Tapenade

 Classic tapenade isn't just about the olives. Capers play a major role too.  The name comes from the Provencal word for capers (tapenas). In the version that I make, the capers get equal billing with the olives. That makes for a tarter version than we often see. But it works pretty well.

Ingredients

1/2 cup non-pareil capers, rinsed and drained

1 cup black olives in brine, rinsed, pitted and chopped

2 anchovy fillets

2 larger cloves of garlic, crushed 

1/3 cup high quality olive oil (you might need a little more if the olives are quite dry)

Method

Place the drained capers into the jar of your blender. Roughly chop the olives with a few quick passes with your chef's knife. This serves 2 purposes. First it finds any pits that were left behind before your blender or teeth do. Second it allows for a shorter time in the blender so the capers don't get overprocessed. Add the anchovies and crushed garlic.

Pulse the mixture for a second or two. Then add the olive oil, and pulse until the desired consistency is reached. Maybe 3 pulses each lasting a second. Depends on the power of your blender.

Spoon out, the mixture and refrigerate - preferably overnight.

Serve with crostini and a nice glass (or several if you aren't driving) of a chilled Provencal rose.

Gazpacho

This is not your standard, boring blended salsa Gazpacho. It has stale bread. It has olive oil. It has a touch of sherry vinegar. Nothing is heated. The trick is to get as much flavor as possible out of raw vegetables, blending them, and then pushing the soup through a fine-meshed strainer.

The idea and techniques come from Serious Eats (where technique rules). However, when you get to the freezing step do make sure that you freeze the vegetables (especially the onion) in a freezer safe bag. Otherwise you end up with a very smelly freezer - the only thing to do then is to defrost and refreeze. Don't ask me how I know this!

Ingredients - these don't need to be terribly precise

2 or 3 slices of stale bread, sliced. We used a homemade sandwich loaf with 80% bread flour 20% whole wheat.

4-5 lbs ripe tomatoes, cored, cut into chunks. We typically use seconds and cut off any ugly/squashed bits.

2 Cucumbers peeled, cored and sliced into chunks

2 Red bell peppers cored and seeded, sliced into chunks

1 Medium red onion, peeled and cut into chunks

1 1/2 tsp kosher salt 

4 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed

1/2 cup high quality extra virgin olive oil (first cold press, preferably Spanish)

8 tablespoons Sherry vinegar

Method

Tear the bread into chunks into a small bowl. place the chopped vegetables into a large bowl, sprinkling with the salt as you go. Leave the vegetables for 30 minutes to allow the juice to drain. Drain the juice over the bread to soften it. Set this aside, at room temperature, covered.

Gather the vegetables into 2 one gallon freezer bags. Lay the bags flat to even out the vegetables and press the air out. Freeze the vegetables until slightly mushy feeling. Not frozen solid, but not as firm as they were when they went in. If you let them go too long, that's fine - you will just need to let them thaw prior to the next step

Remove the vegetables from the freezer. Transfer liquid from the bottom of the bags over the bread.

Working in batches, place some of the vegetables, bread, olive oil and sherry vinegar into the blender. Blend on high power for at least 60 seconds. Transfer to a fine strainer and strain the pureed soup pushing it through with a metal spoon. There should be very little residue in the strainer, but what is left in the strainer will tend to clog it up. So you will want to clean the strainer between batches.

Chill until you are ready to serve.

Serving

When serving the soup, use chilled bowls, and some garnishes including chives, avocado, grated egg. We often freeze some of the gazpacho in ice cube trays (there go the freezer smells again). This helps keep the soup chilled, although the texture of the frozen pieces is a bit coarse. The ice crystals, are not ideal. Pour a little more olive oil and a few drops of Sherry vinegar onto the soup, and sprinkle some coarse crunch salt.

If you happen to have baguettes or other crusty bread handy, now would be a good time to serve them too. As you can imagine, we did and we did!

Confit tomatoes

I attended a sourdough class at Kuluntu in Dallas over the weekend. As well as it being an absorbing, informative and fun class, Stephanie also served lunch. One of the accompaniments was "confit tomatoes". Why had I never thought of this? Absolutely delicious - almost candy like. Sweet, tart, pungent, .... So, of course I had to give it a go. I used cherry tomatoes and olive oil. And did everything by instinct.

Ingredients

2 cups cherry tomatoes

1 shallot sliced thinly

Enough olive oil (I didn't see any need for extra virgin) to cover the tomatoes. Looked to be about 1 1/2 cups.

Salt, to taste

Method

Put the tomatoes into an acid resistant saucepan (I used a small stainless steel saucier). Add the sliced shallots and mix around with your fingers. Cover the tomatoes and shallots with the olive oil and start to heat slowly. When the temperature of the oil reaches 195, turn it way down and hold the mixture between 190 and 195 for 90 minutes.

Strain the oil off. Salt the tomatoes and transfer to a dish to cool. Refrigerate. They will keep for a few days, but they won't last that long!

Roasted Red Pepper Dip

This was one of those warm Texas evenings, a bottle of rosé , pita chips and the great outdoors kinds of recipes. We had a few red peppers, some pine nuts, olives, capers, anchovies and "secret ingredient" lying around. So of course a dip was the answer. Served with an Argentinian rosé (Pinot Noir).  Bagel chips as an accompaniment and we had very happy tummies.
It turns out that there are quite a lot of ingredients in this. But we happened to have them all to hand.

Ingredients

3 Red Peppers - roasted and cut into pieces

1/2 cup pine nuts - toasted

2T olive oil (not extra virgin - it becomes bitter with the use of the immersion blender)

1 salt packed anchovy

6 Niçoise olives, pitted

1T capers rinsed and drained

1t Habanero vodka (aka secret ingredient). May substitute any hot pepper sauce, but if vinegared, reduce vinegar in overall recipe

2T Sherry vinegar

Salt to taste

Method

Place all the ingredients except the vinegar and salt into the immersion blender's beaker and pulse until almost smooth. Crunchy peanut butter texture is what you are aiming for.

Taste once the desired texture is attained. Add salt (if necessary) and sherry vinegar to taste.

Chill and serve with pita chips

Mango and Avocado salad

A dinner party dish. It's all about the prep! It can be varied a bit too, depending on which accents you want. This time we used pomegranates - they are just coming back into season, it seems. Thanks Dana, for the prep.

Ingredients

1 large ripe mango, peeled and cut into 1/3" chunks

1 shallot, finely diced

2 ripe avocados, peeled and cut into the same sized pieces as the mango

Juice of 2 limes (divided use)

1 Pomegranate (arils only)

High quality olive oil (amount varies depending on the ripeness of the fruit, but around 2T)

2 green lettuce leaves per person

1/2 cup roughly chopped roasted pistachios

Coarse sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Method

Ahead of time, prepare the mangoes, avocado, pomegranate and onion. Make sure you cover the avocado with the juice of one of the limes.

When ready to serve, combine the fruits and shallot into a bowl and add the juice of 1/2 the second lime. Add 1T of olive oil and taste - checking for consistency.  You may need more, so check carefully.

To plate, lay 2 lettuce leaves on the salad plate, spoon the salad mixture onto the leaves, sprinkle a little more olive oil over the dish, then top with the pistachios and add some coarse sea salt (for crunch). Grate a little pepper on each plate, and serve immediately. 

Squash Salad

In the summer here in Texas there is an abundance of squash - zucchini, yellow squash, crook-neck, 8-ball and a host of others. Our trip to the farmers' market on Saturday yielded some nice, firm zucchini - about 6" long each. Zucchini can be annoying to cook - all that water has to be driven off before they will brown - and then all of a sudden they are black. If you don't drive the water off, they are all limp and mushy - almost able to be sucked through a straw. Am I making them sound appetizing yet? I thought not.

Then I saw this thing advertised. It is a spiralizer. Once you get past the "gluten free" hype and stop trying to pretend that strands of zucchini are pasta, the idea is quite handy. The tool is unnecessary - at least for this dish. A good old-fashioned vegetable peeler is all you need. But the spiralizer did spark some thinking.

The secret to this dish is your choice of olive oil. It would be revolting with a neutral tasting oil. We used a California Koroneiki oil, an oil with lots of peppery notes and a silky, buttery mouth feel.

Ingredients (2 Servings)

4 medium sized zucchini

16 cherry tomatoes, halved

1 T capers, rinsed and drained

A few sprigs lemon thyme, leaves only chopped finely

A few glugs of high quality, peppery extra virgin olive oil. Probably 1/4 cup

Juice of 1/2 lemon

Kosher salt to taste

Coarsely ground black pepper to taste

1 avocado diced into 1/4" pieces

Crunchy sea salt for finishing

Method

Peel the zucchini, and then slice into ribbons length wise using the vegetable peeler. Discard the core where the seeds are.

Add the tomatoes, capers, lemon thyme, olive oil and lemon juice to the zucchini slices in a bowl and toss to coat. Add the seasoning salt and pepper to taste, and toss again.

Place 1/2 the avocado onto each plate. Mound the squash salad over the avocado. Sprinkle  some coarse salt on the surfaceof the salad. Frind some pepper onto the plate to make it look interesting, serve immediately

Caprese Salad

Kenji at SeriousEats makes some excellent points about Caprese salad. The keys are:

• Use really fresh tomatoes
• Use really fresh Mozzarella (none of that supermarket pizza topping Mozz.)
• Use really fresh basil, and tear it. (From the garden is the best)
• No vinegar
• Fruity olive oil
• Coarse salt.

So I made it his way tonight. Outstanding. I hadn't previously realized what a dulling effect vinegar has. It was so fresh, so tasty this way. I think there will be a lot more in our future.