I think I have to stop watching cooking shows. I just made tapenade. Again.

The other night we were watching cooking shows on TV – Martha Stewart, I think – and she made a tapenade. I don’t recall what she did with it, but I do remember thinking that it would probably be awesome mixed into roasted potatoes.

Last month I saw Jacques Pepin make a tapenade and stuff it into chicken breasts and made that. I’m thinking that somewhere along the line, I like tapenades…

Funny, because as a kid, I was not an olive-eater. I was always an adventurous eater, but olives eluded me. No idea when the olive bug bit me, but I’ve made up for however many olives I didn’t eat, growing up.

We had a bunch of marble-sized potatoes, so I decreed they would be perfect, tonight. And what a shock. They were!

I didn’t exactly follow a recipe for the tapenade – I mean – it’s olives and capers and anchovies and garlic and stuff – so here’s an approximation of what I did:

Mixed Olive Tapenade

  • 1 1/2 cups assorted olives (I used kalamata, oil cured kalamata, California black olives, and giant Chalkidiki olives)
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 3 anchovies
  • 2 tbsp capers
  • 1 green onion
  • 4 large leaves fresh basil
  • 3 tbsp olive oil
  • black pepper

I put everything into the food processor and pulsed until it was properly chunky.

I prefer more texture to my tapenade, so I don’t process to paste like some folks like to do. It’s a personal preference, but if you’re making it and make it into a paste, I’m still eating it. As an afterthought, I probably could have squeezed a bit of lemon into it. Maybe next time.

As for the potatoes, I oiled them and put them into a 425°F oven for about 15 minutes and then just added some of the tapenade and mixed it all about.

It was goooooood.

With the starch set, vegetable and entree were next.

More clean out the ‘fridge time…

A simple salad of a can of kidney beans, green onion, watermelon radish, yellow zucchini, fresh fennel, basil, oregano, thyme, S&P, olive oil, and sherry vinegar. Mix and eat.

I had ribs in the ‘fridge, so ribs it was.

They received a quick marinade of soy sauce, bourbon, honey, toasted sesame oil, a pinch of nutmeg, cinnamon, salt and pepper. I baked them in the oven and then finished them on the grill.

It was a riff on a recipe I saw online. They were okay. I’d omit the cinnamon, next time, though, and up the bourbon.

All-in-all, though, a successful dinner.

And there’s leftovers!