Where do we begin when we think about the complex task of chopping an olive. Our ancient ancestors would be shocked to hear that we would even consider such a task. I can hear them now, “chopping an olive? how about chopping up a boar and feeding the village?” It’s painstaking knowing the process an olive goes through just to make it to the antipasti bar or tightly packed jar in the supermarket. Can you imagine being any regular ole olive knowing very well you might get passed up for a Castelvetrano? Consider the knife and the cutting board before the act of chopping an olive. Let’s narrow our attention to the refined discipline of chopping an olive.
Choosing the right olive is the first step to reaching Mt. Olympus. I dare you to skip the Castelvetrano olives and give another lucky set of girls their big break. Moroccan black olives are reminiscent of dark turds baking in the afternoon sun, but actually delicious. One of these olives eaten raw is a sucker-punch you never asked for. Okay, while we’re at it here, what the hell happened to Niçoise olives? Too small to care? Selecting the an interesting olive can spark good dialogue.
“Oh what olive is this?”, a dinner guest might ask.
“Well, I decided to use Lucques.”
“Who’s Lucques?”
“Oh, haha, it’s a type of olive.”
“Really? Never heard of it.”
“Yeah, they’re french.”
“Who’s french?”
“The olives are French.”
“Oh, I see.”
Wonderful conversations are just waiting to be had over a funky olive making an appearance. So you’ve made a choice, hooray, but the olive hasn’t been chopped yet.
Storing the olives well honors the life it’s led to make its way into your home. Oil cured olives need basically nothing. Olives stored in brine need to be submerged or they will oxidize and get a weird tan. If you somehow bought fresh olives, God bless, I wish you well. I’m going to say this carefully, I don’t think olives need to refrigerated. I can hear the sirens now as the FDA or USDA swarms my block waiting to arrest me. The time invested to process an olive to be palatable is the equivalent of trying to watch “Killers of the Flower Moon” while the kids are still up. A lifetime later, astringency removed, the olives are shelf stable and (signaling index finger and pinky up) ready to rock.
Nestled along an arid slope in Greece lies an olive grove shuttering at the idea they’ll be hacked into with a dull blade. The olives certainly haven’t sucked every last drop of water through the roots just to produce millimeters worth of fruit attached to a pit to get shaken off a branch drowning in a sodium solution to be whacked with an unsharpened dagger. No, no, no. Oh my God, the knife! We have to sharpen the knife. The cutting board should be afraid at how sharp the knife is. Take your tools seriously, you can get hurt out there. When cutting into a fruit as old as an olive, one mustn’t wield a weapon of mass dysfunction. Staring down the edge you should see a precise line that will cast many incisions upon the olives.
Vulnerable and open the olives are ready to be chopped. Centuries old farming techniques, methods of preservation and family tradition are locked away in the flesh of an olive. Underneath the olive trees lay tightly woven nets or a tarp attempting to catch any and all fruit for harvest. There are amphora and hydria depicting the importance of olives. These relics are a portal to the past revealing the mythic energy stored in each olive. As the tip of the knife makes its way towards the cutting board the olives resign. When the pits are removed the olives memory of time and place is gone. Queue up Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn,” the olives sing in harmony, “nothings fine I’m torn, this is how I feel, I’m cold and I’m shamed…” And that is how to chop olives.
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