Baked Olives

Karen Pierotti, a friend and co-worker here at BYU, recently brought to work a great Mediterranean side dish--baked olives.

This dish had two kinds of olives, small black olives and large green olives. (One recipe suggests nicoise olives and kalamata olives. I think you could use any combination you like.) There was a mixture of Italian herbs (thyme?), some sliced garlic, orange peels (without the pith) and a some olive oil sprinkled over the mixture (probably with some of the orange juice squeezed over the top). Bake this on medium heat and serve, or prepare in advance and then reheat.

You could do a lot of variations on this. The point is olives, citrus, herbs/garlic, all heated up.

Here's a recipe for a version of this from the BBC. This version adds a bay leaf (which you should remember to take out).