Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Marinated olives

I needed to take something to the department potluck and I wanted something easy. I signed up for an appetizer and decided to bring marinated artichoke hearts and marinated olives. The artichoke hearts came from a jar; the hard part of the prep was opening the jar. No, seriously, the lid was on so tight, it took us several tries to open the jar. As for the olives, I searched online and found several recipes, but either didn't have the right ingredients or thought the recipes were too complicated. Either my coworkers really like olives or I came up with a great recipe because I got lots of compliments from the cooks in the group. But really, how can you go wrong with garlic and olive oil? Here's my recipe (sorry, I don't have a photo).

Ingredients
1 can black olives
1 can green olives
Zest and juice from 1/2 of a medium lemon. The zest should be in strips.
2-3 short sprigs of thyme (the sprigs I had were about 4 inches long)
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup olive oil

Directions
Mix all the ingredients together. The olive oil/lemon juice should coat, but will not cover the olives. You may need to add a bit more olive oil.

Marinate overnight.

Serve cold or at room temperature. Add a few more sprigs of thyme for garnish.

Notes
Several recipes called for grated zest, but I thought that the peel was more attractive in strips. Also, I wanted the lemon flavor to be more subtle since I wasn't sure how the marinade would turn out.

Feel free to experiment with different herbs, vinegars, and olive oil.

1 comment:

Nancy Thomas said...

Sounds yummy Arlyn. I never really thought about marinating my own olives - I usually have to hit up the expensive olive bar at Whole Foods. I definitely need to give this a try.