Back to basics: or, the calming properties of tapenade

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

After all the hype and hysteria of the last few days, political news coming at us like the rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire, I have fled back to the comfort of food. Most specifically, I am sheltering under the umbrella of tapenade.

Tapenade is not something I make. I like the idea of it, I think I might even have bought a jar or two in my time. Black olives, olive oil and garlic are three of my very favourite things. It comes out of the earthy heat of Provence, a region that produces some of the most delightful cooking in the world. In fact the more I think of it, the more I fail to understand why I do not make it every day.

I turned to it yesterday on a sudden, imperative whim. I was reading of LibertyLondonGirl’s culinary travels through California, and luxuriating in her description of the tasting menu at the Bel Air Hotel, when I saw the word tapenade and decided that that was exactly what I must have, right now. I leapt from my desk, rushed to the shop, bought all the ingredients, and came home to make it.

I had vaguely assumed that it was pretty much just olives and olive oil and maybe some garlic. It turns out that it also includes capers and anchovies. The name derives from tapeno, the Provencal word for capers. It appears that capers were brought to France from Crete by the Greeks in the sixth century BC; they were preserved in olive oil and stored in amphora (the capers, not the Greeks), where they became mushed down into a sort of paste – thus the origins of the tapenade. It is unclear where the olives came in. For such a simple thing, it arouses quite a lot of discussion. There are purists who say that you should leave the garlic and anchovies out; there are gadflies who throw in everything but the kitchen sink – I read one recipe for ‘cucumber and orange tapenade’ which sounds so revolting that I don’t like to dwell on it. Some people add lemon juice, or brandy, or mustard, or thyme. There is a mystifying subset which insists on throwing in tuna. Delia says you can make it more ‘aristocratic’ by adding sun-dried tomatoes. I find this mildly peculiar on several levels. I don’t especially see the need for poshing up what is a basic rustic dish. And I can’t see much that is aristocratic about sun-dried tomatoes, an ingredient invented by the peasants of southern Italy, and so peculiar to them that the Northern Italians had hardly even heard of sun-dried tomatoes until they became fashionable in London in the 1990s.

As well as a myriad of different versions of tapenade, there are a hundred different things you can do with it. I like the sound of using it in tomato tarts, and Gordon Ramsey has a lovely idea of spreading it on toast soldiers and eating it with creamy scrambled egg. But as always, I went for the most simple recipe and the simplest way of eating it.

Here is what I did:

Took a jar of Kalamata olives, rinsed them, and pitted them. The pitting took ages, and I had to press and fiddle to get the stones to come out, but all the serious chefs who talk about tapenade insist it is really worth it, because olives without stones do not have nearly such a rich flavour. Luckily the rather diverting Museum of Curiosity was on the wireless, which helped take my mind off the dullness of the job.

Then I threw the olives into a blender with a small clove of garlic, three anchovy fillets and a glug of olive oil. Blended the whole thing up until it was a rough paste.
(Did you notice the omission? No capers. I love capers and would have included them, but they are beyond my local shop, and despite the fact that this entire dish originates from the capers in the vats in the sixth century BC, I did not notice their absence. Probably next time I would add a very few, the ones stored in salt, not in brine.)

I sliced a baguette as thinly as I could and toasted the little rounds under the grill. For perfection, I think a good Italian bread would be better – again, the limitations of my local shop – and I imagine that sourdough might be sublime. I spread a generous amount of tapenade on each toast, added a sliver of Capricorn goat’s cheese and a little suggestion of Parma ham on the top. All the textures worked fabulously well: the crisp of the toast, the black fleshiness of the tapenade, the yielding softness of the cheese and the smooth of the ham. Also, the cool tang of the goat’s cheese cut the saltiness of the olives beautifully.

I mention the brand name of the cheese because it is one I am particularly fond of at the moment, and I highly recommend you track it down. It is made by the Lubborn Creamery in Somerset and has a lovely delicate flavour and a thin washed rind; it is like a very fine brie in style, and utterly delicious.

In which, once more, I wax a little sentimental about the blogosphere

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Today, I was going to give you my very own recipe for spaghetti olio, aglio e peperoncino, but, my darlings, you are going to have to wait for that until tomorrow. Instead, I am going to write a little ode to the wonders of the blogosphere.

I do not wish to sound like one of those grumpy old geezers who are endlessly groaning about how everything was so much better in their day. And I hate the intellectually lazy habit of bashing the media (or the MSM, as I learn we bloggers must call it). But I have been lately struck by the almost indecent delight that the papers have been taking in The Bad News. Railing against bad news is a fast track to derision and rolling eyes; remember when poor Martin Lewis made his plea for some good news, and how everyone laughed and scoffed? No one now dares say stop, and so we exist on a crazed diet of economic crash, swine flu, political malfeasance, feral children and vapid celebrities, who are unpicking the very moral fibre of the country with their bare hands, thread by thread. You can say it has always been so; you can say it does not matter so very much. You can say the punters are just getting what they want. But it does have real consequences. Take crime, for example. Because of sensationalist headlines about knives and stabbing and no police on the streets, the public believes that we are living in a crime wave. The numbers, dry and unsensational, suggest that crime is decreasing at a steady rate; the curve runs down yearly. So there is a canyon between perception and reality, and since no one believes any more a word the government says, those in power have given up even trying to insist on the truth of the matter.

So it goes with the blogs. The general notion is put about that the bloggers are geeks and freaks and blatant self-regarders. Don't go there: it is where the nutters live. When I first started blogging, I was actually afraid. My terror existed on several levels. I feared that people whose opinions I valued would mark me down in the narcissist box. I had an inchoate fret that by going from the safety of the printed page, where I have lived for my whole professional life, to the unknown world of cyberspace, I would somehow be sacrificing my literary integrity. (I know, don't shriek, but we all have our little fantasies about ourselves; literary integrity is one of mine.) And I had a low-level fear that once I entered the blogosphere I would find myself lost in Crazytown without a map home.

Instead, as I have written before and I shall almost certainly write again, I find myself in a disarmingly wonderful new place. I use the word wonderful advisedly: every day, as I navigate the blogging ether, I am actually filled with wonder. Kevin Kline once said in The Big Chill something like - how much fun, friendship and good times can one man take? That is how I feel about the bloggers. I wish one of the bad news merchants would one day decide to write about the cleverness, funniness, occasional blatant brilliance and sheer mass of interesting information that is to be found out there in blogland.

I slept badly last night. My poor old mum is in the hospital; I know she will be fine, but I don't like to think of her in a strange, sterile room, away from home. I woke this morning feeling slightly lost and worried. I listlessly checked my Twitter feed, more out of habit than anything else. And there was a message from Libertylondongirl saying: read my blog. I went to her page to find she had given Backwards In High Heels a glorious, shameless plug. It was a little shaft of sunlight in a grey day. (Also, it is the kind of thing my mum would love; she does not quite understand the concept of blogging, although she listens very politely as I try to explain it to her, but she understands very well the concept of people saying nice things about the book, and diligently clips cuttings on the subject and sends them to me in case I might have missed them.) Praise from LLG is a high thing. She is a serious presence in the blogosphere. When the papers pause in their embrace of the bad news and find a moment to run lists of the hundred best blogs, she is always high up on the roll call. From the moment I entered this strange new place, she took time to welcome me in, show me around, and fire off little morale boosters. No one writes about that, but I discover, to my delight and surprise, that this is what bloggers do. I suppose 'Some bloggers really are rather kind' is not the catchiest of headlines. It's not front page news. But today, it is my front page.