Tapenade

I have had olive tapenade numerous times, but have never made my own. I've had both the freshly-made tapenade and the jarred, supermarket kind. There are a few supermarket brands that aren't bad, but fresh is always far better.

When I decided to make my own tapenade, I looked up recipes on this here interwebs, and found several varieties. The most basic calls for olives, capers, and lemon juice, while one (silly Emeril Lagasse) requires 13 ingredients, including Dijon mustard and Cognac. I think simpler is better. While on the interwebs (amazing thing, that interwebs), I learned that "tapenade" comes from the word tapeno from the Provence region of France, meaning capers.

I used 1 cup of fresh Calamata olives, about 2 tbsp of capers, a tbsp of lemon juice, a little olive oil, salt and pepper. I pulverized the whole thing in my teeny-tiny food processor (which is really very cute, but only good for small things like this) until chopped into bits but not a mush. I could have chopped it more, but I wanted a coarser texture.

I had bought some English muffin bread, so I cut circles out of that (glass top-down on the bread, cut around the edges) and toasted them so that they were nice and crisp. The tapenade was delicious and had a very heavy and pungent flavor from the Calamata olives. I think I would like to try to make a slightly milder tapenade and see what that is like, but it is hard to find fresh olives besides Calamata or green Manzanilla. I want to try to find Aleppo, Gaeta, Atalanta, or Nicoise olives and see what they are like in a tapenade, but I haven't been able to find them around here. I will have to keep looking!

Homemade tapenade counts as a success, and also, is extremely cheap, quick, and easy to make.