Olive trees get so old that a whole book could be written about the history that has walked over one set of roots, but this book, while respectfully mentioning the great age of trees and traditions, is really a world-around survey of olive cultivation and fashion. Cultivation is as hard as agriculture generally is, fashion complex: old olive-crushing technology has serious snob appeal.
Politics come into it, too: export conglomerates and controls, label scandals, the difficulty of fitting seasonal work into citified schedules, inheritance that preposterously divides the ownership of groves, and war. Olive trees used to be good things to have around in a siege, as they are said to sometimes grow back from their enormous roots even after being burned down. Tractors and dynamite undo them, though.
Although olives grow well enough on several continents, it seems that Tunisia is the most natural place Rosenblum found them growing; enormous ancient trees on unirrigated, dry, marginal land, outproducing French trees. The oil is good enough to fill Italian blends, and the Tunisians have a clever and low-tech way of picking the olives.
The recipe for olive-onion-mint soda bread is pretty good, although the enormous quantity of onions makes the dough a bit slimy while kneading.
One annoying publisher's failure: no index. Nor are the recipes that
begin each chapter named in the table of contents.
So wrote clew in
History (commodity).