Olives

Let me tell you about olives, and why a raw olive is a thing you could never just eat off the tree.

A fresh olive is bitter beyond belief — nobody bites into one in the orchard and smiles. That bitterness has to be pulled out, by brine, by salt, by time. That's the whole story of an olive: it's not a fruit you eat raw, it's a fruit you negotiate with. One piece weighs very little, but what matters most is what's in the jar, not the fruit alone — taste the brine before you taste the olive. A little tang is normal, that's just the cure talking. What should put you off is anything musty, flat, or plain off, the way bad brine smells when you lift the lid.

Choose by smell first. A good olive smells of the brine and of itself — green and grassy, or deep and winey if it's black. If it smells sharp in a bad way, put the jar back.

Some people say black olives and green olives are two different fruits. No! They're the same olive — olives turn from green to black as they ripen, right there on the tree. What matters to you in the kitchen is that they taste and feel different in the mouth, one sharper, one softer. Before you swap one for the other in a recipe, taste a piece of each off a fork. Your tongue will tell you faster than any rule can.