Tapenade

Eating tapenade takes me back more than a decade ago, back to Paris, at Saint-Germain-des-Pres to be exact.  I may have been a student living on allowance, but I occasionally allowed myself to eat very good food always using research as an excuse.  While most Asians find French cuisine too sophisticated, I beg to differ.  I find that most of their common fare is quite simple to prepare.  Case in point...the tapenade.  Do you have at least 5 minutes to spare in the kitchen?  Here's how...


Chop black olives along with capers (drained) and anchovies.  I don't like using the food processor for this as it tends to keep things way too mushy.  Just keep chopping until the ingredients are very tiny in size and well combined.  Incorporate some olive oil, fresh lemon juice, and freshly cracked black pepper.  I usually don't add salt unless necessary (and if I have to, I use some ile de rhe).


You can make this ahead of time and there are various options for your pleasure.  Bottle it and drizzle with loads of olive oil until it covers the top of the tapenade (this will ensure quality and freshness, trust me).  You may also toss it into some pasta and add some freshly cooked seafood into it along with freshly chopped herbs.  Or you can just simply serve this with any fish dish of your choice.


On this occasion, I had it on crackers and some cheese.  

Considering this recipe uses quite a sum of highly-salted tinned products, I only allowed The Young Tongue to have a cracker (okay, two).