i found these great olives, just picked, at the Collingwood Farmers' Market, they were beautiful and fat and I couldn't wait to eat them. in my impatience I searched every reference for the shortest curing method I could find, and finding nothing suitably hasty I decided on a saturated brine solution (drastic, I know).
not content with just a sodium overdose, I first blanched the olives in boiling water, then JG cut a slit into each one before we poured the over hot brine solution. we were thinking that would take perhaps a week, but after two days the olives were beginning to shrivel and wrinkle.
by the third day I feared I might have ruined them, so I opened the jar. surprisingly they were still slightly bitter, but soft and beautifully flavoured and essentially ready (if you have a sodium fetish, as we do).
I blanched them again in boiling water to get rid of some salt and then put them back in the jar with the mildest brine solution, which is mitigating the saltiness and bitterness as we're eating them.
it sounds like a terrible abuse of good olives, and results in some uneven softness of the fruit, but it means eating delicious home cured olives in three days.
