If You Read Nothing Else

A market stall spread with open trays of cured olives in green, gold, purple and black, each tray with its own scoop and label — Almost every olive you eat is cured — the tray tells you how.

Always cured — raw olives are inedible.

Green and black are one fruit at two stages.

Mostly healthy fat. Watch the salt.

Try an olive straight from the tree and you'll understand why nobody eats it that way. It needs weeks in brine or salt before the bitterness gives way.

Known to botanists as Olea europaea.