Olives and other sweets

Olives from Campo Real

The Spanish word for olive, aceituna, comes, like many of my favourite Spanish words, from Arabic. Az-Zait, which means the juice of the olive, gave Spanish the word aceite, which now refers to any type of oil, but in Spain, usually olive, used liberally in both sweet and savoury dishes.  Aceitunas, or olives themselves, are also eaten frequently, not just as an aperitivo with sherry or a caña (small beer), but also in salads, in sauces and can even be bought in plastic bags from sweet shops.  In the UK, olives have a reputation of being an acquired taste, but I´ve never met a Spaniard who doesn´t like them.  They are a favourite food of my friends´ one year old daughter, which I took, along with her passion for jamon iberico, as one of the many signs of her future as a great gourmet.  That was until I was waiting to be served outside a uniquely Spanish grocery store, which along with various tins of conserves, jars of frutos secos, which refers to nuts as well as what we´d call dried fruits, tubs of lentils and cartons of stock, had a whole deli counter dedicated to various types of pickled fish, olives and vegetables.

A window display of sweets and lentils by the gram

I thought the excitement of the children in front of me, who ranged in age from about 5 to 10, was due to the presence in the window of displays of brightly coloured sweets and chocolates.  But as they pointed out the tins of picked fish, crying “¡mejillones!” (mussels) and salivated over the black olives, it became rapidly apparent that they didn´t have a sweet tooth between them.  “This man has the most delicious job” declared the eldest “He can eat all the olives and pickles he wants.”
“Even better than the pastelero?” Asked his father, referring to someone who works in a cake shop.  “Hmmm” replied his son “Well, that depends what kind of cakes he sells.”
The delicatessen offered the children some of the new season´s Campo Reales, young, fresh tasting green olives from a designated area of the Communidad de Madrid which are marinated with fennel, garlic, thyme and oregano.  They happily munched away, before leaving with their treasure, two pots of olives, marinated with onion and peppers.
Perhaps Spanish children, being exposed to the regular consumption of olives by their mothers from the womb are born with a taste for them, or perhaps it´s in their DNA, I really can´t imagine the same exchange taking place in the UK.

I used some of the olives I bought in an easy sauce that was delicious with fish:

olive and caper sauce for fish

3 tbsp prepared mayonnaise
6 green olives (with stones in, stoned olives quickly lose their flavour)
2 tsp capers
1 tbsp small gherkins (cornichons)
Juice of half  a lemon
Salt and pepper

Crush the olives under a heavy knife to extract the stones then finely chop the flesh, slice the gherkins finely and mix all other ingredients.  Season with salt and pepper.  It would have been great with some finely chopped fresh flat leaf parsley in it but I didn´t have any!