No dish deliver all of the goodness quite like the olive paste of Purviance, Tapenade; I realized that innumerable permutations of this dish exist; I think the real secret is in creating not only in contrast of flavors but the contrast of textures. I do this by using a combination of soft flesh easy to pit olives and some firm flesh, not so easy to pit olives. Okay, now super soft olives like say, Kalamatas can often be pitted simply by rolling them around in a tea towel while exuding a bit of downward pressure. Tougher olives like this little French number might just require a whack from one of my favorite multi-taskers; the big scraper apply duskily, face in the eyes duskily, one good whack, pits be gone. Whatever you do, don’t go out and buy one of those sissified olive pitters, you just don’t need it.
Traditionally, tapenade is made the mortar and pestle, but if you decide to give that up and look to your food processor for liberally, I for one will tell; so in go half a pound of mixed, rinsed, pitted olives along with two tablespoons of olive oil, extra virgin would be nice, a tablespoon of fresh squeezed lemon juice, one small clove f garlic, minced; two tablespoons of capers, which are of course, the pickled flower buds of a Mediterranean evergreen, two to three basil leaves and last but not the least, two anchovy fillets. Oh come on, anchovies don’t have to be those funny little furry curls on that frozen pizzas really, I prefer a seal packed anchovies which I soak in a little cold water before adding to mix, they’re just for flavor, trust me. What are you looking at? They’re first in piece I help with the swelling, now come over here. I get everything in the work pool and process and breathe burst until you get a nice, even, of course, paste. You got to have to stop several times during the process to scrape down the ball, probably will take you about a minute total.
So what exactly is Tapenade good for? (0:02:18.5) the obvious choice since you could smear it all over (0:02:21.2) on a nice piece of brusquetta but there are other options to be sure, for instance, you could mix a little with extra virgin olive oil and let me just make you some nice little salad dressing; you could toss it with hot vegetables, smear it on beef, beef loves tapenade. I like to stir mine in the mashed potatoes, very tasty, and fish; fish never had a better friend, in fact, I can only think of one food that really just doesn’t get along with tapenade,
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