The pounded thing (to keep in a pot, preservation)
Black tapenade made in a mortar
PreservingDocumented🧂 🍄 ☕facile20 min
A dense black paste of olives, capers, anchovies, and olive oil, pounded in a mortar, brightened with a dash of lemon. It keeps in a pot under oil and is spread on warm fougasse.
The pounded thing (to keep in a pot, preservation)
A dense black paste of olives, capers, anchovies, and olive oil, pounded in a mortar, brightened with a dash of lemon. It keeps in a pot under oil and is spread on warm fougasse.
Here is a black and silent thing, which must be reduced in the mortar so that it finally speaks. You pound the wrinkled olives like little pebbles, the capers — which give the paste its name, tapéno in Provençal —, a few anchovies, and you bind it all with oil until you get a glossy, salty, almost bitter mud. Put in a pot under a finger of oil, it keeps for weeks in the cellar. Spread it thick on bread: it is the whole Midi concentrated in a spoonful.
Ingredients
- •Pitted black Provençal olives — two handfuls (base)
- •Salt-packed capers — a good spoonful (signature (tapéno))
- •Salt anchovies — a few (umami)
- •Olive oil — as needed (binder, preservation)
- •Garlic — one clove (aromatic)
How it was made : Tapenade as we know it was codified at the end of the 19th century (attributed to Marseilles chef Meynier, around 1880), but it extends an ancient tradition of olive purées. Its name comes from the Provençal tapéno, caper. Under oil, it served as a preserve to keep the taste of olives all year round.
Sources : Francis Ponge, « Le Galet », dans Le Parti pris des choses, Gallimard, 1942 · J.-B. Reboul, La Cuisinière provençale, 1897