Weekends are hard times to be obedient. But I was not to be phased and although I still don’t feel 100%, I wanted to impart a highlight of the day. One of the aforementioned spreads made its debut today and it is a tapenade. So far the highlight, tastewise, of this detox was when I slightly cheated last night and had a Pub version of crudité, houmous, falafel and tzatziki (but no booze, so that is good). Oh and I had two breakfasts this morning, whoops, but anyway. Enter tapenade, the oily goodness of olives and garlic, something that I believe I will make as soon as this whole experiment is over. So I thought I would pass on this knowledge. Please excuse the oat cakes in the picture, only half of this snack was meant to taste good and photographing dark brown spreads is hard.
Tapenade
1 ¾ cups of whole pitted green and/or black olives
1 clove chopped garlic
1 tbsp capers
1 tsp fresh thyme (chopped)
1 tsp fresh rosemary (chopped)
3 tbsp lemon juice
4 tbsp olive oil
Black pepper
Step 1: Put all of the ingredients up to the olive oil into a blender, make sure the mixture is blended enough, ie no whole olives. Then add the oil slowly until the right consistency is formed (you might need more or less olive oil depending on the olives). This also means you can pretty much ignore the chop directive as the blender will do it for you.
Step 2: There is no step 2! How great. Use this as a spread or on the top of chicken or fish it makes a great crust.
Note: This is a healthy portion of tapenade, much more than could possibly be consumed by the two paltry servings I am allotted. I am now less confused as to the bounty in my refrigerator as it seems the nutritionist is in cahoots with Ocado.