Artichoke Tapenade is a tasty tapenade recipe featuring chopped artichokes and olives in a rosemary infused olive oil. Absolutely delicious on bread or crackers or mixed into a pasta dish with chicken.
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I was so extremely grateful that my friends at the Cook the Book Fridays group chose a relatively quick recipe for this week’s CtBF. Still, I knew that getting away with assembling a quick tapenade seemed a bit too easy.
Having learned my lesson from the last recipe which involved an all day process of baking a quick bread and a slow braising the stew, I made sure to review the tapenade recipe ahead of time. Aha! My suspicions were confirmed…David’s recipe required the extra step of heating the olive oil with rosemary.
The process of heating and cooling oil would definitely add a chunk of extra time to this seemingly quick tapenade. Was it worth it? Probably. Did I already have herbed olive oil in my pantry? Yes! I went with that. Sometime in the future when the herbed oil runs out I will make my own because it’s a fairly easy process and I always have fresh rosemary on hand.
I’m going to be pretty honest here. I’ve never liked olives. So why…you might ask…would I vote for a tapenade recipe? I absolutely LOVE artichokes and my love for artichokes is so strong that I could handle a few pesky olives.
David’s recipe doesn’t specify what kind of olives to use, he only mentions green and pitted. So I made a special trip to the nearby Italian Centre so that I could pick out olives that were slightly more tolerable to me.
I had always thought olives were a ‘love them or hate them’ kind of snack, but recently (and because of the Italian Centre) I have discovered two kinds that I can tolerate. One is the really dry wrinkly black olive and the other is a bright green, globular one called a Nocellara olive.
The Italian Centre was really a one stop shopping for this dish because they also carry capers and quite a few varieties of canned artichokes. I was pretty excited when they opened their store last year because they carry almost any culinary item and ingredient imaginable and they are only a 10 minute drive from my house.
After picking up the ingredients, I hurried back home to make the tapenade and hand shaped orecchiette. The dough I had set out to rest while getting the olives had to be rolled out and shaped before we had to leave for football. Time was running short!
Even so, I took some liberties with the tapenade recipe, as I most often do. These specific liberties actually added on more prep time because they involved hand chopping every ingredient rather than chucking it all in the food processor. There are some things that just should not be made in the processor and tapenade is one of them (salsa is another).
I’m kind of old school that way, plus I like my tapenade super chunky. Of course David mentions throwing the ingredients into a mortar but there was definitely no time for that. By the way, I tried to get the olive pits out by hand but that wasn’t working so I got out the cherry pitter. It actually worked really well on the Nocarella olives.
My attempt at making orecchiette was pretty lame so you won’t ever see a photo of it but I have plenty of photos of that amazing Artichoke Tapenade with Rosemary Oil. We ate it on the gorgeous rustic potato bread (also from the Italian Centre…they have an amazing bakery!) and warmed up with some leftover chicken on the nightmarish orecchiette for a quick dinner. It was delicious!
Then we spent the next two hours watching our son’s football team win their first game of the season.
Generally our group respects David’s ownership of each recipe that we cook from My Paris Kitchen by not posting the recipes from the book. There are a few renditions of the tapenade floating around on the internet, including one on David’s site.
If you make this Delicious Artichoke Tapenade recipe, I’d love to hear about it in the comments section or in the ratings. Be sure to follow me on Facebook and Pinterest for my latest recipes. Also, if you do make this recipe please share your photos and tag me on Instagram. I hope you like this recipe!
Artichoke Tapenade with Rosemary Oil
Artichoke Tapenade is a tasty tapenade recipe featuring chopped artichokes and olives in a rosemary infused olive oil. Absolutely delicious on bread or crackers or mixed into a pasta dish with chicken.
Ingredients
- 1 can (14 oz/400 g) artichoke hearts; drained
- 1/4 cup dried black olives; pitted
- 1/4 cup Nocarella olives; pitted
- 2 cloves garlic; minced
- 1 Tablespoon capers; rinsed and squeezed dry
- 1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice
- 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1/3 cup rosemary oil
- sea salt
Instructions
- Quarter and finely chop up the artichoke hearts, add to bowl.
- Very finely chop the olives and capers, add to bowl.
- Add remaining ingredients to the bowl and mix. Season accordingly with sea salt, if the olives don't add enough saltiness for you.
Notes
To use as a 'pesto' on pasta, warm slightly and mix with boiled and drained pasta. Add warmed chicken if you wish.
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
6Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 46Total Fat: 4gSaturated Fat: 1gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 3gCholesterol: 0mgSodium: 215mgCarbohydrates: 3gFiber: 2gSugar: 0gProtein: 0g
Nutritional calculation was provided by Nutritionix and is an estimation only. For special diets or medical issues please use your preferred calculator.
Tasty!
Your chunky tapenade looks delicious! My family devoured this when I served it as an appetizer, but I look forward to make it again so I can try using it in different ways. With chicken and pasta sounds very tasty.
yes, it was a big hit here. I just won’t serve it on a football night again because we were all so thirsty after…I guess that’s the point of tapenade, a bar type snack to get you thirsty.
Oh what a great idea to use it on chicken! Another excuse to make this recipe! I used the nocellara green olives as well and (while I love all olives) I really like their buttery brininess. It’s nice for non-olive people that they just provide a foundational briny flavor and richness of texture here as opposed to being really forward, like in olive tapenade. At least to my palate.
yes, that why I used them…I call them ‘beginner olives’ and I am just starting to like them so that makes me a beginner 🙂 Thanks for stopping by!
I need an Italian Centre ten minutes from my house. It sounds like an incredible store!
I like the look of the chopped up tapenade. Next time I’ll play around with it and combine both textures.
It’s pretty amazing..I go there quite often, too often! Thanks!
What a wonderful dinner! I also had mine with chicken and it was so good. You are right- it would be excellent with pasta too! Will have to try that!
and as a sandwich spread. The possibilities are endless 🙂
Your chunky tapenade looks fabulous and serving it with the rustic looking potato bread sounds delicious! Congrats to your son’s football team!
Thank you Joyce!! He didn’t have a great season last year so it was nice to kick off this season with a win. The tapenade was a winner too!
love the picture of your mise en place, and the finished dish of both green and black olives!
Thank you! When all the ingredients are this beautiful I love doing a mise shot!!
Love your photos! Your tapenade looks delicious and that bread is to die for! Your dinner does sound wonderful.
Congrats to your son’s team!
Thank you 🙂 The tapenade was a treat….the bread was quite hard but we gave it the old warm up in the oven with some steaming water and it was good to eat.
We were all pretty thirsty during the football game…might have to rethink the olives before a game next time!
The Italian Centre sounds wonderful. It’s great to find places that really get a cuisine, especially when they’re one stop shops. I agree with Betsy, your dinner sounds delicious, even if it wasn’t photograph-able.
I like the look of your chopped version of this tapenade – it’s beautiful!
I’m not even sure if it’s still technically a tapenade lol. But all the flavours were there and that is what’s important.
I am so in love with the Italian Centre, for real. They have amazing take home pizzas and an espresso bar with displays full of Italian goodies. They claim to have the largest deli in North America. They have a WALL OF CHEESE! It’s the first place I’m headed during the zombie apocalypse!
How lucky to have such a great place nearby! We will be tossing leftovers of this with pasta for lunch.
That tapenade is great on a sandwich too! Yes, we are really lucky. I spend a lot of time (and money) there 🙂
Love the idea of putting it on chicken. Yum!!!!
Yes, it was tasty. Although I have to say we were all quite thirsty at the football game, including my son who drained his whole 2 L water bottle.
Haha..I hear you!Good tapas will have that effect!
Even if your orecchiette wasn’t picture worthy, I do love your idea of serving the tapenade on pasta with chicken. My mouth is watering. I might try that. After being traumatized by cans of black California olives, I was surprised when I found more Mediterranean olives that I really liked. I’m glad I got over thinking olives weren’t for me.
My husband really likes olives so I would try one once in a while to see if I still hated them because I thought they were something I SHOULD learn to like. Nope. Not until I found these olives can I tolerate them. I guess they are quite mild ‘starter olives’ 🙂
We also had the tapenade with leftover chicken as sandwiches. Good stuff!