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Ever wondered about
the
life of an olive? In Spain,
they say it takes
more
than a lifetime to grow an
olive tree: the
grandfather
plants it, the father grows it and the
grandson
harvests it.
The olive tree starts
producing olives between 5 and 10 years from planting and its maximum
production is reached between 35 and 100-150 years old. So it’s true that
the olive tree gets better with age!
Olive trees flourish in
spring and only 1 of 20 flowers will become an olive. Right now, with
Spain in the midst of summer, our humble olive is growing and over the
next 2 months it will begin to gradually turn from green to purple and
increase its oil contents as it
matures.
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Olives
Explained
With
over 260 varieties of olives from Spain, it is no wonder they come in so
many different sizes and colours. One of the most common questions we are
asked is, “Why are the olives different colours?” So in each email alert
we will explain different olives and varieties.
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Let’s start
with green olives. They are picked before they are ripe to maintain their
colour and firm texture. To determine when a green olive should be picked,
harvesters evaluate their size, as their colour can vary from strong green
to straw yellow.
Once green olives are picked, any with bumps or
bruises are discarded to ensure the best quality olives from Spain.
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Peter Evans’ Mountain Style
Rainbow Trout
Ingredients
4 tablespoons Spanish olive
oil
4
whole rainbow trout, cleaned and gutted
plain flour, seasoned with salt
and pepper, for dusting
4 tablespoons butter
juice of 2 lemons, plus
2 more
lemons, halved
4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 banana chillies, seeded and
thinly sliced
16 sage leaves
2 kipfler potatoes, boiled and thickly
sliced
16
cherry tomatoes, cut in half
12 caperberries
16 olives from
Spain
Heat the oil in a large frying pan. Dust the fish with
seasoned flour and add
to the hot oil. Cook the trout until golden and
crisp on one side, then turn
over, add the butter and cook until it turns nut
brown.
Add the lemon juice, garlic, chilli and sage leaves and cook
for a minute,
then add the potatoes, tomatoes, caperberries, olives and
lemon halves,
cut side down, and cook for a further minute until the fish is
cooked through.
For this dish, you could also replace
the rainbow trout with brown trout, barramundi, snapper, bream, mulloway
or prawns.
Serves
4
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This month’s
feature
recipe comes from well
known chef,
restaurateur,
television presenter and
fisherman, Pete
Evans.
Taken from his book, Fish,
Pete shows how to combine
olives from Spain with beautiful fresh fish to make a mouth watering meal.
Fish,
by Pete Evans.
Photography by Alan
Benson. Published by
Murdoch
Books.
RRP $34.95.
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