Pantry Green Olive Tapanade

I'm at The Boyfriend's and am attempting to use up the ingredients we have in the house. Since he travels all week , it is hard to find the balance between buying food to cook and wasting food, so using what we have on hand is a fun way to expand my creativity in the kitchen.  I had some leftover pizza dough in the freezer (I'll be blogging about how to create amazing pizza dough without using a pizza stone this week!) and some garden tomatoes and I wanted to do something a little different for dinner, so I decided on a Green Olive Tapanade to use as the sauce. 

Normally, I suggest using high quality olives for tapanade, but I just used a jar or regular Spanish Green Olives with Pimento and it came out really well. 

Green Olive Tapanade

• 3 cloves garlic
• Pinch salt
• Juice 1 large lemon
• Zest ½ lemon (save the rest of the zest for another use!)
• 1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes (less if you don’t like heat)
• 1 ½ cups green olives, drained
• 1 tbsp dried thyme  (please make sure you dried thyme of good quality.. it makes a difference) or better yet, 3 tbsp fresh thyme
• 1 tbsp dried onion flakes
• ½ tsp dried marjoram
• 2 tablespoons fresh basil
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• freshly ground pepper to taste

Method:

• Process garlic and a with the pinch of salt in a food processor
• Add the rest of the ingredients, except olive oil, process
• Scrape bowl, stir in olive oil and pepper

You can top pizza with it, stir it into some pasta, soups, mix with tofu or sour cream and  use as a dip with chips/veggies or on top of crostini.. It would be delicious mixed with cashews cheese... and spread on a bagel with sprouts, avocado!

What would you do with  this tapanade?