Hey everybody. How is it going? I have a super quick dish for you today. This is a really simple dip called: TAPENADE, which you will find predominantly … well prominently I should say throughout the Mediterranean. I like to serve it up in a little different way because it’s pretty salty naturally, because of the fact that we’re using olives and anchovies and capers and all the salty things that you could possibly imagine. I want to share some statistics about olives.
Here’s what I gathered from weolive.com. As far as the US production goes, 99% of all the olives grown in the US are from California which makes all the sense in the world because we grow avocados and almonds and all kinds of agricultural things that you would find in the Mediterranean where the climate is the same. That makes sense.
Now we know that olives and olive oil, they’re all cholesterol free. The cool thing is, is when you swap out butter for olive oil, it helps your baked goods last longer because of the polyphenols in the olive oil. Brilliant! I’ve done that. Literally taken out the butter as a rehab and baked with olive oil. You’d think that it would make it taste olivey but not necessarily. Doesn’t have to. That’s another fun fact.
Here’s another fun fact. Three towns and one city, town being smaller than a city, in the United States are named Olive Branch. I’m from Olive Branch, USA. That’s cute. I think it would be cute if you were from Olive Branch, don’t you? It just means that you’re a peaceful people. That’s what is inherent in that fact that you’re from Olive Branch.
Get this. I think there is a correlation between eating olives and longevity because an olive tree can live 300 to 600 years. Years, that’s a long time. I think we better tap into that. There are some DNA happening there that is pretty indestructible and I think we can all use that. Imagine if we could just figure out the secret of the olive tree and then adopt it, I think maybe eating it might help. That’s just my own opinion. My grandfather used to tell me just eat a spoon of olive oil every day and you’ll never get sick. You’ll never get constipated. I know that’s TMI but that’s what he would share with me.
Then another fun fact is that Cleopatra, the queen herself used to make a mask out of olive oil. Yes, she would combine olive oil and clay to pull out the impurities and honey to make her skin soft and milk and all of these different concoctions. I have a combination of green Castelvetrano and Kalamata olives. I did about two-thirds of the green to one-third of the Kalamata. Why? Because the green are actually a lot sweeter so it tempers the saltiness of all of the other ingredients. That is about that.
Anchovies, these made an appearance last week. They’re part of tapenade. Half a can of the anchovies into there. We’ve also got some fresh lemon, some fresh basil that will help to add a little bit of sweetness. We’re going to top it off with a little chive and we’re going to make this spread. We’re going to smear it onto little cut Persian cucumbers. This tapenade, everything goes into the food processor.
I have my olives and everything is going to go into the mix here. My capers, a tablespoon. I have half a can of anchovies. Even if you don’t like anchovies, don’t be scared because this is just going to add some salt. Now if you are vegan or vegetarian and you just don’t do olives, leave them out. Just leave them out. I’m going to add a little bit of yellow bell pepper too, the little mini bell peppers for some sweetness also. You see how I’m playing off the sweet and saltiness.
These lemons I already cleaned with our Eat Cleaner. I use these the other day. I just needed some zest. These are zestless. We don’t need any zest in this one. I know I tell you zest is the zest of life but this one, you don’t need it. Oh my god you guys! Did you hear about the fact that they found … they detected that King Tut’s dagger that he was buried with was from a meteorite? What? Does that validate that there was some outer stuff going on? I wonder. By the way, we’re going to add some olive oil. We’re going to add about two tablespoons of olive oil to the mix.
What do you think about them potatoes? Then I’m going to add some of my little yellow pepper. These have also already been washed. I did this as part of my meal prep for the week. These are what I call my snacking vegetables. That is that. That’s how simple this is you guys. I’m going to just give this a taste see if it needs anything. Really good.
What I’m going to do is I’m going to take my cucumber and I’m going to slice it at an angle. Just by doing it at an angle, it makes it look somehow much more elegant. That is what our little serving platter for our tapenade will look like. Then we’re going to take a little bit of Greek yogurt. Take my bowl here. I’m going to add a little bit of lemon to this. A little bit of lemon juice as the base here. Mix it up. I’m mixing it up with just a little bit of the olive juice that was left after I put my olives in so I’m picking up that flavor. Just a little olive juice with my plain nonfat Greek yogurt. If you don’t do dairy, you can do the dairy free yogurt. There’s a dairy free or meat free option for everything nowadays.
Is anybody out there feel like they’re a dork? I’m okay with being a dork. I was the smart kid that everybody wanted to cheat off of in school. Now how easy and delish. You can even put the tapenade if you really wanted to get fancy. You could put it in a pastry bag and pipe it onto your little hors d’oeuvres here. You could also toss the tapenade with some warm gluten free pasta if you like. You could do a little bit on a flat bread. Instead of a tomato sauce, do the tapenade. You can have a lot of fun with this dip.
This is, I will say the fallback dip because its things that you can always have in your pantry pretty much that don’t go bad. You’ve got the olives. You’ve got the anchovies. You’ve got the capers. You got the olive oil. The only fresh stuff you really need are the herbs. The basil, the lemon and the peppers which are usually part of our meal prep anyways. You’re going to have those around. That is that. What do you guys think? Pretty cute. Pretty fun little appetizer that comes together in about three minutes. I love all of you … olive you. Olive you I love you. All right have a good night. As they say in Arabic masalam.
Take a look at the video and tell me what you think!! I love you guys and I’d love to hear from you! Be sure to tune in to The Real Dish LIVE and catch the replays on our You Tube Channel.
