Fluster Magazine

Tasty Little Friends by Mateo Jarrín Cuvi 

Growing up, I associated the word “olive” to many things but the savory almond-shaped fruit. For instance, it recalled the first few verses of Federico Garcia Lorca’s poem Romance Sonámbulo, the wind, the branches, the gypsy woman’s flowing hair and dark flesh, all in my mind in various shades of olive, waiting for her loved one. Also, the green cargo and corduroy pants I obsessed with from the GAP, and Olive Oyl, Popeye’s favorite gal, who with her stringy body, prominent nose and obsidian hair still reminds me to this day of my dear mother. Little did I know, though, that many years later I’d be stuck in a sea-locked Greek nation consuming the meaty fruit on a daily basis and in every way imaginable—stuffed in pastry dough, marinated with coriander seeds, garlic, oil and lemon, slowly stewed and even grilled over charcoal, the latter a method that might lead you on a Sisyphean battle against a serious addiction to olives.

So in honor of our tasty little friends and their rise to prominence in my life as an adult, I interviewed my good college friend, Valeria Athanasopoulou, who recently forwent a dull career in the health sciences sector to set-up a family-operated Kalamata olivarchy in Greece’s Peloponnese. Valeria’s  brand spanking new project consists of approximately 100 acres of land  that houses about twelve thousand trees and is located in Astros, a small coastal town in the eastern Peloponnese with a long-standing tradition in the cultivation of olives. Her family has actively produced olives for the past six years but only now have they decided to brave the tenuous economic environment and deliver fruit to the end consumer. The Kalamata  variety—the Ferrari of olives and main choice of the Athanasopoulou family—is purple to black in color, bigger and meatier than your run-of-the-mill kind. Given the Kalamata olive’s lower oil content, it is not particularly suited (or profitable enough) for the production of  olive oil. Visually speaking, these olives are smooth, shiny and dark oval marbles. Biting  into one—I’m doing this as I type—coats your palate with a rich, briny, earthy and umami-packed flavor, while its meatiness lends itself to be patiently savored.

According to Valeria, for an olive to fall under the Kalamata protected designation of origin (PDO), they need to be of the specific Kalamata variety and grown in the area of Messinia in South Peloponnese. In an effort to boost the production of this olive, however,  the Greek Ministry of Agriculture has pushed for the expansion of this particular PDO to include neighboring areas. For best results, mild winters are preferred, and the final size of the fruit depends largely on the levels of rain experienced during the months of September and October, period when the olives mature on the branches. Ideally, although costly and labor intensive, Kalamata olives are meant to be handpicked from the trees—fully ripened and dark purple to black and sometimes up to four times from October to January—to prevent the fruit from being bruised.

During the past year, her family invested in a new processing and packaging plant that will allow the company to provide olives at both wholesale and retail levels. The factory is a state-of-the-art facility under all HACP and FDA requirements and will consist of a fully automated processing line. It is specifically designed so that following the first stage of sorting, as the olives are unloaded straight from the fields, they are transferred to tanks located four meters underground to achieve a constant low temperature that will protect the fruit from the scorching high summer temperatures. Each tank is expected to have a capacity of 16 tons and will be interconnected through a hydraulic system that allows for the careful handling of the fruit when stored or moved. Once collected, the olives are transferred to the company’s facilities where they are sorted according to size and stored in fermenting tanks filled with brine to allow for natural debittering, a process that lasts a period of up to three months. After they have been cured, the fruit goes through a last sizing process and are then ready to be sliced, depitted, marinated and/or packaged for final consumption. Valeria’s operation will be able to process 4.5 tons daily ensuring optimal quality to the end consumer and it is expected to kick-in halfway through 2014.

All that is missing now for the Athanasopoulou olive empire is a catchy company name. So check this space often and keep an eye out for a Flavours contest in search of a corporate moniker with the winners (maybe, just maybe) receiving a couple handfuls of the tastiest little friends money can buy.

If you enjoy writing, traveling and discovering new foods, get in touch with Fluster Magazine and pitch your idea to us, so drop us an email or leave a comment in this page. We are always on the prowl for culturally sensitive, animal friendly, highly creative and somewhat humorous writing that covers a specific country’s culinary riches or other more random food-themed topics. If you don’t write but revel in all-things edible, we urge you to let us know what you would like to read and see on these pages.  Flavours is a collaborative effort and we are all quite good listeners.

Mateo Jarrín Cuvi is Flavours` editor and contributor: “You might be wondering what I bring to the table. For one, my multicultural upbringing and lifestyle is somewhat of a plus. Thanks to my father’s nomadic job, I was raised on a steady and healthy diet of Ecuadorian, Scottish, Colombian, Brazilian, Argentine and Texan food. Later, I added to this gluttonous disposition through my extensive travels in Latin America, the United States and Europe, and developed a continuously growing passion for wine and beer, haute cuisine, street food, cooking and the use of fresh local ingredients. Now I live in Cyprus where the meze is plentiful and my waistline and lower body fight a losing battle against plumpness. Besides participating in the launch and evolution of Flavours, for the past three years I have run an island wine blog called Whine on The Rocks, written a multitude of food and wine articles for a now unfortunately defunct Cypriot culinary magazine, and dabbled here and there in the art of the short story”