I have come, now that I have achieved *cough* maturity, to understand and appreciate tapenade. I didn’t like olives at all when I was growing up, or even after I was grown. It’s only been in the last 4 or 5 years that I’ve started finding them delicious and interesting and addictive. I think it started with some tiny little Arbequina olives that I tasted in a Spanish restaurant, then some warm, citrusy Kalamatas that showed up at a sort of pseudo-Spanish meal . . . and I’ve been hooked ever since. I now hang out at the olive bars in various grocery stores, and can tell you which markets carry which varieties. I also know that no one around here has those Arbequinas, the ones that first converted me; but I’m not giving up the search.
In the interim, I’ve fallen hard for tapenade, that tangy, salty, earthy condiment that hails from Provence. On a sandwich, a wrap, folded into steaming pasta, smeared on a sweet tomato, or dolloped into a bowl of soup . . . it’s totally addictive. My absolute favorite summer lunch is a whole wheat tortilla, smeared with goat cheese and tapenade, covered with juicy ripe tomato slices (preferably something sweet, like a German Johnson), and rolled up. So I have to keep a small stash of tapenade in the fridge at all times. I usually get it from the Whole Foods in Raleigh, from their olive bar, but that requires driving right past the Whole Foods by my house, which only has it in jars, and that makes me feel stupid and wasteful.
So last weekend, I finally decided to figure out how to make the stuff myself.
It couldn’t be simpler. I’m still kicking myself for not trying it sooner. Not only is it stupidly easy to make–it’s stupidly easy to make just enough for lunch. Seriously–if you like olives at all, you have to try this.
Tapenade
makes enough for my lunch; your mileage may vary8 fat, juicy Kalamata olives, pitted (The pitted part is really, really important. I can’t emphasize that enough.)
1 teaspoon capers, drained
a generous drizzle of stoneground mustardPut all three ingredients into your (washable!) spice grinder. Whizz until it reaches an unctuous, paste-like consistency. Smear it on your sandwich. Be immensely proud of yourself.
Note: do be sure those olives are pitted. All of them. I can tell you from experience that while olive pits will indeed get fairly well crushed by the spice grinder, they will impart a distinctly gritty, unpleasant texture to your tapenade. And then there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth (and, if you are stubborn like me, many hours of picking said grit out of your teeth, because you were dumb enough to eat the stuff anyway). Much simpler to label your olives carefully.