Tapenade

Name: Tapenade (Anchovy, olive and caper paste)
Yield: Makes about 300 ml (½ pint)
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: 3 × 15 ml spoon (3 tablespoons) capers; 8 × 15 ml spoon (8 tablespoons) olive oil; 2 × 15 ml spoon (2 tablespoons) brandy; 15 ml spoon (1 tablespoon) lemon juice (optional); 100 g (4 oz) black olives; 5 salted, whole anchovies or 10–12 canned anchovy fillets; pepper (optional)

Anchovy, olive and caper paste

Preparation info

Makes about
300 ml

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

The Cooking of the Mediterranean

By Jane Grigson

Published 1991

About

Ingredients

100 g (4 oz) black olives
5 salted, whole anchovies or<

Europe
France
Starter
Pescatarian
Gluten-free
Mediterranean

Method

Stone the olives and put the flesh into a blender. If your anchovies are whole, salted ones, soak for half an hour, then cut away the fillet from each side (discard the rest). If your anchovies are canned in oil, drain them. Put the fillets into the blender with the capers and switch on. Add the olive oil, slowly at first and then faster as the mixture thickens, and then add the brandy. Taste t

A beautiful purplish paste which takes its name from the Provençal word for caper, tapeno. Having been invented only a hundred years ago (by M. Meynier of the Maison Dorée in Marseilles), it is part of the modern regionalism in French cookery.