Well yes, I pitted all these 650 grams of black olives by hand. It was a rather meditative activ… naaaah, it wasn’t, it was a boring activity which took away 45 minutes of my life. Not bad for the delicious result though.

 

 

Whenever I visit Turkey for a couple of weeks of holiday at least, I buy a jar of black olive paste available in many markets and eat it happily at breakfast. I love olives, I love all kinds of olives. And naturally, I also love this paste, which is only made with black olives for some reason (at least that is what I encountered only, maybe there is also other versions). Actually, you know what, I will also try it with other kinds of olives in the future.

 

 

 

There is nothing mind blowing about this recipe, honestly. You just put 4 ingredients in a food processor and that’s it. Your taste buds will blow afterwards though.

 

 

As I wrote in my first sentence, I pitted the olives by hand. It isn’t hard by any means, it just takes time. If you have one of those olive pitters, by all means, use it. Otherwise, I highly recommend using disposable gloves, because it gets slightly messy.

 

 

Enjoy your olive paste with fresh bread in the morning, with bread or crackers or even chips in any other time of the day as a snack. Yum!
—

 

Ingredients:

 

Difficulty: Easy
(makes about 1 lt. jar full of paste)

 

Printable PDF-recipe (no photos)

 

650 gr. black olives*, soaked in very hot water for 20 minutes, then pitted by hand**
juice of 1 + 1 lemons***
4 tbsp olive oil
4 tbsp rapeseed oil (or another vegetable oil of your choice)
3 cloves of garlic (in the photos you see 2 cloves but I added 1 more in the end)

 

*You can of course buy pitted black olives in normal markets. But, the regular black olives (and most of the green ones for that matter) are not tasty at all. So I bought delicious black olives from Turkish market in Itäkeskus. These are already soft, wrinkled, salty olives. I highly recommend something like that: http://alanyamarket.fi/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/687-1-325×390.jpg
**Soaking the olives in hot water makes them even softer and thus, easier to pit. How to pit olives, other than just putting on a pair of disposable gloves and go into the bowl with both hands? Check out wikihow then: https://www.wikihow.com/Pit-Olives
***Depending on the saltiness and taste of your olives, you might want to use just 1 lemon’s juice or both. So I recommend having 2 lemons at hand but using them gradually, as needed, according to your taste.

 

 

—

 

1. Put all the ingredients in a food processor (remember the note about how much lemon juice to use above). Process until you get a paste!

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. If needed, scrape the sides using a spatula and then continue processing.

 

 

 

3. When the texture is smooth enough (I like leaving a bit of chunks here and there), taste it. If you feel like you need more lemony taste, add a little more lemon juice. If you feel like you need more salt, then add salt (but really, salt is something I really don’t think you will need if you use the black olives I recommend, you might even find it a bit too salty so maybe, taste your olives before the whole process begins to see if you need to wash them a bit or not..). When everything is good enough, put the paste in a jar and tightly close the lid. The paste stays well for a bit more than a month in the fridge! Enjoy!