These aren’t my mama’s olives. Not the pickle-like sharpness of the pimiento-stuffed olives that swam in Mom’s occasional martinis. Not the pitted crow-feather black olives that cuddled between gherkins and pickled watermelon rind in our holiday relish dish; those were tasteless gloomy orbs cured with lye and dyed with chemical additives. I used them for jolly fingertip adornments.

Today’s marketplace is filled with olives of a much hipper sort, more than a mere cocktail garnish or holiday amusement. Intense, flavor-packed Mediterranean-style beauties — bronze, mauve, jet black or army green, are fleshy fruit that set taste buds atwitter. Some are tiny football shapes. Others range from small, shriveled nuggets to glossy, smooth, walnut-sized wonders.

Bite into one. The delicious flavors

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