In this week’s version of a recipe that sounds totally out of my comfort zone, I introduce you to orange and black olive salad.
I know, I know, I said the same thing when I heard it. And researched it. And saw the photos of it.
It just seems like two ingredients that really shouldn’t go together, but who am I to tell an entire country what doesn’t go together? Just a vegan home cook with a lot of opinions, so I decided to be brave and see what all the fuss was about.
Oranges, The Drama
Let me start by telling you that I will never, ever, make this recipe again unless there’s some kind of orange cutter than exists because I spent approximately 3 years peeling and cutting oranges and I didn’t get one beautiful slice. Not. Even. One.
Maybe it was operator failure, which it totally was, but it was also not really fun at all.
But, I digress.
Black Olives
All of the recipes I researched for this vegan salad recipe were very particular about the type of black olives the recipe required. Cured Moroccan black olives was the phrase I found again and again, and I was honestly surprised that I found them in Kaufland.
They have the pits in them so that’s another task you’ll have to perform, pitting the olives. To make it happen, you’ll need a good olive pitter that won’t get too slick after you pit a billion olives at once.
Pit them and half them and you’re good go to.
Shallots
I’m pretty sure the recipe called for sliced red onion, but I’m not gonna lie, I am not a huge fan of raw onions even if they are red onions so I switched it up with pickled shallots, which turned out really well. But feel free to use red onions if you’re a fan.
Everything Else
There’s just two more ingredients to go, mint and parsley. These are vibrant and fresh ingredients to offset the citrus and the salty olives.
I recommend you taste the olives first before you go crazy and add too many to this vegan salad.
The original recipes all call for an olive oil based dressing that included sumac, citrus juice, cumin & paprika. I omitted the olive oil, and also I didn’t have any. Add if you want, I didn’t miss it.
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Tell me what you think about this!