OLIVES

I have always found it difficult to make up my mind whether I like olives or not. In small doses (on a pizza, say, or in a stew) they're fine; the problem comes when they appear on their own, to be eaten as a pre-dinner appetiser. Some three years ago in Spain I decided definitively that I didn't like them. But then I went to Portugal this summer.

As in Spain, there are an awful lot of olives around in Portugal. However, what was different this time was that I learned that there are good olives and bad olives. Plump, firm black olives, eaten with cheese and cold Sagres beer as a starter, are delicious; slightly mushy green ones are not good with anything.

So my olive education continues. Next stop, I suppose, is Greece, to eat them with all of that feta cheese.

Walter Blotscher