Friday Night Eats

On Friday Christopher had the idea to re-live some cuisine we had together last year during our trip to Seattle. We ate at Lola's a modern Greek reconstruction restaurant and ate a unique Kalamata and Fig Spread on pita bread. We decided to make a party of it and invited Marlon over to help us re-create the recipe.

We bought raw pizza dough from the store and grilled the raw dough in a cast-iron skillet. The result was bread as tender as Indian naan but with a familiar American pizza dough taste. The resulting bread was used as the vehicle to sop up the tasty spreads. We made one savory and one sweet spread that went great with the Pinot Noir Marlon brought over. We all agreed the spreads were good enough to make again although the sweet spread was the most reminiscent of the spread from Lola's that we missed so much. We also made Strawberry and Whipped Cream Napoleons for dessert but that is a story for another day.

I included the recipe for the sweet mission fig and olive tapenade below. I excluded the salt from the recipe because we found the olives gave the recipe an ample salty taste. We also added 1T orange zest for another flavor dimension. The rich taste and the intriguing texture of the figs contrasts well with the salty black and purple olives in this recipe. I can't wait to share this appetizer with friends on the deck with a glass of Las Brisas wine this summer.

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  Fig and Kalamata Tapenade
  1.5 c chopped dried black mission figs
  .5 c kalamata olives pitted and chopped
  1/3 c pine nuts (toasted) (chopped and toasted walnuts would also work)
  2 T balsamic vinegar
  2 T extra virgin olive oil
  2T capers (blotted dry)
  1.5 t fresh oregano
  1/2 t black pepper
  1 T orange zest
  
  Chop figs and olives in food processor.
  Mix remaining ingredients together with figs and olives and serve.
  (Recipe found from Google Books.)