Tapenade is a Provencal dish that consists mainly of puréed or finely chopped olives, capers, anchovies and olive oil. It is generally eaten as an hors d’ourve spread on bread, or as a dip – however it can also be used in other recipes such as the Roast fish with Tapenade.

Ingredients

• 20 pitted kalamata olives (or 1 can pitted black olives)
• 1tbsp chopped capers
• 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
• 2 cloves of garlic
• ½  tsp anchovy paste
• Fresh cracked black pepper

Depending on your desired consistency for the tapenade you can either, use the food processor and blend it into a smooth paste, or you can chop-up everything together which will have a rougher consistency and far more rustic feel to it (I prefer the latter option!)

Also the above ingredients are more guidelines than strict rules. If you don’t particularly like anchovy’s feel free to leave them out. If you fancy adding some fresh basil…do so! As long as the base of the tapenade is olives and capers…you can be as experimental as you like ;)

Method
Roughly chop together olives, capers, garlic, and continue chopping until everything is quite fine. Or place it all in a food processor and pulse.

Place the olive mixture into a bowl, then add the lemon juice, olive oil and anchovy paste and mix well. Taste and adjust the seasoning.

Note: If you are using pitted black olives from a can, they can be naturally very salty so watch out when you are seasoning. Once finished the tapenade will last for up to 2 weeks in the fridge.