Currabinny Cooks: How to make the perfect pasta puttanesca and our best olive recipes
Pasta puttanesca is a spicy pasta dish with dubious roots. Picture: Bríd O'Donovan
Is there any fruit more evocative of the Mediterranean than an olive?
We don’t know exactly where the first wild olive trees grew, although it’s speculated that they first appeared in Syria, Lebanon, or possibly Jordan. It’s known that people began cultivating the olive tree about 7000 years ago. Olive pits have been discovered found in ancient tombs around the Levant, as well as fossilized olive wood fragments. The desire to exploit the noble olive spread westward, cultivation spreading to Spain, Portugal, Italy, France and sub-Saharan Africa.
