HOT OLIVES

A few days ago I mentioned a fabulous dish of hot olives brought to us at lunchtime. It had never occurred to me to eat them as a veggie. Several blippers expressed an interest in knowing how to make them. Any blip idea is greeted with joy in these parts so here they are although they do not make a pretty picture.

They were made from fresh olives soaked in brine for two weeks. It's a natural end-of-harvest dish, of course. Few have access to fresh olives so I asked myself why not use ordinary olives in brine. It works but you wouldn't want the huge jumbo olives which taste of nothing nor the sharp green ones, either. The small French or Italian ones still with their seeds are just the thing. They are available in jars or in vacuum packs.

It's simple. Saute chopped onions in a very generous amount of olive oil for a few minutes but do not brown. Add a tin of chopped tomatoes. Cook until the oil separates from the tomatoes. This takes time, about 40 minutes on a slow simmer. The sauce should be mellow, not sharp or sour. Add the olives, cook for 5 or 10 minutes. That's it. I'm sure garlic and chili could be added but no salt. There is plenty in the olives.

These cooked olives, poured over little goats cheeses in individual ramekins and baked in the oven until sizzling would make a nice starter or lunch dish.

For the record: Not quite so dark today, the Sirocco from Africa is still with us so it is warm, + 11C. The boar hunters are out, men are shouting, the valley dogs are barking, Cloud and Luigi are exhausted from it. An ambulance wailed its way up the twisting roads, a brutto suono, an ugly sound, as they say. It was not for a hunter. It went to the big villa owned by people from the Netherlands.