Needing help to make olives taste good!

[Cherrango]

Hi guys! I have found a good truly raw foods distributor and purchased some raw "botija" olives along with a few other supplies. Well, these olives are unsalted and, I'm pretty sure, unfermented as well (although they are black in colour), just dried, and....they taste HORRID! :eek: Like a bitter oil slick in my mouth!! In fairness, when I went to buy them, the person taking my order mentioned that they taste really strong and nothing like one would expect. But I am a big time olive lover and thought I could handle an intensely flavoured olive. Not so, sadly. So, my question is, what can I do to these to get them to be edible? I think it is salt they *really* need, so could I brine them somehow? I don't know how long they would need to soak, if that is the case. Any help would be much appreciated-I don't want them to go to waste.

[spicyfull]

If they are dried they should last a while. Why not soak a few in salt and keep tasting them to see how the flavor changes. I would love to find some dried ones. I also have a Passion for Olives.

[NoniPixie]

you can get some good dried bottilla olives from david wolfes site. sunfood.com. they are sooo yummy. and actually pretty cheep for a bags worth. i like them lots cause when you eat a lot of raw food for me i really just crave the texture of certain things. and i think the dried olives provide a good fleshy meaty texture. they're yummy.

also if you like olives a lot maybe you can make them into a tapenade. that way you can mix all the spices, salt, and olive you want to them. i think there's a recipe for it on goneraw.com.

[jacsam]

Maybe use them in a Marinara sauce and add more salt...yikes, I love olive too but I'll stear away from those and try the ones Noni pixie talked about.

[Bobbie]

I absolutely adore the sundried unsalted black olives, so you could send them to me! I usually hate bitter things, but the ones I had were the bitter-est things I'd ever tasted and I was absolutely addicted. I bought them to use in a chocolate cake recipe but I ended up eating them all plain, because I couldn't bare to "waste" them in a recipe.
Usually I like olives but not specially. These ones are one of my favourite foods ever. But I've only bought them the once because the cost £10 ($20) here and I would just eat them in one day which seems extravagant.

My mum who is crazy about olives, tried one and spit it out and said it was disgusting.

So....you could either send them to me, or you could use them in the chocolate cake recipe - I'm not sure where my book is, but someone else might have it. Its Eat Smart Eat Raw by Kate Wood.

[Bobbie]

Usually if I'm trying to make something less bitter, lots of sweetener does the trick.