Carol’s Column

Life's a bowl of olives

SMALL, green and plump, they can send you into ecstasy. Olives.

They were relished by the Sumerians, adored by the Akkadians, ravished by the Assyrians. When the Israelites finally arrived on the scene, they too cherished them, as did the Babylonians, the Egyptians and the ancient Greeks.

It was the Greeks who created the ultimate delight — olives in lemon juice with a pinch of salt and paprika. And rumour has it that even while the Romans were throwing unfortunates to the lions, they ate olives dipped in oil and sprinkled with parsley, known then as parsleum.

My family has always been great supporters of the olive. In fact, I could say we are quite addicted to the little fruit which is why price increases of the past years have caused a crisis on the home front.

My oldest unmarried son worked out that with escalating prices, each olive popped into a waiting mouth-hole cost 28c. Prohibitive.

And then came salvation in the form of Edric von Meyer. Edric, one of my third son Jamie's colleagues at school, brought up the topic of olives as we sat around the diningroom table.

He let slip the fact that they had the largest olive trees in Africa residing on the pavement outside their house.

It seemed that not only did the Von Meyers grow their own olives by the barrelful, but he also had a grandmother who was an olive queen. She had a recipe that turned the most stubborn olive into a sumptuous, succulent nibble.

Edric, a sympathetic, caring person, sensed the need in the Lazar household and volunteered to pick some olives from his trees.

We were overjoyed.

A gloomy, crestfallen Edric appeared the following day. "The olives are almost finished," he said sorrowfully. It seemed that in order for olives to be pickled to perfection, they have to be well-developed but not ripe. Not only were the Von Meyer olives ripe, but they were wrinkled and past their prime.

Despair struck the Lazar household. Oh, how we had dreamed of designer olives.

The next day Edric appeared at the door with a jar of ready-to-eat olives. "These are from my father," he said, "he prepared them himself." We were touched at the generosity of a man who would part with his last few olives.

At dinner that night, we shared Mr von Meyer's olives democratically. They were superb. Small, but of an excellence never discovered in the bottled or tinned variety at the exorbitant prices. Truly magnificent.

I begged Jamie to procure the recipe from Edric the following day at school. Unfortunately it seemed that it was an ancient, secret recipe handed down from ancestor to ancestor and had to remain within the Von Meyer family.

I was doomed to remain ignorant about the finer points of olive-making.

And then a friend of Nicky's produced a recipe which involved earthenware containers, caustic soda, vinegar and salt. Her father, before he became an undertaker, had been the top olive maker on the island of Cyprus.

"Are you sure this is a recipe for pickling olives?" I murmured tactfully to Nicky. One can't be too sure under the circumstances.

So there we were, with earthenware container, caustic soda, salt, vinegar and all the other ingredients but not a fresh olive in sight.

And then Edric came to dinner. Like a magician, he plucked yet another small jar of olives from beneath his school blazer. "These are Grandmother Farah's olives," he said. I sneaked one into my mouth. It was the food of kings. There was no doubt that Grandmother Farah was the Master Olive Maker.

And then Edric dropped a bombshell. "I'll get you fresh olives," he said, "I know a special place." He refused to divulge his source.

"Is it in the Transvaal?" I asked. "Is it legal?"

Edric smiled. "My lips are sealed," he said as, like Prince Valiant, he departed into the dark night on his mission. We waved him farewell and returned inside to savour Grandmother Farah's olives — to find they, like Edric, had vanished.

Motorcat sat on the table, his whiskers quivering with joy. "Good God, the cat's eaten the olives," shouted my husband.

It is not easy persuading him that an earthenware jar filled with caustic soda and vinegar is not the place for a cat.

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