Reconstitution

Remember those olives?

Yeah, me neither. Per the instructions, I tossed them in ample kosher salt, set them in a colander over a bowl ... and promptly forgot about them. I was supposed to test them in a week. It's been three.

I took a gander under the kitchen towel that daintily covered my little experiment to find a basket full of little mummified nubs, wizened down to a leathery skin adhering to hard pits. On the upside, they were utterly devoid of bitterness.

The recipe suggested transferring them to olive oil with some chili flake and garlic. I'm not particularly good at following instructions (see above re: mummified olives), and furthermore I have always been told that leaving fresh garlic in olive oil breeds botulism. So I made a simple infused oil with garlic, chili pepper, lemon rind and black pepper, steeped over a low flame for about 30 minutes. Once cooled, I strained the oil into a clean jar with the olives, where they'll -- hopefully -- soak up their flavorful quarry and return from their shriveled state.

And now, we wait.