An Appetizer that Eats like a Meal
Filed under: What's Cooking by jess
So, it’s late. I’m tired. Walt is tired. And there’s no dinner made yet.
What to do? Well, I start flipping through one of the awesome cookbooks that I got for Christmas (thank you behbeh!) and the word tapenade jumped out at me from the pages. And I thought, “Mmmmm… olives. And a chance to put my new food processor to work! But what to have with it?”
Well, earlier that week, when we were trying to find some hard rolls for our beer brats (see previous entry), we also bought some nice crusty bread in case the other rolls didn’t work out. Perfect bread for tapenade, but also for…. oh yeah… fonduta. If you’ve ever had this at Olive Garden restaurant, you know how yummy it is. I didn’t have quite all the ingredients listed (or all the ingredients for the tapenade), but has that ever stopped me? Of course not!
Well, the first thing I noticed was that the recipe (linked above) serves eight. As there were only two of us, I decided to cut all the ingredients by half. Then I figured that even though I didn’t have smoked mozzarella (or any sort of provolone), I did have a package of shredded “Italian blend” cheese, plus several odd-sized chunks of various varieties of cheese on hand. (We have a serious cheese addiction in our house.)
And so I figured, hey, the recipe (cut by half) calls for 3 cups + 3 tablespoons of cheese. I’ll grate up what I have until I have the correct amount. What’s the worst that could happen, really?
Well, as it turns out… nothing. 
I completed the cheese recipe with the various bits of what I had (which I’m not even sure what it was… some sort of smoky gouda perhaps, a bit of gruyere maybe?) plus the pre-shredded stuff to complete the necessary amount. And it was awesome!
As for the tapenade… every basic, olive-based recipe I found online mentioned odd things like capers and anchovies, which I don’t really tend to keep around the house. So I fudged it a little and just threw some kalamata olives, fresh tomatoes, olive oil, basalmic vinegar, salt, pepper, garlic, basil, and oregano into my food processor and let ‘er spin. It, too, was quite tasty.
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