For the Love of Olives

There is this amazing restaurant in the town that I grew up in that serves really yummy tapenade.  It's one of those things that I eat and think "ooh, I need a recipe for this" and then by the time I get home, I forget about it, and life goes on...  Well, not today!  I will  no longer miss out on the olives that olive-haters leave behind!  The coolest part about this recipe is that I learned how to roast red peppers too!  So with Kalamatas from good ol' Costco (yes, I have a GIANT jar in my fridge), a lemon from my tree and the experimental red pepper, I went to work.  Lemme tell ya...  It's pretty tasty!

The Tapenade Recipe
Roasting Red Peppers instructions

I tried the first suggestion of roasting the pepper on my stove-top...  Let's just say that someone as accident prone as me should not be playing with fire!  Next time I will use the broiler so as not to combat a flaming vegetable.  Since the article is long, here are the highlights and a variation of what I did.  You need a gas stove or bar-b-que:

1. Wash your pepper.
2. Broil red pepper in oven with door open (so flame stays lit), turning the pepper with tongs so that it gets burned evenly.  You want the outside to be black all over.
3. As soon as it is done, stick it in a bowl with a plate over the top and allow to cool completely.  Do not let the steam out!  I let mine sit for about an hour and a half.
4. Get out a bowl and place a small-mesh strainer over it.
5. Take a paring knife and slice the first layer of skin lengthwise down the pepper.
6. Cut around the stem and pull the stem and seeds out and place them in the strainer letting juices drip into the bowl.
7. "Open the pepper like a book" and remove any excess seeds.  Carefully scrape the burned skin off of the pepper and into strainer.  Be careful, it gets slippery... and remember that anything that comes off of or out of the pepper goes into the strainer!
8. When finished, discard the stuff in the strainer (garbage, compost, whatever) and place the pepper in the bowl with the juices!  You can stick a lit on it and refrigerate it for later use, or do what I did...  Slice it up and dump the whole bowl in the food processor for the tapenade!

I also did not use capers in mine, but I plan to next time.  I spread the mixture over thinly sliced sourdough and it was delicious.