My Life in Food and The Taming of the Nolche Olives

I’ve had a somewhat love / hate relationship with food and cookery over the years.  As a kid, I was blessed with having a mother who enjoyed cooking and baking (we rarely had fast food) and a half-Khasi, half-Irish grandmother (raised in Shillong, Meghalaya, Northeastern India) who was a dab hand in the kitchen and made all manner of delicious curries and fragrant dhals.  My dad was also a barbecue enthusiast during the warmer months and we’d spend hours concocting new marinades, at times using ingredients that would usually be considered unconventional in the preparation of a savoury meal.   

My secondary school made it compulsory to study a technology for GCSE-level and I opted for Food Technology (eating your creations was a benefit that Woodwork, Electronics and Textiles couldn’t offer).  I did pretty well across the board in the exams we had to take aged 16 but bizarrely, my highest mark came in Food, with an A*.  Fortuitously I did my coursework all about Italian cuisine and even made my own ravioli and tagliatelle using a neighbour’s pasta machine. 

At university cooking fell way down the priority list in favour of nights out, socialising and my band.  During this period, my specialities included beef goulash out of a can, served with McCain microwave chips, noodles coated with pesto from a jar (to this day I can no longer enjoy the flavour of pesto) and an array of supermarket microwave ready-meals.  If I had £20 left in my pocket, a night out would always win over going to a restaurant for a meal.  I was also rather partial to cheesy chips with garlic sauce and even had a preferred supplier of choice; It’s Pizza Time on Crwys Road, Cardiff, run by a Greek man called Attis.  In hindsight, the runny garlicky sauce was actually something special – as was the aromatic stench coming from the bin in our shared student flat the following morning. 

Things came back round full circle though and I re-discovered the joys of cooking in my mid-20s.  Culinary figures such as Anthony Bourdain, Marco Pierre White and Graham Garrett shared the non-conformist spirit of many of the musicians I admired and even their predecessors, the likes of Elizabeth David and Patience Gray were the rebels of their day.  Food became a way of understanding more about other cultures – much in the same way as music.

During the first coronavirus lockdown in Italy (one of the most strictly-enforced in Europe), I found myself effectively stranded and isolated in a foreign country; living, working and exercising from the same small flat, only allowed outside for necessities.  Cooking and coming up with new recipes in the evening became a form of salvation and a creative outlet to look forward to.

That brings us to November 2020 and browsing my local branch of the Dok supermarket in Bari, I picked up what I thought was a box of black grapes.  It was only when I got home I realised I had picked up a box of ‘Olive dolce da tavola nolche’ instead of the grapes.  I’m usually a great lover of olives but these were like no other olive I had ever tasted.  They were extraordinarily bitter (I have no problem with the most pungent blue cheeses or 95 percent cocoa dark chocolate), they made the skin on the inside of my mouth go on edge and turned my fingertips purple.  I taught a lesson an hour later and actually struggled to properly annunciate my words initially, thanks to the after-effects of this strange variety of olives.

After some research, it transpires that these kinds of nolche olives are a speciality of Puglia and in particular the region around Bari, Bisceglie and Molfetta.  They are only in season from September until November and their distinctive ultra-bitter flavour comes from the presence of polyphenols and in particular the compound oleuropein.  They are high in anti-oxidants and thought to reduce cholesterol and protect against cardiovascular disease.  I was beginning to feel quite fortunate that I had picked these up instead of the grapes after all.   

I also found out that heating the olives made them less bitter and caused them to break down in the pan.  Below is a recipe I came up with for the remaining Olive dolce da tavola nolche, using what I could find in my fridge and kitchen cupboard.

Nolche olives with Datterino tomatoes, chickpeas, chilli and casarecce

2-3 servings 

Steps 

1.)  Heat a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil in a saucepan over a medium heat.

2.)  Add all of the olives and season with sea salt and black pepper.  Cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring frequently.  The olives will begin to break down and disintegrate and the pan should develop a deep purple coating.

3.) Whilst the olives are cooking, bring a large pan of water to the boil and then season with sea salt.

4.)  Add the crushed garlic to the pan of olives and cook for 1-2 minutes, until soft.

5.)  Add the sliced peperone crusco, red chillies and salumi to the olive pan.  Heat for 4-5 minutes until the salumi starts to crisp up and the peppers begin to soften.  Stir frequently and add a drop of water or white wine if the salumi starts sticking to the bottom of the pan.

6.)  Add the chickpeas, sliced tomatoes and oregano and continue cooking for a further 10 minutes, stir occasionally. Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to its instructions (10-12 minutes is recommended for casarecce).

7.)  Once the pasta is cooked al dente, drain well in a colander but reserve approximately two tablespoons of the starchy pasta water in the pan.

8.)  Combine the nolche olive mixture with the casarecce in the pan the pasta was cooked in.  Mix well so that all of the ingredients are coated and incorporated.

9.) Serve in bowls, topped with grated Parmesan or Pecorino cheese, to taste.  

Serving suggestion 

As a side dish, I roasted some fine green beans and cicoria (a bitter green leaf that grows in abundance in southern Italy) with olive oil, sea salt and rosemary for 15 minutes in the oven.  A simple green salad would also work well.