Tapenade: A great way to open your appetite
Along the lines of the last couple of days where I have been making super simple dishes that will impress people with your cooking skills even if your skills are still blossoming, I remembered this "dip" my grandmother's friend, an older Greek woman, used to make when we would come for dinner. Before the meal, we would spread this Tapanade on crackers or thick slices of crusty bread.
It was called Tapanade. Traditionally, the dip is a Provençal dish consisting of puréed or finely chopped olives, capers, anchovies and olive oil. Of course, we leave out the salty, furry fish.
Its name comes from the provençal word for capers (tapéno). It is a popular food in the south of France, where it is generally eaten as an hors d’œuvre, spread on bread.
As far as I was concerned, we could have eaten just this. To me, it tasted pretty exotic. I think it was probably a pretty common dish in a lot of Mediterranean families. It's a lot like the hummus we used to eat, but with olives as the base.
If you have a strong steady hand, you can dice the ingredients in this dish by hand, I usually just pop them in the blender for a more consistent texture, but it doesn't really matter.
Serve this on thick chunks of bread or with triangles of toasted pita bread.
Tapanade
1 jar of Kalamata olives, diced finely1/4 cuo of capers, diced finely
1 cup of mushrooms, diced finely
1/2 cup of sundried tomatoes, diced finely
1 red onion, diced finely
Olive oil - in this case, you have to use olive oil for that authentic Mediterranean flavor - to taste
Lemon juice - to taste
- Chop all the veggies.
- Mix with the olive oil and lemon juice until it sticks together.
Vegan.
