Sundried Tomato Spread

Okay, maybe you'd actually like a picture of the finished product from the last post. Here's the finished tapenade, accompanied by my sundried tomato spread. These two will be coming together on a single sandwich later. The tapenade is smooth, salty, rich, and complex; the spread is chunky, sweet, earthy, and tangy.

I looked through lots of sundried tomato spread recipes, and most of them had mayonnaise or sour cream or other apocryphal ingredients. I had to design my own, and I think I've come up with something that really works well as a sandwich spread. I guess mayo makes sense if you're looking for a dip, but it still seems...wrong.

Sundried Tomato Spread

• 1 cup sundried tomatoes, packed in oil, drained
• 1-2 tablespoons capers
• 1/2 head (or more) roasted garlic
• 1 teaspoon worchestershire sauce (can replace with soy sauce or salt, if desired)
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• handful fresh basil leaves
• dried oregano to taste (about 1 teaspoon)
• salt and pepper to taste

Again, just whir in a food processor until smooth. If it's too chunky you can thin it with some olive oil, water, or even the oil from the sundried tomato jar. The roasted garlic and balsamic vinegar, both sweet themselves, really accentuate the sweetness of the tomatoes. You can use raw garlic for more of a kick, but since I use this with the green olive tapenade (which contains raw garlic), I like the contrast between the two.

Green Olive Tapenade

There are few foods I can absolutely not tolerate; the main one is bleu cheese. But high on the list are black olives and raw tomatoes. I can handle raw tomatoes if they're thinly sliced or diced in a salad or sandwich, especially when they're actually in season. And I thought I didn't like olives at all.

But it turns out that black olives (the most commonly encountered olive) are packaged unripe and set in a solution to make them ripen artificially. I first found out I like green olives when I tried a piece of green olive focaccia. Turns out they're great on Italian sandwiches. If you've never had them, give them a try; a small piece of one by itself. You know what I think they taste like? Salty, oily... root beer. I swear, green olives and root beer share a flavoring of some kind.

So here's my simple green olive tapenade. I'm going traditional here, using the very basics of a tapenade. You can add other things, like herbs (parsley, oregano, basil, rosemary), pepper, maybe even pine nuts. It certainly does not need salt, however.

• 1 cup green olives, pitted
• 1-2 tablespoons capers, drained
  
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 2-3 garlic cloves
• 2 anchovy filets
• 1/4 cup olive oil
  

That's it. Just whir it in a food processor until smooth, or do it the old-fashioned way, with a mortar and pestle. Looks pretty, don't it? Leave out the anchovies and you've got yourself a vegetarian and vegen-friendly spread. You might want to add some more capers in that case. It's gluten-free and lactose-free, too!

Serve on bread or crackers, or spread on sandwiches. In fact, this post is the first of many dedicated to Italian-style sandwiches. More later.

By the way, if you do what I did and accidentally buy olives with pits in them, you'll have to pit them yourself. Luckily it's not too hard, just smash them with the side of a large knife, just like you would a garlic clove. (Although, you don't need to use as much force; you can lay your knife on the olive and firmly press down with the heel of your other hand. No need to whack it.) Then just peel away the fruit and discard the pits. Be careful, it's slippery. Here you can see whole olives, smashed olives, pits, and pitted olives.

Bloggining

I need an outlet to talk about everything food-related: baking, cooking, food science, history, anything. There are lots of food blogs out there, and lots of people just as food-obsessed as I am, but I'm hoping at least a few people will be interested in what I have to say. I have three tenets of cooking: what you make should be tastier than what you can buy in a store or restaurant (or at least strive to be), it should be cheaper, and/or it should be worth the effort.

For example, butter? Totally worth making at home; it tastes a hundred times better than butter from the store, you can use the buttermilk by-product, and if you can find some inexpensive cream (this is where Costco or Sam's Club come in handy), the cost is on par with store-bought butter.

And if you like (American, southern, buttermilk) biscuits as much as I do, homemade buttermilk biscuits made with homemade butter and buttermilk are a food miracle that don't come in a can.