Moroccan Mixed Olive Salad Recipe

Olive Salad

Moroccan Olive Lemon Salad

That’s right: Not Salad with Olives, but olive salad.

We Moroccans grew up eating olives at every meal, not only in salads but cooked with our dishes. Nothing as delicious as olives in tajines In this dish, they ARE the salad.

I love mixing and matching good quality olivesfor this olive salad. Try and get them all pitted: easier to sneak them in sandwiches.

Lemons in Olive Salad

The lemon here is not a garnish, but a real ingredient in its own right, and gets eaten, skin and all.

This recipe is in my first and most enduring book, Levana’s Table: Kosher Cooking for Everyone, where you will find some fabulous classics, including a whole chapter on favorite recipes from the former Levana Restaurant, and a chapter on entertaining in style.

In this salad, the olives are the star, practically all by themselves (no other salad ingredients) If you poke around online, there’s no olives you won’t find, best quality and well priced too.

Got Leftovers?

Ha you got yourself a good problem! They can be eaten in the next several days, so make the whole batch. The seasonings preserve them beautifully. In those rare times where we didn’t devour them at one seating, here’s what I do: I cram them in a glass jar, and pour olive oil to the top to protect them. Take them out with a fork, so you leave the oil behind in the jar.

Ingredients

• 4 cups mixed olives, anything good you find, pitted or whole, black and green: Moroccan oil-cured, calamata, cerignola, niçoise etc
• 1 large thick-skinned lemon, quartered then sliced very thin
• 2 tablespoons anise seeds
• 2 good pinches red pepper flakes, or more to taste
• 1 tablespoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 2 large cloves garlic, sliced thin
• 1 bunch flat parsley, minced (throw it in a food processor and pulse)
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Instructions