Roasted olives with garlic, rosemary and orange

With Christmas just a couple of months away (yes hard to believe but it is) its time for me to  think about what edible gift I could make for family and friends.  A simple recipe I discovered transforms ordinary olives in brine into big flavoured olives by roasting in oil and other flavours.

I discovered the recipe at the Fred’s Cafe in Ponsonby in the cookbook “Danks Street Depot” by Australian chef Jared Ingersoll based in Sydney.

Roasted Olives with Rosemary, Garlic and Orange

Makes enough to fill a 6 cup jar.

1 kg olives in brine (don’t use pitted olives but you can use any variety you like)

1 bulb of garlic – broken into cloves, with the skins left on

3 stalks of rosemary

Generous pinch of ground black pepper

about 500ml or 2 cups of extra virgin olive oil

Peel and juice of 2 oranges, peel cut into strips

I chose Kalamata olives that came in a large plastic container – you want good olives but often there are bargains if buying in bulk.

First step is to rinse the brine off the olives and put into a large saucepan.  I used a large wok shaped pot.

Next add the garlic, orange peel cut into strips, and rosemary.

Add the olive oil, pepper and bring up to a very gentle simmer and simmer for about ten minutes.

Now add the freshly squeezed orange juice.

Simmer again and continue to cook until the garlic is soft.  The olives are supposed to be done when they start to wrinkle – about another 20 minutes.

As I chose larger kalamata olives it took about an hour and they still   weren’t wrinkled, but the orange and garlic was certainly soft so it was time for bottling.

The jars need to be sterilised. The olives made a smaller jar to give away as a gift and a large preserving jar with the olives that I put in the fridge to bring out over the Christmas period. They will keep for a couple of months.

I used the oil to brush on bruschetta to toast in the oven and drizzled a little more over the finished pieces plus using some olives.   

It could be the perfect value added gift to make this Christmas because after enjoying the olives the remaining flavoured oil can be used in salad dressings or drizzled over bruschetta.