Green Olive Tapenade

A tapenade is a Mediterranean dish loosely defined as a paste consisting of olives, capers and anchovies made into a puree with olive oil.  Traditional tapenade is made with Kalmata olives, a Grecian black olive.  While that's good, I was served a green olive version, made by my Number One Fan and thought it was sublime.  She found the recipe online from the Tasty Kitchen website, but as usual, we've made some refinements to make the dish our own.  While this recipe is simple to make, you do need the help of a food processor in order to get the right consistency.  Either that or you will chopping for the whole afternoon! In either event, this is far better than the stuff you can buy in a jar from the grocery store, loaded with preservatives and other food manufacturing ingredients you won't find in the real deal.

What can you do with a tapenade?  I like spreading it over brown rice crackers and having as a snack or an appetizer before dinner, but you can serve it on bruchetta, Melba toast, or crackers of any sort, and it would do well over pasta or as an accompaniment to a salad.  You can even use it as a spread in a sandwich.  In fact, the New Orleans Muffuletta is a sandwich made with cold cuts on Italian bread with an olive salad that resembles tapenade.  It's very versatile.  While the recipe below is made with green olives, you can use strictly black olives or a combination of both.  If your grocery store has one of those "olive bars" with different kinds of green and black olives, experiment! Just stay away from the pits.

Ingredients
2 cups green olives, any style, stuffed with pimentos
4 tbsp olive oil
4 tbsp drained non-peril capers
whole can of anchovy filets packed in olive oil
5 tbsp sun dried tomatoes, chopped
4 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped (or 2 tbsp dried)
5 whole fresh basil leaves (do not use dried)
2 tbsp pickled jalapenos, or one half fresh (seeds and veins removed, finely diced)
1 tsp garlic, minced
juice from one fresh lemon
salt & black pepper to taste

The Recipe
Put all the ingredients except the olive oil and capers into the food processor and pulse until you have the vegetables at a rough, but even consistency. Add the capers and pulse once.  Add the olive oil at the end and pulse twice more to combine. Don't over-process.

The dish will taste better if you put it in the refrigerator for several hours or longer, allowing the flavors to amalgamate.  This is especially important if you use dried parsley.  Dried basil does not work well with this dish.  Go fresh with the basil or don't make the dish at all.