A few weeks ago, Eric and I road-tripped to Portland for the day to pick up my dad and bring him back up to Seattle. Before we hit the road, we went to the PCC (food coop) to get some snacks for the car. We bought chips and salsa, rosemary/garlic bread, and a container of olive tapenade. My dad doesn’t even really like olives and he was raving about how good the tapenade was. We all were. In fact, we polished off the whole container in the car on the way home. The only trouble with that tapenade is that it was $6 for a very small container. So… using the ingredients listed on the container, I recreated it this weekend. It was awesome! The fresh basil really makes it something special and it only takes about 10 minutes to make. This would be great if you’re having people over and want to impress them with your appetizer-making prowess or if you’re just looking for new snack foods to keep around in the fridge. I ended up using half the recipe as a layer in a vegan lasagna on Sunday (I’ll post the recipe for that soon).
The Recipe
Makes about 2 cups
2 cups pitted kalamata olives
1/3 cup roasted garlic cloves
1/4 cup capers
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/2 Tbls lemon juice
black pepper and ground red pepper to taste
Throw all ingredients in food processor and process until very finely chopped. Taste and adjust pepper and lemon juice to your liking. If you don’t have a food processor or blender, you can chop all ingredients very finely by hand. Note: You can roast your own garlic, but if you’re in a rush (like I was), you can buy some roasted garlic either in a jar or in the antipasto/olive bar sections of some grocery stores.
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Yikes, that sounds great! It sounds like you could modify that just a little bit by adding broth/white wine and some olive oil and use it as a sauce for pasta. Yum!
I loooove tapenade, but I’ve never made it myself. I’ll definitly have to try it now that you’ve posted this recipe!