 

This cookbook explores the fascinating story of the deep and lasting influences that Islamic culture has left on modern Spanish cooking. 

Author and Spanish cooking expert Janet Mendel tells the story of the Moorish influence on Spanish cooking through 120 recipes and photographs for modern-day dishes, from salads and vegetables to fish, poultry and meat to sweets and pastries, that trace their heritage to foods served in medieval times. Dishes from this era include exotic spices such as saffron, the use of fruits and almonds with savory dishes, and honeyed sweets and pastries. The flavors of al-Andalus live on in modern Spanish cooking and are what makes Spain’s cuisine distinctive from the rest of Europe. (Hippocrene Books)    

 Order on IndiePubs

Use PROMO CODE HIPPOCRENE40 for 40% off on all Hippocrene titles at IndiePubs online bookstore.

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MOVE OVER, LATKES, IT´S TORTILLA TIME

 Eggs, potatoes and oil are the basic ingredients for latkes, potato pancakes or patties, a beloved food for the holiday of Hanukkah (begins Sunday evening, Nov. 28). Not so very different is the tortilla de patatas, Spanish potato tortilla, a sort of “omelet” or “cake” with eggs and potatoes cooked in olive oil. 

Potato tortilla, an alternative to latkes? Similar ingredients--eggs and potatoes cooked in olive oil.

Hanukkah is a celebration of olive oil. The holiday marks the victory in the 2nd Century BC of the Maccabees over an occupying force and the re-lighting of the menorah in the Temple. The olive oil for the menorah, enough for a single day, lasted for eight days and nights.

Tortilla is another great way to celebrate with olive oil. Different than latkes, but just as delicious. In any case, Hanukkah lasts eight days. There’s plenty of time to try tortilla as well.

The classic tortilla is simply potatoes and eggs with a little chopped onion, but you can easily customize your version, incorporating parsley or other herbs, spinach or other vegetable, mushrooms, roasted red peppers. (See below for links to more tortilla recipes.) 

Serve tortilla for breakfast, brunch, lunch, snack, tapas or dinner! In Spain, tortilla is not generally served with a sauce. I’ve noticed that American-style tapas bars like to present it with a piquant alioli (garlic mayonnaise). My kids always liked it with ketchup! Serve tortilla with a heap of fried green peppers or roasted red peppers on the side, with sautéed mushrooms or tomato salad. Add some smoked salmon and call it brunch. Pair tortilla with tomato soup for a terrific lunch. 

My tortilla is a little ragged on the edges. It is about 2 inches thick, still a little juicy in the center. 

Latkes are often served accompanied by apple sauce and/or sour cream. That didn't seem quite right with tortilla, but tangy apple chutney and a dollop of Greek yogurt are perfect!

You can make a pastel de tortilla or stacked tortilla cake, combining three small tortillas of potatoes, spinach and red peppers. Spread it with bechamel and grated cheese and brown under the broiler. Cut the stack like a cake.

Unlike latkes, which use grated raw potatoes, the tortilla is made with sliced potatoes that are cooked first in olive oil, then combined with beaten eggs. The mixture doesn’t need any flour or crumbs. It does take patience, to slowly cook the potatoes in oil.

Classic Potato Tortilla

Tortilla de Patatas

Use olive oil—preferably extra virgin—for this recipe. You shouldn’t use the highest quality/expensive oil, as delicate flavor is lost in the cooking process. 

Don’t try to scimp on the quantity of olive oil. You need enough oil to cover the potatoes, so they cook evenly in little time. The potatoes soak up very little of the cooking oil. The oil--as long as it's olive oil-- can be strained and used again, so it is not wasted.  

What variety of potato is best for tortilla? Preferred are what in Spain are labelled “para freir,” frying potatoes. Use new potatoes, not mature ones. Suggested varieties are Kennebec, Monalisa and Agria. 

Potatoes can be peeled and sliced in advance of cooking the tortilla. Cover the sliced potatoes with water to keep them from turning dark. Drain well and pat dry before adding them to the heated oil.

A truco, cook’s “trick”: use a large deep skillet to cook the potatoes in oil, so there is no danger of the mixture overflowing the sides of the pan. Then use a smaller, lightweight, no-stick skillet to cook the tortilla. You absolutely don’t want a cast-iron skillet for the tricky flipping of the pan. A 10-inch skillet produces a 2-inch thick tortilla using the ingredients as given in this recipe. 

The potatoes don’t “fry” but rather, “poach” in the oil. Moderate the heat so the oil bubbles gently (oil temperature around 200ºF, whereas frying temperature is 360ºF). If potatoes begin to brown, lower the heat further. How long to cook them depends on the type of potato and cooking temperature. Mine were ready in 12 minutes. Add the chopped onions after the potatoes have been cooking 8 minutes or so, so they don’t brown too quickly.

Serves 4-8.

Tortilla ingredients.

2 pounds frying potatoes

4 cups olive oil

¾ cup chopped onions

1 teaspoon salt

6 eggs

Peel the potatoes. Cut big ones in half or quarters lengthwise. Slice them crosswise ¼-inch thick. 

Heat the oil in a large, deep skillet on moderately high heat. Carefully add the potatoes. They may splutter at first when moisture hits the hot oil. Gently stir the potatoes so all are evenly mixed with the oil. Then lower the heat to medium. Cook the potatoes in the oil, stirring them occasionally, about 8 minutes.

Use lots of olive oil to "poach" the potatoes. Best to use a deep skillet for cooking the potatoes, then a smaller one to cook the tortilla. 

Add the onions to the potatoes and continue cooking until the potatoes are completely tender, 4-5 minutes longer. Remove the skillet from the heat. Place a heat-proof sieve or colander over a heat-proof bowl. Use a skimmer to lift the potatoes out of the oil into the sieve. Sprinkle the potatoes with ½ teaspoon of the salt. Allow the excess oil to drain from the potatoes. Allow the oil remaining in the pan to cool.

Beat the eggs in a large bowl with the remaining ½ teaspoon of salt. Gradually mix the potatoes with the eggs, making sure all of them are coated with egg. (If raw egg is not a problem for you, taste the mixture and add additional salt if desired.)

Eggs almost set, tortilla is ready to flip.

Add 2 tablespoons of the remaining oil in the deep skillet to a smaller (10-inch) skillet and heat on moderately-high. Pour in the egg-potato mixture and spread it evenly. Use a wooden or heat-proof spatula to stir the mixture briefly. Reduce the heat to moderate and let the mixture begin to set on the bottom, without browning. Shake the skillet occasionally to make sure the egg-potatoes are not sticking to the bottom. Cook until the top of the egg-potatoes begins to thicken and set, 4-5 minutes. Although you cannot check the bottom, it should be golden, not browned. 

Place a flat plate on top of the skillet. Use a towel or hot pad to grip the handle of the skillet. Place the other hand flat against the plate to hold it firmly in place. Working over a bowl to catch any possible drips, lift the skillet and turn it upside down, releasing the tortilla onto the plate. 

Reverse the tortilla onto a flat plate, then slide it back into the skillet to finish cooking.

Carefully, ease the tortilla back into the skillet to cook on the bottom, 3 minutes. The center will remain a little juicy. If you like the eggs cooked completely, cook a little longer, taking care not to let the bottom brown too much.

Remove the pan from the heat. Tip the pan and slide the tortilla out onto a serving dish.

To serve, cut the tortilla into 8 wedges. Serve hot, warm or room temperature.

When the cooking oil has cooled, strain it into a bowl or jar. Use it for frying and sautéeing. 

After cooking the tortilla, the olive oil has been strained. I started with 4 cups of oil--I've got almost 3 ½  cups left. Olive oil can be reused two or three times. 

To serve with tortilla:

Roasted Bell Peppers.

Fried Green Peppers.

Piquillo Pepper Ketchup.

Green Chile Sauce (Mojo Verde).

Garlic Mayonnaise (Alioli).

Tomato Sauce.

Apple-Mango Chutney.

More versions of tortilla:

Eggplant Tortilla.

All-Onion Tortilla.

Tortilla with Zucchini and Potatoes.

Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate. Happy Cooking with Olive Oil to Everyone Else.

OLIVES TO OIL

First, pick the olives. Get them to the mill as soon after picking as possible. That way, they maintain their freshness and fruitiness and produce the finest virgin oil.

Unloading six sacks of my olives at the mill. This mill is a small, family run business only a few miles from where I live. Originally established in 1920, it stopped functioning in the early 1960s. Five years ago, the four Ayala brothers who own it decided to put the mill in working order again.

A fork-lift loader moves my bin of olives to the loading chute. A week's worth of picking looks like nothing in that bin that holds 500 kilos!

Off they go, olives on the way to becoming oil.

First step, the olives are tumbled and air-blown in a hopper to remove leaves and dirt.  Large scale growers usually down olives by vareo, thrashing the branches with sticks and gathering the fruit in tarps spread on the ground. Inevitably, leaves and twigs accumulate with the olives. I hand-pick olives, ordeñando, or "milking" them off the branches. So my olives are especially clean. Sometimes the jefe decides they don't need the leaf-blower. The olives drop into a bin that functions as a scales.

 

 

Weight: 127 kilos ((280 pounds).

Harvesting of olives seems to begin earlier every year. Two factors are at work here. One, yes, global warming. The fruit matures earlier. As soon as the first rains plump the olives (October), they are ready to pick, green and fresh. Also, early milling makes superior virgin oil.

Virgin olive oil is oil that has been extracted solely by mechanical means--crushing and pressing, without the use of high temperatures or chemical disolvents that alter the oil's composition. It is almost the only oil that can be consumed without further refining. 

The next step, the olives are crushed to release the oil. This is the old way for molturación, with grinding stones. It is no longer used at this mill. "Not efficient," said the owner.

Instead, olives go into this machine to be ground up by spinning steel wheels.

This is an old-fashioned olive press. The ground-up olive pulp is spread onto mats, woven of esparto grass or of polyester synthetics. These are stacked on the hydraulic press, which squeezes the pulp tighter and tighter, allowing the oil to flow out through channels at the bottom. This mill no longer uses this press, except for special orders. The reason these presses have fallen into disuse is that they produce less good oil. The mats must be scrupulously cleaned in order to prevent residue from causing rancidity and off flavors in new oil.

Jesús Ayala monitors a modern olive oil extraction machine. The crushed olives are spun at high speed to separate the oil from the water. Forget that old phrase, "cold-pressed oil." Almost all olive oil in this day and age is extracted by a centrifugal process. Big cooperative factories have huge ones. This mill has a small one. During the milling season, the Ayala brothers run it seven days a week.

Straight from the centrifugal extractor, new oil pours out. Fresh-squeezed olive juice.

This oil is unfiltered. After settling a couple of weeks, it will clarify quite a lot.

Modesto Ayala figures out how much I've earned. I could take the money--hardly enough to buy lunch! But, I want the oil. Fifteen liters, he tells me. This is not from my own olives--I don't have enough olives at one time for the "run of the mill" (500 kilos). Working by myself, with a little help from son and grandson, I can't pick enough in one week to make up the minimum. 

Labels applied by hand.

No automated bottling here.

Ben and Leo load three 5-liter jugs of oil. I'm up to 35 liters now and still more olives to pick! Hopefully, we'll finish by next week.

The olive mill of the Ayala family is located in Campo de Mijas (Málaga).

FRESH-SQUEEZED OLIVE JUICE

Ann and Kenton haul olives to the mill.

This is the story of a fellow-American living in Spain. She and her husband have a farm with 850 olive trees. They pick the olives themselves, take them to the mill, and bring home the oil

Even before the press starts to squeeze, oil begins dripping from the tower of mats spread with crushed olives. When the hydraulic press begins to slowly compress, the flow increases. Oil begins to pool in a trough at the bottom. This is pure “olive juice,” squeezed from fresh “fruit,” olives.

Old-fashioned olive press.

Watching are Ann Larson and Kenton Smith, who picked the olives on their 22-acre farm in Yunquera, a white village in the highlands of southern Spain, and hauled them to the mill. Later they will truck the extra virgin oil back to their farm.

The olive juice as it is drawn off into a settling tank does not look appetizing.

“The first time I saw it,” says Kenton, “I was horrified: ‘What have they done to our wonderful olives?’  It looked like old machine oil.”

Oil in settling tank.

Allowed to settle in a convex tank, the oil rises to the top, leaving the dark water and sediment at the bottom. The oil is pumped out into big plastic jugs. Greenish-golden and still very cloudy, the unfiltered oil is ready for use without further treatment. Extra virgin. Fresh-squeezed olive juice.

“We let it rest for a couple months,”says Ann. “It settles more and turns almost clear.”

The traditional olive press in the small village of Yunquera is one of very few still operating in Spain. The process is simple. First the olives are tumbled and air-blowed in a hopper to remove leaves and dirt, then crushed by stones or steel wheels to release the oil. The pulp is spread onto mats woven of esparto grass or of polymer synthetics. These are stacked on a spindle on a hydraulic press, which squeezes the pulp tighter and tighter, allowing the oil to flow out through channels at the bottom.

There is another, modern mill in the village. Like most oil processing in Spain, it uses a far more efficient centrifugal system to extract the oil. After crushing, the olive pulp is spun at high speed to separate the oil from the water and solids.

“Once or twice a week I see tanker trucks with Italian license plates pull up at the gates,” says Kenton. (A lot of Spanish olive oil is exported to Italy, where it is blended and marketed as an Italian export.)

The traditional press, not very different from those used for milennia, is slow, labor-intensive and costly, but, said Ann, the locals think it produces the best oil.

Ann pours new oil for tasting.

Back in the kitchen, where Ann and Kenton enjoy cooking together, Ann pours some new oil into a saucer and cuts up a mollete, fresh-baked bread roll, for dipping. The oil is fresh and fruity, a little herbaceous. For comparison, she sets out some of last year’s oil. It is heavier, more full-bodied.

“This year we started picking early in December,” explains Ann. “Mainly to avoid the high winds that make picking nearly impossible. The locals usually wait as late as possible—February or March—because the yield is greater, but then the olives are over-ripe and the oil isn’t as fresh tasting.”

Ann, who is originally from Sioux Falls, SD, and Kenton, from Suffolk, England, left jobs in information technology eight years ago and moved to their mountaintop farm in Spain.

“We were at the top of an interesting profession, but we were always at the office or on a plane. We never saw our house in daylight. I had to ask, ‘do I want to do the same thing another 25 years?’ “

They traded in their upwardly mobile lifestyle for an abandoned farm on a mountainside facing the Sierra de las Nieves national forest. There they built a small house amongst olive and chestnut trees with astonishing views to the tumble of white-washed houses of the village, across hills all the way to the Mediterranean coast.

“We grow almost all our own vegetables, and cook with our own olive oil,” Ann tells me, “very much enjoying the more natural, outdoor life here, and the open way of living. Most of our friends in the village are farmers like ourselves. They’re finding it hard to make a living with dropping agricultural prices. In fact, many are just abandoning their land, because farming just doesn't pay.”

Estate-bottled olive oil.

Ann and Kenton sell oil under their own label, Yunquera Gold, bottled in recycled wine bottles, or, for shipping to the US, in silver-grey Pepsi Light bottles. Now, that’s estate-bottled oil. But the oil is a hobby, not a business.

 “It’s too expensive to bottle mechanically,” says Ann. (http://www.yunqueragold.com for more about Ann and Kenton’s olive oil and life in Spain.)

A few years ago, Ann and Kenton started using their virgin oil to make artisanal soap for Christmas gifts. Stirred up in their small kitchen, the soap was scented with locally grown herbs and flowers.

“We were stunned at the difference between our soap made from olive oil and commercial soaps,” says Ann. Instead of just clean skin, we had clean, soft and moisturized skin. This is because commercial soaps have all kinds of additives in them and the manufacturers strip out the ‘good stuff’ (glycerin) for use in other beauty products.”

Silky olive oil cream has spicy scent.

Besides soap, Ann and Kenton developed blends of olive and other oils for body and face creams as well as hair care products. Easier to ship world-wide, the beauty products are proving quite successful. (http://www.lujos.co.uk for more information.)

Ann has been collecting recipes from the locals, starting with Manuel, a neighbor, who has coached them through olive harvests and pruning. This is a traditional Yunquera dish—a “soup,” often cooked outdoors on a wood fire.  (The recipe for Sopa y Bollo is compiled by Ann Larson and used with permission.)

Sopa y bollo, cooked outdoors during olive harvesting. (Photo by Kenton Smith, used with permission.)

Yunquera Soup and Accompaniments
Sopa y bollo

Ann’s notes: The sopa is served first. When people have eaten almost enough, bollo is made from the remaining sopa. This is because the bollo contains expensive ingredients! My grandmother did the same by serving my farmer grandfather fried potatoes first, then the meat and veg afterwards.

Olive oil
5-6 large potatoes, peeled and sliced
2 large onions, sliced
4 long green peppers, sliced
1 large tomato
A few fava beans, cut into ½ inch pieces, but not shelled
A few asparagus stalks, torn into small pieces
1 head garlic, broken into cloves but not peeled
1 loaf day old bread, torn into small pieces


Heat olive oil, then add potatoes. Turn occasionally, so they don’t burn on the bottom, but don’t turn too much or they will break apart.

When softened, add the onions and garlic; cook a few minutes more, then add the green pepper and tomato, and other vegetables. Cook until potatoes are ‘al dente’.

Add water to cover the potatoes; after it boils, heat through a few minutes. Add the torn bread and cook until the liquid has been absorbed.

When people have nearly eaten their fill, prepare the bollo.

Bollo

1 tin tuna, not drained
2 hard boiled eggs, chopped
2 spring onions, chopped
1 orange, peeled and chopped

Add the above ingredients to the remaining sopa, and stir.

OLIVE OIL FRIES

Patatas fritas--olive oil fries.

I’ve just come back from the mill with a 5-liter jug of fresh extra virgin olive oil, fruit of my labor—I picked 60 kilos (132 pounds) of olives. I’ve still got more to pick, so, hopefully, I’ll earn another 5 to 10 liters, enough for all my cooking for about nine months.

Olive oil from the mill.

I use olive oil exclusively in my kitchen—to “butter” the toast, to baste a turkey, drizzle on green beans, dress a salad, sautée and stir-fry. I don’t do a lot of “deep” frying, not because olive oil is not suitable, but because of calorie considerations.

But today I’m making a pile of fries, Spanish fries, olive oil fries. Fried potatoes are a wonderful flavor-test for new oil. I thick-cut the potatoes, heat the oil to about 360ºF—only about 2 inches of oil, enough to barely submerge the potatoes. At that temperature the oil is shimmering, not quite smoking. —and let them fry until tender, lightly crusted and golden. This takes 10 to 15 minutes.

Potatoes frying in olive oil.

Drained on paper towels and sprinkled with salt, they are ready to eat. These fries are not crisp. If you want them crisp, more like “french” fries, reheat the oil and return the potatoes to the pan until browned. They will emerge from the second frying with a crunchy exterior.

When the oil is cool, I strain and reserve it. Olive oil can be used three or four times for frying. (Unlike other oils, which break down with repeated use.) Maybe some croquettes or boquerones, fresh anchovies, will be next.

Whatever you’ve heard about olive oil not being suitable for deep frying is a myth. What can be said is that, because the fruity olive aromas are lost at high temperatures, frying is not what you want to do with your very pricey, delicate olive oil. My extra virgin oil, straight from the mill, is relatively cheap. I can afford to use it for frying. If cost is an issue, you can use non-virgin olive oil (simply labeled “olive oil”), for frying.

To accompany my patatas fritas, fried potatoes, I made some piquillo pepper garlic mayonnaise, also using the new oil. Really good slathered on a burger, too.

Olive Oil Mayonnaise with Garlic and Piquillo Peppers
Alioli

Makes about 1 cup.

1 to 2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 egg, at room temperature
¾ cup extra virgin olive oil
½ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice or 2 tablespoons vinegar
2 canned piquillo peppers, well drained, or roasted red peppers

Put the garlic and egg in a blender and pulse until garlic is finely chopped. With the motor running, pour in the oil in a slow trickle, allowing it to be absorbed by the egg before adding more. Blend in all the oil. The sauce will emulsify and thicken. Blend in the salt and lemon juice. Add the chopped piquillo peppers and blend until smooth.

The sauce will keep, refrigerated, for up to 2 days.

Fries with piquillo alioli.

THE FAMILY THAT PICKS TOGETHER STICKS TOGETHER

Last weekend, with glorious fall weather, my son, Ben; grandson, Leo; visiting friend, Donna, and hired man, Juan, gathered to help me pick the olive crop. Donna and I had already filled one gunny sack with pickings from several small trees, but that day we gathered the olives from a single big tree.

With a tarp spread on the ground to catch fallen olives, Ben clambered up the tree to cut down high branches with a chain saw. The tree badly needed pruning anyway and it’s way easier to hand-pick the olives once the limbs are on the ground. Donna could sit on a chair, “milking” (ordeñar) the olives right into a bucket.

I picked from limbs within reach—great stretching exercise! Leo, six, rolled olives on the tarp into a bucket, then happily used twigs to make fantastical play creatures.

Olives on remaining high branches were brought down by vareo, thrashing the branches with a cane pole (cane grows wild in the arroyo, free for the picking) and rastrilla, raking through branches to drop olives onto the tarp. Later, limbs will be cut up and stacked for next year’s firewood.

We loaded four big sacks of olives into the trunk of my car, the fruits of two-days picking. On Monday I drove to the almazara, oil mill, in a nearby town.

Dumped into a hopper on a scales, my olives weighed in at 143 kilos (315 pounds). The going price was a very low 24 centimos per kilo and the price of new oil, 3 euros a liter (quart). Nevertheless, I was smiling as I loaded 11 liters of fruity, fragrant, cloudy extra virgin olive oil to take back to my kitchen and to share with the people who helped me. (Thanks, Donna!)

Picking olives together on a sunny day with family and friends was actually fun. However, it's not easy work. I’m glad my livelihood doesn’t depend on it! 

I still have several trees to be picked. Maybe when Ben and Leo come for a visit over Christmas holidays.

I made an olive pickers’ stew to feed my crew. This recipe is taken from my book COOKING FROM THE HEART OF SPAIN—FOOD OF LA MANCHA. The stew comes from the Montes de Toledo, an area famous for its olive oil. Groups of pickers work all day in the olive groves. They make a roaring fire, to warm the hands and cook the midday meal. The traditional version is made with bacalao, dry salt cod that has been soaked for 24 hours to de-salt it. In this recipe I have used fresh cod, which needs only minutes to cook. If you use salt cod, cook it very gently with the potatoes. I like the addition of something green—in this case asparagus.

Olive Pickers’ Cod and Potato Stew
Pote Aceitunero

Serves 4.

1 pound cod fillets, cut into ¾-inch cubes
Salt
2 pounds potatoes, cut into ¾-inch cubes
¼ cup olive oil
1 bay leaf
1 dry chile, such as cayenne
2 cloves garlic
1 whole, medium tomato
1 cup coarsely chopped onion
¼ teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon sweet pimentón (preferably smoked)
½ teaspoon hot pimentón or pinch of cayenne
1 cup sliced, cooked asparagus (optional)
1 egg

Sprinkle the cod with salt and let stand at room temperature.

Place the potatoes in a soup pot or deep skillet with the oil and sauté 2 minutes. Tuck the bay leaf and chile into the potatoes and add 2 teaspoons salt and 2 cups water. Bring to a boil.

Cut a small slit in one, unpeeled, clove of garlic and add it to the potatoes with tomato and onion. Cover and simmer the potatoes until almost tender, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove and discard bay leaf and chile. Skim out the clove of garlic and tomato.

Remove skin from cooked garlic and tomato and place them in a blender with 1 clove peeled raw garlic, cumin, sweet pimentón, hot pimentón, and ½ cup of liquid from the potatoes. Blend until smooth. Add this sauce to the potatoes and cook 5 minutes.

Add the cod to the pot and cook until it just flakes, about 3 minutes. Stir in the asparagus, if using. Raise the heat so the liquid bubbles. Break the egg into the pot. Use a fork to stir it into the cod and potatoes, about 1 minute. Remove from heat and allow the stew to rest 5 minutes. Serve in shallow soup bowls.