Olive Tapenade

I can't believe this is my first post about olive tapenade. It's one of my favorites that I almost always have in the fridge because it lasts for ages. Maybe mine is not a "real" tapenade because I don't use capers or anchovies, but it is delicious to me. Culinary hero Alton Brown said in his olive tv show that it is important for your tapenade to have different olives with different textures. No problem for me, as I usually have between 5-10 varieties in my fridge at any one time.

The basics, besides olives of course, are fresh lemon juice, dried red chili flakes, fresh parsley, and lots and lots of extra virgin olive oil. Sometimes, if I've tried a variety of olive as an experiment, and I don't like it, I'll use them in tapenade. That works quite well.

No olives out of cans here. In today's batch, I used what I had in the fridge, which consists of 7 olives from 4 countries, including: manzanillla from Spain, kalamata from Greece (which I don't think any tapenade should be made without), four from Italy (Gaeta from Lazio, Barenese from Puglia, Taggiasche from Liguria, Castelvetrano from Sicily), and Old Mission from California.

Oh yeah baby:

I love the way it comes out from the food processor. Before I got one, I used to do it in my little magic bullet, and while it worked and still tasted good, it kind of really pureed it into a paste. The food processor just chops it all, so you're left with little chunks of different kinds of olives. Perfect.

And, the best way to eat it. On a really good piece of toasted bread (this is an organic whole wheat miche from Trader Joe's, which comes as a huge half-loaf that I slice up and freeze to retain freshness. It rocks.). Not toooooooo many things in the world are better.