Tapenade

Geoff demonstrated how to make tapenade, a delicious olive and caper spread. It's quick and easy to prepare, and is ideal to serve with pre-dinner drinks. Try it with sourdough bread, bruschetta, focaccia, or anything char-grilled.

Ingredients

150g good quality black olives, pitted
2 tablespoons capers, preferably small
8 good quality anchovy fillets
juice of half a lemon
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
black pepper, freshly ground
100ml olive oil

Method

1. Squash the olives to remove the seeds.
2. Put the olive flesh and the capers in a blender or food processor. (Note: if the capers are salted, rinse them first.)
3. Pour boiling water over the anchovy fillets and leave for about 10 minutes, to remove some of the oil and salt.
4. Add the drained anchovy fillets, lemon juice, Dijon mustard and black pepper to the blender. Blend until chunky, then add olive oil and blend further until the desired consistency is reached. Put the tapenade into a bowl and serve.

Geoff's tapenade tips

A healthy dollop of tapenade goes wonderfully well with grilled fish, such as a snapper cutlet or tuna steak. Hard-boil some eggs, peel them, cut into halves, scoop out the egg yolks and mash the yolk with tapenade (keep tasting and adding tapenade until you like the flavour). Return the yolk-tapenade mixture to the hard-boiled eggs, and serve as tasty finger food.

Copyright CTC Productions 2000