How to prepare home-made Olive Dip

NB. This is officially my first recipe on the blog... so please bear with me!

Local olives are rarely, if ever, found pitted

6 years ago, when we were still at the initial stages of starting this eco venture, I didn't have the slightest of clues that I'll be concocting dips or preparing recipe blogs! Ok, we were already delving into local products and stuff by then, but me, writing a recipe?! Well it turned out that most of our eco tours ended up having something to do with local food, in some form or another, so it was only a matter of time that we started to explore our own twists to traditional recipes.

For this season's Olive Grove Experience we introduced home-made dips. We figured that if we're promoting local products we should serve in-house nibbles with fresh ingredients - wherever possible - no shortcuts. Quite simple... yet it took time for us to get there. The supermarket, grab-and-go option was just too tempting! Even though we did our best to see that the processed ingredients were local, we knew that we could do better - yet the additional chore of preparing even the dips for each event seemed to be a daunting task. Until, one fine day Jeanette casually mentioned cream cheese!

Wild Thyme from
Tas-Salut Orchard

She has lately spent a lot of her free time looking into baking and other flabby-belly-inducing habits, mostly thanks to Il Piu Grande Pasticciere, a food reality TV series, and her knowledge of ingredients increased exponentially. When she did mention this wonder ingredient - cream cheese - it was quite a revelation to me.

Guilty as charged, I don't 'make' home-made cream cheese in our tiny apartment... this is one of the short list of ingredients that we buy from a supermarket! But if you want to keep the recipe 100% local you can even try and substitute cream cheese with ricotta and even fresh sheep's milk cheeselets - I tried this and it's divine! But cream cheese it is for now...

So this Olive Dip made it to this year's Olive Grove Experiences - and we'll have to be really running out of time to go back to the pre-packed version. The dip was a winner during every experience. We just couldn't believe how much the guests enjoyed it, and raved about it, given that it was not such a big deal to prepare.

Maybe it's just because of that - the simplicity and freshness of the ingredients, or it could be due to the extra bitterness of the olive drupe. Whatever the reason, during all of the sessions, without exception, some guest asked for the recipe... so here it is.

Enjoy!

Christian

OLIVE DIP 

______________________________________________________

PREP TIME  15 mins

Ingredients

80g olives (around 20 pitted olives)

1 medium tomato

200g regular cream cheese

1.5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Fresh herbs

Salt & pepper 

  

 

Instructions

Bring the cream cheese close to room temperature, this avoids leaving larger chunks of cheese in the dip.

Remove the pits from the olives by pinching both ends of the drupe, or squash it with the flat part of a heavy chef knife, and place the flesh in a separate bowl. 

Dice the tomato in smaller parts, so as it will be easier to blend. Don't waste anything from the tomato (apart from the top part of the stem). This adds liquid to the mixture and also gives it a nice orange-to-pinkish colour. 

Toss everything into a mixing bowl and blend with an electric blender until it's the right consistency.

Add the extra virgin olive oil, together with the other seasoning and blend further.

For best results, refrigerate, and let the mixture settle for at least 12 hours before serving.

A continuous success story

I felt so proud while reading the article named "The story of the birds and the bees" by Kristina Chetcuti featured on the latest E&D magazine. This article explains how Charles Camilleri, one of the beekeepers who supplies us regularly with honey, managed to place himself very well in a blind honey tasting competition in Tuscany. 

Charles also happens to be a good friend of mine. We were colleagues when I worked at the Ministry for Rural Affairs and the Environment and we read for the same Bachelors in Agro-Ecosystems Management between 2005 and 2008. After completing our studies, we took different paths, however we soon started working hand in hand on the Merill Local Products venture. Honey is by far the most popular local product of the Maltese people and we only choose the very best producers who like Charles, carry out bee keeping with a lot of dedication and passion.

Properties of honey have been appreciated since early times and life history of bees has been studied in detail to reap the maximum benefits from swarms. Bees are precious creatures as they are also responsible for carrying out a large percentage of pollination in many of the insect pollinated species. 

The relevance of this article lies in the fact that bee keeping is an agricultural practice that our ancestors have mastered. Nowadays, science and technology have made bee keeping a specific section within the umbrella of Agriculture. Many ask me, "are there any opportunities for students who are inclined to study Agriculture?". My answer is certainly Yes! Malta is a very small country however there are many opportunities that have not been exploited as yet. Marketing and Research in the Agricultural sector are two areas where there is ample room for growth, not only in Malta, but also in many countries around the world.

In principle, we only sell pure local honey in spite quantities are so limited. Our prices are fair in spite we do not have economies of scale like other Mediterranean countries. We are convinced about the quality of our honey and being a prestigious local product makes us look forward.

This year we have worked hard to assemble a larger range of products, all packaged in 100% upcycled packaging. To know more about our Eco Hamper, click here!

More links about this article:

Merill Local Products Eco Hamper Catalogue review from Charles Camilleri - Page 12

Every day keeps hay fever away - Times of Malta

Best Honey in the Mediterranean Competition

Article written by Jeanette Borg - Owner Merill Eco Tours and Local Products