Debs Kitchen

My latest adventure was to be a part of a special group that learns to cure olives at Pasolivo Olive Ranch in Paso Robles. Farmer Bill (Spencer), Windrose Farm, led us through a fun day of how to cure the bitterness from fresh picked olives so that what you end up with are luscious, meaty, beautiful olives for your table.

We drove from So. California just as the wind was beginning to blow and missed most of the storm during the drive to Cambria on the central coast. The town was pretty quiet as we pulled in and the vacation rental company was closed so our house keys were in their lock box. I thought maybe they closed down early that day as it was ‘hospitality’ night and everyone wanted to get home early.We headed over the hill to our rental and turned to pull off the road onto our street but this tree kind of blocked the way…..

We managed to find a way around the tree and up the hill to our house. We unloaded and began to settle in when we realized we had no power, hmmm, I wonder if that tree had anything to do with it, duh! Did you see the size of that tree? Come to find out the entire town was without power. Lucky for us we stopped in Morro Bay and did a little shopping! We stocked up on wine, salad fixings, potatoes to bake for Sat. dinner. I’d brought frozen steaks and we thought we’d throw them on the bbq. I happened to find this great deal on frozen lobster claws and legs in Morro Bay and so I grabbed a bag, again lucky for us because with the town closed down and no power, the steaks were still frozen so we cooked the lobster, slice up the potatoes and fried them up in a little olive oil. Quite a candlelit dinner we had! A bit of a cold night as we couldn’t get the wood in the fireplace to burn and not one scrap of kindling.

We headed out for Paso Robles and our olive curing fun in the morning where group of about 30 ‘press club’ members gathered at the ranch and began sorting through the just picked olives. In the beginning one is very careful about which olive end up in the ‘good’ bucket. You want to discard any olive that has any blemishes or ‘bad’ spots, any leaves and any debris go into the compost bucket destined for….you guessed it, the compost pile!

Rinse, and repeat and repeat and repeat. Mix up the water and lye and add to the olives for 8-10 hours, we chose overnight.

Ciro came for lunch with his wood burning oven on a trailer hooked up to his truck. He fired up the wood and whipped up pizza after pizza after pizza. If you’ve ever had Ciro’s pizza you know he makes the best pizza in Paso Robles or almost anywhere as far as I’m concerned. A simple bean salad drizzled with Pasolivo Extra Virgin Olive oil and huge chunks of Ciro’s Italian bread.

Back to the ranch the next day to check how far the lye mixture penetrated the olive. A second cure of water and lye is mixed and the olives once again rest overnight. At this point the lye has leached out most of the bitterness and we go on to the water bath. Now I might tell you too that because it’s been so cold that rinsing a 5 gal. bucket of olives/water is not the most fun. My hands were numb from the cold as you rinse the olives at least 3-4 times with fresh water before you cover them with water for another overnight bath. You get to repeat this procedure every day for 10 days and then every 3 days for another week.

BUT, if you’re really lucky-like I am-my olives finished their water bath by the 4th day and I was able to jar them with liquid and spices….

I’ll leave them to steep for a few weeks and then feast on them daily until next year!