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I have several olive trees in my garden. As I explained earlier—these are young trees, their yield is small and does not warrant going to an olive press. Until such time as they grow taller and bear more fruit, I harvest a few buckets every year and pickle them deliciously. When is the right time to harvest the olives? Some say this is after the first rain, because it causes the olives to swell. Others say the first rain simply washes off the dust. There are also those who claim that olives should be harvested when they begin to blacken. I harvest them when I think they are nicely plump, mottled with pale spots, and when—I admit—I have time.

I also prepare black olives, and these I harvest when they are worthy of their description—in other words, when they have blackened. This is an opportunity to correct a common error: black olives and green ones are not two different varieties, as is the case with black muscat Hamburg grapes and their white counterparts, muscat of Alexandria. A green olive is the unripe fruit, and the black olive is the ripened one. If you have the time and inclination, you are welcome to choose a tree bearing olives and to stretch out in its shade for a few weeks. By not removing your gaze from the tree, you will be able to see the olives blackening before your very eyes.

Pickling olives is a masculine art, or at least that’s what men think. Perhaps they think this because in the past it was customary to crack olives using a stone, with all the Neanderthal connotations attached to that, and perhaps because the Hebrew language is fond of the word for “pickle”—kibush, the root of which means “conquer” and which is used in all sorts of male domains. Admittedly, I mentioned here the path conquered by the poet Rachel’s feet, but Rachel is the exception that proves the rule: Hebrew conquers the land, conquers women, conquers ways, conquers instincts, conquers a person imprisoned or enslaved, and if there is still strength, it also conquers olives.

The truth is that it is very easy to both conquer and pickle olives. Even my father—who kept his distance from ovens, cooking pots and pans, and the kitchen in general, and who never cooked or baked or fried or preserved—would buy a few pounds of olives in the market every year and pickle them in a jar, and like all the other males took great pride in this. Note well: aside from salt and garlic and lemon and hot pepper, men put into their jar of olives the added ingredient of competition. A man who gives his buddy a jar of pickled olives made with his own bare hands—“the work of his hands that he may be glorified” might be a more fitting description here—does not do it merely out of friendship or generosity, but to make it perfectly clear that his olives are better than the other man’s.

Once, in a vegetable store in a nearby Arab village, I chanced upon a conversation with my own kind about the pickling of olives. The grocer was offering tastes of olives he had pickled himself and that were for sale. He glanced sideways at his interlocutors with a patronizing look reserved for precisely a moment like this, and the customers—both Jews and Arabs—tasted the olives, exchanged similar looks with the grocer, and began bestowing advice and suggesting suggestions.

I also tasted the olives and, like everyone else, was happy to discover that my pickled olives were better than the grocer’s. Not that this was news to me. Like every male, I also know how to pickle olives better than any other man. “Very tasty,” I told him respectfully and as a matter of course offered my own suggestions on how to improve his olives so that they would reach the unattainable level of mine.

Theoretically, these suggestions are trade secrets. But we, the conquering males of olives, do not keep our recipes a secret. On the contrary, we are happy to divulge to any rookie who asks, knowing with certainty that his olives will never be as good as our own. For this reason, I will gladly divulge my own recipe, a simple and basic one intended for those who shy away from various special additions and pungent herbs which, as with cooking in general, conceal the good taste of the fundamental ingredients.

I’ll begin with the olives themselves. There are purists who refuse to pickle olives they did not pick with their own hands from an organic tree they grew themselves or whose grower they know intimately. I respect their way, but I will not join them. Those who do not have their own olives to pick can purchase them in the market, at least here in Israel. Of course, it’s worth inspecting the olives to make sure they are firm and plump and beautiful rather than mere gaunt flesh, flaccid and blemished, but this rule applies to all fruits and vegetables.

I rinse black olives in water, and while they are drying I take empty bottles of mineral water, cut and remove their bases, upturn and fill them with layer upon layer of sea salt and olives. Once the bottles are filled, I stand them upside down on old newspapers in a shady place. The salt absorbs and soaks up moisture from the olives, and any surplus drips through the spout and is sopped up by the newspaper. After ten days, I taste them, changing the brine if necessary, and then continue the process for a few more days. Then I rinse the salt from the olives, place them in jars, submerge them in olive oil, seal, and the next day they are ready.

There is another method I myself have never tried, but I’ve heard about it, and it sounds like a good one. Apparently, it is perfect for small black olives. Soak them in brine for several months in sealed containers, then strain, pour olive oil over them, and by the next day you will be able to slice bread, add a selection of salami, green cucumber, tomato, salty cheese, open a bottle of arak, and invite friends. Your friends will taste them, praise you, say the olives are pretty good, but they heard from a grandfather or an uncle or an old shepherd they met in the Galilee that it’s worthwhile adding aniseed, rue, cumin, hyssop, and various other misfortunes to the pickling mixture and let them age in an oak pickling barrel. But everyone knows none of this will do any good, because of the basic principle that cannot be concealed or undercut: your own olives are always superior.

As for green olives, soak them in water for several days. Change the water every couple of days and then water the plants with it. After soaking, you must make a decision: whole or cracked, also referred to as “slit open.” The main difference between the pickling of whole or cracked olives is how long the process takes. Cracked olives are ready for consumption within a few weeks, whereas whole olives are ready only after a few months. Exactly how many? Open the jar and try one.

How are olives cracked? Well then, there are fundamentalists who strike olive after olive with a stone or wooden hammer. This process takes up a good deal of time and splatters drops, one of which—always!—enters the eye of the hammerer, who then issues a cry loud enough to warrant a response from a chorus of jackals. There is always the option of going to the market and looking for the man with the special gadget for this kind of thing. The perfectionists, the elite pickle makers, make a slit in each olive and talk about it incessantly while serving the olives to guests. I am in the habit of putting handful after handful into a thick nylon bag, the type used to collect waste from building sites, and to thrash them amicably with a stick or heavy frying pan.

Once the olives have been cracked, broken, or slit, boil water in order to dissolve the salt and create a solution within which the olives can marinate in jars. Much importance is placed on the concentration of the solution, because aside from the taste it gives, the salt preserves the olives for a long period of time. Too little and the olives will be ragged and tasteless; too much and they will be inedible.

The nostalgic types determine the amount of salt using an egg plunged into the brine. This tradition was begun by their grandfather’s grandfather, who owned an olive stall in Odessa or was the official egg plunger of Sultan Abed el-Khamid. Either way, the egg must float between the surface of the liquid and the bottom of the jar. If there is not enough salt, the egg will sink to the bottom, and if there is too much, it will bob up in the water like an iceberg. This anecdote, which appears in cookery columns attempting an air of earthiness and authenticity, is misleading. To be more precise, it only works when the egg is really fresh, laid by your own hen straight into the palm of your hand. Eggs that have spent time in refrigerated trucks and storage facilities lose fluid, suffer from air bubbles, and float like water wings.

In short, instead of floating eggs, I taste the brine, add water or salt if necessary, and adhere to this simple rule: it must be a littler saltier than seawater. I know this sounds somewhat strange and vague, but if you try it you will discover that this simple and practical piece of advice also works when pickling cucumbers.

Now wait for the brine to cool down a little. Meanwhile, arrange the olives and the rest of the ingredients in a jar or plastic container that has been thoroughly cleaned and dried and which has a hermetically sealed lid. Place a few slices of lemon at the bottom of the jar or container, add peeled garlic cloves and hot peppers, and over this a layer of olives that reaches a third or a quarter of the way up the jar—each pickle maker to his own—and over this another layer of lemon, garlic, and hot pepper. Pour in the brine and then enough olive oil to reach the top of the jar, seal, and store in a dark place.

A few days later shake the jar and shake it again. Then open it and taste the brine with a teaspoon, correcting what needs correcting: I add salt or water, occasionally a little garlic, hot pepper, or fresh lemon juice, and after a further month I taste and correct again. That’s it. From here onward, let time take its course until one day you taste the olives, discover they are ready, and quickly invite friends around. Enjoy a sense of fulfillment and take no notice of any advice your friends offer or any comments they make. Your olives will be superior to theirs, but inferior to mine.