Tarka Olives

For someone like me who loves a pickle-y, briny thing, olives are the perfect snack. So, when spicy marinated olives are on the menu, I’m ordering them. Unlike typical spicy olives, this recipe imparts flavor through a tarka, a popular South Asian cooking technique where whole spices are bloomed in oil, infusing the oil and extracting their flavors.

Here, a slightly unique tarka made with lemon zest, garlic, and chili, among other spices, gets poured over the most buttery of olives,