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Sweet Chilli Olives

300g Kalamata olives, preferably low salt
3 tablespoons of Thai sweet chilli sauce

Pit your olives. If they are salty, immerse them in just boiled water for a few seconds to wash the brine away and dry. Heating the olives intensifies the saltiness, so it is important that they do not taste salty to start with.

Put the olives in a bowl and mix in the chili sauce. Then spread them out on a bit of baking paper or aluminium foil in a baking dish and bake in a hot oven for about 20-30 minutes until the olives begin to shrivel. Turn them and cook for another 10 minutes.

Remove from the oven and cool. Serve cold or warm as a delicious pre dinner nibble or on a cheese platter. These guys will convert the most ardent olive disliker to an absolute fan.

i'm intrigued , and curious to know more about the flavour.

Well, the flavour is a wonderful conbination of sweet and tart with an under tone of the olive flavour (but not too strong) and an almost undefinable top note from the chilli, but it is not at all hot spicy - Gottie hates very hot spicy food but she loves these. I generally do not like to eat olives plain, although I quite like them in some cooking if not over done, but these little chaps are yum yum yum!

The trick is to not have very salty olives. The first time we tried this myself I tasted the olives at the start and though they were OK, but the salt dominated after cooking I got the recipe (if you can call it that) from the Paperbark Cafe at Kuranga Native Plant Nursery and they had used some Kalamata olives from Eildon which they said were made with a low salt brine. They were so delicious and we had no idea that it was sweet chillii sauce on them until we asked, this is definitely an example of kitchen alchemy. At Daylseford we were unable to get any olives from the olive grove we were staying at - they said we were about 2 or 3 weeks too early for their next batch which were in the brine as we spoke, so I bought some local olives from another place nearby and tested them. They were not too salty, but I washed them anyway. The result was fabulous. Funnily enough Elli, the lady at the B&B does not actually like olives to eat, but she loved these ones and polished off most of the ones we brought round one night when she invited us in for pre dinner drinkies.

Try them, I'm sure you'll love them, just try to use good quality olives and of course, local ones.