Black Olive Caviar

I have a wine dinner coming up this Saturday 4/18 at the country club and I'm starting to play around with the dishes. One of the hors d'oeuvres is called "olive and crostini". The miniature crostini is topped with a fresh basil pesto and garnished with olive caviar. The caviar was fun to make since I got to teach some of the cooks about chemistry and cooking. We took some olive juice and blended it with sodium alginate until it was slightly thickened. After placing the puree into a squirt bottle, we dissolved some calcium chloride into cold water. By dropping the puree into the calcium chloride broth, it created a skin on the outside of the liquid encapsulating the puree into pearls of olive juice. This hors d'oeuvre will really make people do a double take when they realize they are not eating actual caviar but olive juice. I love playing around with all these new techniques.