La Tapenade

In Provence, where I live, we've got a lot of typical dishes.

I made two of them the last week-end, while we had friends for dinner.

Today, I would like to share with you one of those two recipes :  la Tapenade.
This word comes from "tapeno", in Provençal, who means "caper".

Tapenade is a dish consisting of finely chopped black olives, capers, anchovies, and olive oil.

We use to serve it for drink time. But I like to serve it for dinner, when it's too hot to cook.

Generally, I increase fourfold the basics doses. First, because people like it and eat it a lot. Second, because if people don't eat all the dish, you can keep it for one week in the fridge.
Oil is a natural preservative.

It's a very easy recipe.

My husband makes the second dish, that we call "Anchoïade" (anchovy paste). I'll post it tomorrow.

So here what you'll need :

• 200 grammes of black olives without pits.
• 5 anchovies fillets well rinsed (let the water fall ! It can be too salted).
• 8 capers
• 1 glove of garlic
• 4 tablespoon of olive oil.

 No need salt or pepper !

I want to comfort people who don't like anchovies : in this recipe, you won't taste them. Neither smell them.

As you can see, in the picture, there are more than 200 grammes of black olives ;)
All the doses are multiplied by 4.

Step 1 :
Rinse very carefully the olives.

Step 2 :
Add the capers (I think you can find them in each supermarket), the anchovies and the garlic that you have cut in small pieces or better : with a garlic press.

Step 3 :
Pour the olive oil. I say "4 tablespoon", but you can pour as much as you want. This is not a light dish. But you'll eat it with crudités. So don't worry ;)

Step 4 : Take your new best friend, the blender and blend all that !

Here is the final mixture.

I agree ... It seems not to be very attractive, but I promise this is divine !

Serve it, with crudités and little piece of bread.

Here's an example of what we eat with.

 My daughter helped me to prepare the crudités ;)

 Cauliflower (crude, of course)

Carrots

Cucumbers 

Mushrooms

Cherry tomatoes.

Tomorrow, l'Anchoïade !