green olives and walnut salad
Green olives and walnut salad with a pomegranate molasses dressing, a recipe from Claudia Roden’s “Med: A Cookbook”. The salad has texture from the crunchy walnuts and juicy olives, and sharpness from the pomegranates and Zejd’s pomegranate molasses. Roden calls for “good quality green olives” – Zejd’s green cracked olives fit the bill perfectly.
Zejd’s green cracked “souri” olives are picked early in the season and as a result have a slightly sharper taste. Unlike commercial varieties, these olives are cured in a traditional Lebanese way. The olive is “cracked” leaving the stone in, to maintain the flavour of the olive. In Lebanon, most families will buy quantities of olives to cure at home after the olive harvest. Barbara Massaad in her book “Mouneh” outlines how this is done, by washing them thoroughly and then “cracking” them with a heavy mallet. The olives are left in a basin of water for 3-5 days, with the water being changed twice a day. Then a salt water solution is added along with a touch of white grape vinegar. After 2-3 months, the olives will have been cured, the magic done, and are ready to be eaten.
Supermarket olives will be pitted, but it honestly takes no time to remove the stones from 100g of olives, and the floral scent of the olives while you do it, is amazing.
The parsley is important too – check the leaves are soft, so that the green olives with walnuts and pomegranates have another layer of texture.
serves 4
ingredients
100g Zejd cracked green olives, drained
50g walnuts chopped
3 spring onions chopped
25g parsley sliced finely
2 tbsp Zejd extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp Zejd pomegranate molasses
salt to taste
Aleppo chilli flakes to taste
handful of pomegranate seeds (optional but beautiful!)
method
- Pit the olives and roughly chop to the same size as the chopped walnuts. Add to a serving bowl along with the chopped spring onions, and finely sliced parsley.
- In a small bowl, mix the olive oil, lemon juice, pomegranate molasses, salt and chilli flakes, tasting to make sure the balance between acidity and sweetness is right. Pour over the salad ingredients, and scatter the pomegranate seeds on top.
Done in minutes – a salad to remind us of the delights of the Med!