Olive tapenade or artichoke tapenade is a wonderful snack for a dinner party. It is not difficult to make, but gives a fancy feel, and can even be used as an appetizer – just add a glass of wine and you’re good to go!

It is a salty and delicious snack, and with a bit of bread it is quite satisfying.

Ingredients:

- 1 lemon (organic)

- 3 pieces of garlic

- 1 – 2 dl of oil

- 400 grams of black olives, without stones

- 50 g of capers

- And – if you are brave, which I wasn’t, you can add 4-5 sardines

Now you are ready to go!

Step 1: The Olive Tapenade

I started out with the olive tapenade.

First take the lemon and grade all of the peel on a kitchen grader. Then squeeze the juice out of the lemon. Add these ingredients in a bowl along with oil and garlic. Mix them together.

Now it’s time to do the olives: I chopped them into small pieces, which took some time, and then added them in the bowl along with the capers. I found that it needed a creamier consistency, so I decided to mix it with a stick blender. (If you want a rougher tapenade, just leave the blender alone)

*If you want to add sardines do it along with the olives.*

Taste the tapenade to check if it’s good – I added a bit of extra garlic, but the taste in a tapenade differs from time to time.

Step 2: The Aspargus Tapenade

The artichoke tapenade is almost exactly the same recipe. I bought a glass of asparagus hearts and used them instead of olives. I used a bit less capers and NO sardines for this one! Besides from that, just follow the recipe from before.

I used a stick blender on this recipe as well, and I would recommend doing it – it’s more important working with artichoke, and it creates a very nice consistence. :)

Step 3: Snacktime!

To finish off the snack, I toasted some pieces of sweet bread, and cut them into little triangles. These bread pieces can be used to dip into the tapenade. Tapenade can be used in many different dishes - I’ll upload another example on how to use tapenade soon.

Tapenade is a great snack, but can also be used in tapas or starters. It is one of my personal favorites, and if you love olives and artichoke I will highly recommend it!

Enjoy, and stay creative!