Olive tapenade

<p>Tapenade is what happens when a fistful of the saltiest, brownest things in your cupboard get pounded together and turn, somehow, into something worth serving to guests. Olives, capers, anchovy and olive oil: four cured, briny ingredients that on their own you might nibble one at a time, together become a dark, glossy paste with real backbone. Spread it thickly on toasted sourdough, spoon it over a roast chicken as it rests, or stir it through hot pasta with nothing else, and it tastes like the south of France in early evening.</p> <p>My one small twist here is a little grated orange zest. It is barely detectable as orange, but it stops the paste tasting flat and one-note, the way a squeeze of citrus wakes up anything this salty. Purists will tie me to a stake for it. They are welcome to leave it out.</p> <div class="recipe-card" id="recipe"> <div class="recipe-card-head"><p class="recipe-card-title">Olive tapenade</p> <div class="recipe-card-actions"><a class="recipe-pin" href="https://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?description%3dOlive%2btapenade%26media%3dhttps%253A%252F%252Fmedia.vo.rs%252Folive-oil-1596417_1280.jpg%26url%3dhttps%253A%252F%252Fvo.rs%252Fstory%252Folive-tapenade%252F" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener" aria-label="Save to Pinterest"><i class="fab fa-pinterest-p fa-fw"></i>&nbsp;Save</a><button type="button" class="recipe-print" onclick="window.print()" aria-label="Print recipe"><i class="fas fa-print fa-fw"></i>&nbsp;Print</button> </div> </div> <div class="recipe-meta"><span class="recipe-meta-item"><span class="recipe-meta-label">Serves</span>1 medium jar (about 300g)</span><span class="recipe-meta-item"><span class="recipe-meta-label">Prep</span>15 min</span><span class="recipe-meta-item"><span class="recipe-meta-label">Cook</span>0 min</span><span class="recipe-meta-item"><span class="recipe-meta-label">Cuisine</span>French</span><span class="recipe-meta-item"><span class="recipe-meta-label">Course</span>Appetiser</span></div> <div class="recipe-cols"> <div class="recipe-ingredients"> <h3>Ingredients</h3> <ul><li>300g pitted olives (a mix of black and green, or all Kalamata)</li><li>1 tbsp capers, rinsed and drained</li><li>4 anchovy fillets in oil, drained (about 15g)</li><li>1 fat garlic clove, crushed</li><li>Finely grated zest of 1/4 orange (the twist)</li><li>1 tbsp lemon juice</li><li>5 tbsp (75ml) good extra-virgin olive oil, plus a little to seal the jar</li><li>2 tsp fresh thyme leaves, or 1 tsp dried</li><li>A pinch of dried chilli flakes (optional)</li><li>Freshly ground black pepper</li></ul> </div> <div class="recipe-method"> <h3>Method</h3> <ol><li>Rinse the olives and capers under cold water to wash off excess brine, then pat thoroughly dry with kitchen paper so the finished paste is not watery.</li><li>Tip the olives, capers, anchovies, garlic, orange zest and lemon juice into a food processor. Pulse in short bursts to a coarse, textured paste, stopping to scrape down the sides.</li><li>With the motor running, pour in the 75ml olive oil in a steady stream until you have a thick, spoonable paste. Stir in the thyme and a few grinds of black pepper; add the chilli flakes if using.</li><li>Taste and correct: more lemon for sharpness, more anchovy for depth. It should not need salt, as olives, capers and anchovies are all salty.</li><li>Spoon into a clean jar, level the top and pour a thin film of olive oil over the surface to seal. Refrigerate for up to two weeks.</li></ol> </div> </div> </div><h2 id="where-it-comes-from-and-the-name">Where it comes from, and the name</h2><div class="ad-unit ad-in-article" aria-label="Advertisement"> <span class="ad-label">Advertisement</span> <ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block;text-align:center" data-ad-client="ca-pub-3726833845844946" data-ad-slot="3291553914" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins> <script>(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});</script> </div> <p>Tapenade is genuinely Provençal, and unusually for a &ldquo;traditional&rdquo; dish we can point to a date and a person. It was created in 1880 by a chef named Meynier at the restaurant La Maison Dorée in Marseille. The name has nothing to do with olives at all: it comes from <em>tapenas</em>, the Provençal word for capers, which tells you where the flavour originally sat. Capers, not olives, were the ingredient the dish was named for, even though most of us now think of tapenade as an olive paste first.</p> <p>Meynier&rsquo;s original was far more elaborate than the version everyone makes today. He pounded roughly equal weights of capers and black olives, then worked in anchovy fillets and marinated tuna, seasoned it with spices, whisked in olive oil, and, remarkably, finished it with a couple of glasses of cognac. It was served devilled, stuffed back into halved hard-boiled eggs. The recipe appeared in <em>La Cuisinière Provençale</em>, the region&rsquo;s cookery bible, and then was gradually smoothed and simplified over the following century into the milder olive paste sold in every deli. The tuna and the cognac fell away; the capers, olives, anchovy and oil stayed.</p> <p>You can trace its spread outward from Marseille. Cooks across the northern Mediterranean built their own versions, leaning on whatever grew nearby: brighter green tapenades in parts of Italy, sometimes a splash of sherry vinegar in Spanish-influenced kitchens. But the Provençal frame, cured olives plus capers plus anchovy bound in olive oil, is the one worth learning first.</p> <h2 id="the-ingredients-that-matter">The ingredients that matter</h2> <p>Everything here is a pantry ingredient, which is the whole appeal, but the olives do the heavy lifting. Use olives with actual flavour. Kalamata give a deep, fruity, wine-dark paste; a mix of black and green brings both fruitiness and a sharper, greener edge. Avoid the pale, rubbery, so-called &ldquo;black&rdquo; olives from a tin, which are unripe green olives dyed dark and taste of almost nothing. Buy them with the stones in and pit them yourself if you have the patience, as they keep far more flavour than pre-pitted; a firm press with the flat of a knife pops the stone out cleanly.</p> <p>The capers and anchovies both bring salt and savoury depth, so between them and the olives you will almost certainly not need to add any salt at all. Taste before you even reach for the salt cellar. Good anchovies in olive oil dissolve into the paste and leave umami rather than fishiness behind; if you genuinely cannot stand them, a couple of chopped sardines or, for a vegetarian version, a teaspoon of white miso or a few pieces of finely chopped sun-dried tomato give you that same savoury weight from a different direction.</p> <h2 id="a-word-on-the-anchovies">A word on the anchovies</h2><div class="ad-unit ad-in-article" aria-label="Advertisement"> <span class="ad-label">Advertisement</span> <ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block;text-align:center" data-ad-client="ca-pub-3726833845844946" data-ad-slot="3291553914" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins> <script>(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});</script> </div> <p>Anchovies are the ingredient people flinch at, and the ingredient that makes the whole thing sing. Whole, they taste aggressively of fish; dissolved into a paste of olives and garlic, they vanish as anything recognisably fishy and leave behind a deep, rounded savouriness, the same trick that makes a good puttanesca or a Caesar dressing taste of far more than the sum of its parts. This is umami doing its quiet work: the anchovies are cured, and curing concentrates the glutamates that register on the tongue as savoury depth. Use the ones packed in olive oil rather than salt-packed, or rinse the salt-packed sort first, and start with four fillets. You can always add a fifth if the paste tastes a little thin, but you cannot take them out again.</p> <p>If you or someone at the table genuinely cannot eat them, the paste still works without, but it will taste flatter and saltier at once, so lean harder on the lemon and a little more black pepper to compensate, and consider a teaspoon of white miso or a few pieces of finely chopped sun-dried tomato to put back some of the savoury weight the anchovies would have brought.</p> <h2 id="making-it-processor-or-pestle">Making it: processor or pestle</h2> <p>Two routes, and they give genuinely different results. A <strong>food processor</strong> is fast and gives a smooth, spreadable paste; the risk is over-processing into a grey purée, so pulse in short bursts and stop while there is still visible texture. A <strong>mortar and pestle</strong> is the old way, slower and more physical, and it gives a coarser, more rustic paste where you still meet whole flecks of olive skin. If you have the time and the arm, the pestle version is better. On a Tuesday, the processor wins.</p> <p>Whichever you use, the key move is to build the paste first and add the oil last, in a stream, the way you would loosen a pesto. Adding all the oil at the start makes it slide around the bowl and refuse to break down; drizzling it in at the end lets it emulsify into the paste for that thick, glossy finish. Pulse the solids to a coarse rubble, then pour the oil in with the motor running.</p> <h2 id="what-goes-wrong-and-how-to-fix-it">What goes wrong, and how to fix it</h2> <p><strong>Watery, loose tapenade</strong> almost always comes from wet olives and capers. Brine clings to them, and if you skip the pat-dry step it thins the whole paste. Rinse, then dry properly on kitchen paper.</p> <p><strong>A bitter, harsh edge</strong> usually means you have gone too far in the processor, releasing bitterness from the olive skins and the raw garlic. Keep it coarse, and if raw garlic worries you, use a slightly smaller clove; the garlic mellows over a day in the fridge.</p> <p><strong>Flat and dull</strong> is the orange-zest problem I mentioned, or simply too little acid. A squeeze more lemon almost always fixes it. Salt will not; if you find yourself wanting to add salt, you probably want acid instead.</p> <p><strong>Too salty</strong> is harder to walk back, but not hopeless. Blend in a few more olives to dilute the capers and anchovy, add a little more oil, and let it sit; the saltiness reads softer once the paste has rested and come up to room temperature. Serving it on plain, unsalted bread rather than a salty cracker also brings it back into balance.</p> <h2 id="storing-it-and-using-it-up">Storing it and using it up</h2> <p>Tapenade keeps beautifully because everything in it is already cured or preserved. Pack it into a clean jar, smooth the top, and pour a thin film of olive oil over the surface to seal it from the air. It will keep in the fridge for a good two weeks, and the flavour actually improves after a day as the garlic settles and the anchovy melts into the background. Bring it back to room temperature before serving, as fridge-cold olive oil sets and dulls the flavour.</p> <p>Beyond toast, it is one of the most useful things to have in the fridge. Stir a spoonful through hot pasta with a little of the cooking water. Spread it under the skin of a chicken before roasting, or over a piece of fish before it goes in the oven. Whisk a teaspoon into a vinaigrette. Fold it through soft scrambled eggs. If you like this kind of oil-and-salt Mediterranean cooking, it sits happily alongside a plate of <a href="/story/olive-oil-and-fennel-seed-grissini/">olive oil and fennel seed grissini</a> for dipping, and it makes a punchy contrast to the milder, herby <a href="/story/labneh-zaatar-flatbread/">labneh and za&rsquo;atar flatbread</a> on the same board. For something on the sweeter, brighter end of the olive-oil spectrum, the <a href="/story/olive-oil-lemon-drizzle-cake/">olive oil and lemon drizzle cake</a> shows how far the same bottle of oil can travel.</p> <h2 id="variations-worth-trying">Variations worth trying</h2> <p>For a <strong>green tapenade</strong>, use all green olives and swap the thyme for a big handful of basil, blitzed in at the end; it is fresher and sharper, good with tomatoes. For a <strong>red version</strong>, blend in two or three oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes or a roasted red pepper, which softens the salt with a little sweetness. A spoonful of Dijon mustard is a nod to Meynier&rsquo;s original and adds a warm, sinus-clearing edge. And if you want to honour the 1880 recipe properly, fold through a small tin of drained tuna and a splash of brandy, then stuff it into halved boiled eggs. It is odd, old-fashioned and completely delicious.</p>