It’s hard to imagine just what a party would be like without the olive. Not only would we not have the martini (we’d have only the Gibson), but also, the highlight of any cocktail party might still be Cheese Whiz stuffed celery boats.

From its lowly origins as a wild shrub growing across the Mediterranean, Africa and parts of Asia, the olive has become a symbol for peace, a symbol for heroic accomplishment and the key ingredient of countless Mediterranean traditional dishes such as puttanesca pasta, tapenade and Greek salads.

            The fruit of the wild olive was bitter and inedible. The olives we are familiar with today were cultivated from this wild ancestor, possibly as early as 2500 BC, but it didn’t make its way to North America until the 1700s, when the Spanish brought the Manzanilla olive to California.

All olives will turn black or brown-purple if left to ripen on the tree. The stage they are picked at determines the degree of bitterness (green-picked are stronger flavoured) and the texture (green are firmer). The method of curing and spices used also will determine bitterness, firmness, flavour and colour. Spanish, Greek and Moroccan are just a few of the traditional and well-defined methods of curing. Sometimes, olives take their name from their particular method of curing, such as Greek olives, or they may take their name from the town of their origin, such as Nicoise, or they may simply go by their olive variety, such as the Cerignola.

Olives must be cured before eating in order to leach out the bitter glucoside found in the skin. Curing can be done in brine, water, and oil or by dry salting. While other countries make their olives spicy with various brines, herbs and peppers, North Americans preferred their olives tame in flavour, uniform in size and flawless in appearance. In response to this need, and in order to sell America on olives, the California olive growers developed a method of turning green-picked Mission olives black by oxidation, and then curing them in mild brine. This became known the world over as the California olive, or, pizza olive. The other popular North American olive, the cocktail or martini olive, is also a green-picked olive, cured in lye brine and stuffed with a pimento. Well, not actually a pimento, but an extruded puree of pimento and carrageen, which is squeezed out of a machine in long strips and mechanically stuffed into each perfectly uniform olive. Methods for stuffing other fillings such as anchovies, garlic, almonds or jalapenos have not, rather fortunately, been discovered. These and many other fillings are still done by hand, and these olives tend to be more expensive.

It has taken a long time for North Americans to warm up to stronger tasting olives. For years, our only contact with this fruit was with either the pimento-stuffed cocktail variety or the black, pitted and sliced canned variety. Most of us likely had our first encounter with the “foreign” olives when we ate our first Greek salad, and it is likely that the majority of us pushed the Kalamata olives away, finding them too pungent. North American recipes, which call for black olives, are likely to mean the mild California type. They work great for omelettes, quick salads and breads. If you are making a strong-flavoured dish such as black olive tapenade, the recipe should specify Kalamata or Nicoise olives. The others would make a bland spread.

It’s encouraging to think that our taste buds have finally matured enough to enjoy what the rest of the world has always seemed to enjoy, strongly defined flavours. I can walk into any grocery deli section these days, and buy at least ten different types of olives. Kalamata are now the “regular” and you can find olives that will satisfy any taste, from hot and peppery to garlicky and herbed. Last Christmas, I found some Cerignola olives that had been cured to turn red. The Cerignola is the largest and meatiest of the olives, and is generally cured to be very mild. They are great snacking olives. They generally are a bright green, so I thought that the red and green would make for a lovely seasonal appetizer. Apparently, I was the only one who thought this way, and I ended up having to throw them all away!

It is very unlikely that you will ever come across fresh olives, but you can still make your own flavoured brines to pour over drained olives. Queen stone-in olives work best for this. Jordan and I once made a great batch using brandy in our brine. We have also (once) taken a four-litre jar of large pimento stuffed olives, poked out all of the “pimento” and re-stuffed them with jalapenos. You could also do this with walnuts or sun-dried tomatoes or even cream cheese.

            For those concerned about carbohydrates, fats, salt and calories, yes, olives do contain all of the above. But they do have some nutritional value and at least the fat is the good kind. If you think that a few olives a day is causing you to gain weight, you’d better cut back on the martinis.