Olive spread

It got into my head yesterday. I don’t even really know why. To be precise, what got into my head were those lovely little European anchovies, tucked away in a jar and covered in oil, the ones the French call anchois when they’re preserved (Polish pronunciation: ãszuạ 🙂.

I have no idea why those anchois latched on to me. But the upshot was a black olive spread with anchovies (what else?) and sun-dried tomatoes (thrown in for free, you might say).

But back to things getting stuck in your head. You must know the feeling: something gets in there and just won’t let go. Usually it’s a song. There’s one, for instance, that gets into my head very often, with a title, or maybe it isn’t the title, that goes like this:

„papa papa rapa baba, papa ra papa ba, baba rappa pa… what am I supposed to make of that…”

I should point out that the copyright to the song, at least the particular one going round in my head, belongs to Irena Santor. So, the above text and lyrics by somebody-or-other (as Ninka would put it), performed by Irena Santor (you can listen here).

So that song keeps going round in my head simply because – or primarily, actually, if we’re being precise – Ninka (almost 7 now) recently gave an incredible rendition of it. I’ve got it on record, and whenever I listen to her, it gets into my head all over again and I sing it to her.

The trouble is, Ninka’s bored with the song by now and isn’t especially fond of being reminded of it (or maybe my rendition really is that bad. Could be. Although when “Mucha w mucholocie” – the fly in the fly-plane – gets stuck in my head, that’s OK). So she always tells me not to sing it. Still, my little girl has enough empathy to know that sometimes, when something gets a grip on you… there’s nothing you can do.

Nina calls it “a little worm in your head”. So the moment she hears “papa, papa rapa baba…” she says, “Daddy, do something about that little worm in your head.” Just to be clear, I hope it isn’t one of those little worms you’re supposed to drown in a drink 😉

Anyway, once those anchovies had got into my head, I decided to make a black olive spread. Admittedly, I spent quite a while hunting for the anchovies in a big shop yesterday (they’d hidden them extraordinarily well), but I found them, and for breakfast today I savoured (which means I ate) a wonderful spread with a flavour nothing else can imitate. I heartily recommend it, especially since, as usual around here, it’s a cinch to make and takes barely four minutes. Give it a go.

At a glance: 

Preparation time: 4 minutes

Serves: about 4–5 portions

Calories: it’s bound to have some

Ingredients for Spanish tapenade:

• 100 grams black olives (pitted and drained, so a jar with its brine will weigh about 300 grams)
• 5 anchovies (the little fish, that is. Mine looked like the ones in this photo)
• 4 sun-dried tomatoes
• 1 garlic clove
• 2 teaspoons smooth tahini (that’s sesame paste)
• a tablespoon of olive oil
• 2 teaspoons lime juice (bottled, as usual in my case)
• a pinch of ground black pepper

Recipe for a tasty olive spread (you’ll need a blender):

Making the spread couldn’t be simpler.

I drained the olives and rinsed them with water. I dried them. I peeled the garlic and cut it into 5 equal pieces. I blotted the oil off the anchovies with a paper towel (mine were in sunflower oil). I did the same with the sun-dried tomatoes (mine were packed in oil too).

I put all the ingredients in a tall blender beaker, including the lime juice, the tahini sesame paste and the pepper. I blended everything thoroughly to make the smooth paste you can admire in the, as ever, remarkably successful photos 🙂 The black olive spread with anchovies and sun-dried tomatoes is ready.

It’s best served alongside pieces of a lightly warmed bread roll. It tastes wonderful. Enjoy!