Green olive tapenade

May 17, 2012

Sharp and slightly sour, this tapenade goes beautifully with rustic bread
alongside hummus and other dips

Olives are a great snack, their firm flesh often marinated in herby oils or stuffed with garlic or sun dried tomatoes. By whizzing up a tapenade you can create a wonderful dip to adorn crusty bread that has the same wonderfully summer flavour or olives with the dippy consistency of hummus.


Recipe:

100g of herby marinated olives, marinate your own by popping fresh or unflavoured olives into a sterilised jar of good quality olive oil along with your favourite herbs. Oregano, thyme and basil work really well.
1tsp chopped garlic
1tsp anchovy paste
1/2 lemon's worth of juice
A little olive oil, use the oil from our marinated olives
Salt and pepper

If your olives are pitted then most of your work is done! If they aren't, however, you will have to take the stones out before making the tapenade. I find the easiest way to do this is to squash the olives to push the stone through the flesh. As you will be whizzing them into a chunky paste the state of them after de-stoning doesn't matter as much as if you were serving them whole in a salad for example.

When you have your olives de-stones, tumble them into a food processor with its chopping blade attached. Squeeze in the anchovy paste and throw in the garlic.

Give the olives a blast in the blitzer until they are well chopped, they will probably be a bit 'bitty' and not very paste like. To make your tapenade slug in a good lug of oil and the lemon juice then pulse again until you have a lovely spreading consistency.

Season with salt and pepper then serve up with crusty bread and an assortment of anti pasti.

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