Olive Salt. Recipe for Silence.

There are some foods that don't improve the taste - they calm. They don't argue with food, but become a pause between its words.

Olive salt became this for me. I didn’t plan to make it. It came from a gesture: I just didn’t want to throw away the leaves that were left after picking olives near the house. They smelled soft. Dry. Like an old tree that knows that spring will come anyway.

I rub them between my fingers. Mix them with sea salt - coarse, imperfect. Add a little dried lavender - not for taste, but so that the aroma is not in your forehead, but nearby.

Then — into a glass jar. Without a label. With a cloth on the lid. And it just stands there. Until you want to put a pinch on a piece of bread with olive oil — and shut up.

I add this salt to vegetables. To warm tomato. To boiled potatoes. To baked lemon. But more often - just to bread.

Because it's not salt. It's a reminder that taste doesn't have to be loud. It can be like breath.

Olive Salt Recipe

Ingredients:

• dried olive leaves - 1 tsp.

• sea salt - 3 tbsp.

• lavender flowers (dried) - a pinch

• optional - lemon zest (dried)

Preparation: Crush the dry leaves with your hands or a mortar. Mix with salt and lavender. Store in a jar. Use according to your mood, not according to plan.

I don't make this salt often. Because it doesn't get used up quickly. You don't need a lot of it. It's not for enhancing the flavor, but for enhancing the moment.

Sometimes a pinch of salt can be a meditation. Especially if it has a little wood, a little summer and a little silence.