Here we go...The hors d'oeuvre for the great duck confit dinner was to be a black olive tapenade. Josée di Stasio's cookbook "A la di Stasio" offered only a handful of hors d'oeuvres options, and my first choice, Chicken Liver Mousse with Figs would have been too heavy since the main course involved a ridiculous amount of duck fat. Also, duck fat AND chicken livers would have been a little too much adventure for my first all-French dinner party, but the other options were generally un-cooked things you can throw together for a happy hour, like olive platters and charcuterie, which seemed like a cop-out for such an elaborate meal. So as much as I was skeptical about using two of my least favourite flavours in the dish (orange and fennel), the recipe was very French - simple and delicate - and that was the point, really.
I initially wanted to serve this with Ace Bakery Baguette, which is one of, if not the best, bakeries in Toronto. Unfortunately the dinner was being made on a Sunday and I hate buying baguette a day in advance. So the only option, since the bakery would be closed, would be grocery store baguette. I shuddered at the thought.
Then a saving grace! In front of my very eyes was Premiere Moisson baguette! The very bakery I had fallen in love with upon moving to Montreal. Now it's available at major supermarkets in Toronto! I'm not so naive as to think that it came in fresh that day, so I really could have gotten Ace Bakery baguette the day in advance and had the same results, but it seemed fitting to have Quebec baguette. Another upside was that I didn't have to bring it myself, and therefore didn't have a chance to leave it behind in Montreal, like my duck fat.
Ingredients:
Black olives
Orange zest, finely grated
Orange juice
Fennel seeds
Olive oil
Black pepper
Just 6 ingredients! Simple and fresh. I went to St. Lawrence Market and bought a 250mL container of black olives from Scheffler's Deli & Cheese. The problem was that there were a few different kinds of 'black olives' - different sizes, different countries, different amounts of salt, and different flavours. Italian or Portuguese? ITALIAN OR PORTUGUESE!? Quick, make a decision! Well, the Portuguese were smaller, so you could fit more of them into the container...so I went with those.
Instructions:
1. di Stasio says that to get the excess salt out of the olives, put them in a bowl and pour boiling water over them. Let them sit a few minutes and then drain them. Great tip!
2. To get the pits out of the olives (buy pitted if you can, but the ones with pits will probably taste fresher), I put the olives in a plastic bag (upon di Stasio's recommendation) and tried crushing them with a small saucepan. Yeah, that didn't work. I think di Stasio owns an olive pitter...the rest of us will have to settle for massaging the pits out of the olives. It was a lot less messy to do this with my hands outside the plastic bag and the olives inside, though. Half marks for di Stasio.
3. You can either do all the chopping and mixing in a food processor (very easy - make sure you set the food processor to coarsely chop, not to purée) or do it with a knife (my only option). Chop the olives very finely and combine them with the zest of half a medium-sized orange, 1 tablespoon of orange juice (fresh from the orange you just scraped, of course), and a teaspoon of crushed fennel seeds. The fennel seeds I just chopped finely with a knife as well, but if you use a food processor you still need to crush them before throwing them in, since "coarsely chopped" on a food processor is bigger than crushed funnel). You can use a mortar and pestle, a coffee or spice grinder, or put them in a plastic bag and crush them with a saucepan (this works much better for spices than for olives, as it turns out).
4. Then add a few tablespoons of olive oil and a few grinds of fresh black pepper and process (or stir) to combine.
That's it. Four steps that get a little more difficult if you don't have a food processor or pitted olives. Juicing the orange is actually not bad since it's such a small quantity that it turns out to be more of a squeeze of orange juice, not an arduous process. Just chop the orange in half and squeeze one half (preferably the half from which you grated the zest, since it won't keep as long) with both hands over the bowl of diced olives, or the food processor. There will even be lots of orange left over to eat. It's important to judge the quality of your orange, I'm convinced...even if it is after you've added it to the recipe.
Then put the tapenade in the fridge to let the flavours combine for a few hours. When you're ready to serve (6pm on the nose, in my case), slice the baguette on an angle, and you're done. If it sits in the fridge for a day the olive oil will solidify at the bottom, and that's fine, just let it warm up to room temperature and give it a stir. Oh, the other bread in the photo is a rice bread that I bought for a gluten-intolerant dinner guest. Coming to a dinner party and not being able to eat something shows very bad form on the part of the host, and I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't do as much for my guests as they would do for me.
In the end, I actually liked this tapenade, despite my least favourite flavours of fennel and orange. At first I did hate it, but my tastes matured a little with every bite, until the point where I found it refreshing. Fennel is growing on me in Indian dishes and here it wasn't so bad. The orange was still...well, it was okay. Not too sweet, not too acidic, but more than I would have liked if I made the tapenade solely for myself (which I wouldn't do anyway since it was drowning in olive oil and it's easy to eat way too much of it if it's served as anything but an hors d'oeuvre).
All in all, a great start the meal. The leftovers also work well in a green salad in place of a vinaigrette, and the tapenade will keep in the fridge for up to 3 weeks.
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