Olives Tart

A couple of years ago, a friend gave me an autographed cookbook - The Olives Table by Todd English.  I'll admit I'd never heard of him or his restaurant so it wasn't like getting a Giada de Laurentis autographed cookbook!  After reading the whole cookbook, I decided one recipe just had to be made right then.  It's one of their signature dishes and is it ever incredible.  The pastry dough is so light and crisp and perfect.  The black olive tapenade is amazing on it's own.  And, the whole tart, well, let's just say it's one of those dishes that when you eat it, you can't think of any way to possibly improve it. 

Olives Tart

Ingredients:
1 T unsalted butter
1-3 onion(s), very thinly sliced
4 T black olive tapenade (link to the recipe is in the directions)
1 recipe tart dough (follows)
1/2 c kalamata and cracked green olives, pitted and chopped
1/4 c crumbled goat cheese
2-8 anchovy fillets


Directions:
Make your tart dough

1 1/8 c flour
1 1/2 t sugar
1/4 t kosher salt
1/4 c cold water
8 T unsalted butter cut into 8 pieces

Pulse the flour, sugar and salt in a food processor.  Add the water through the tube and  pulse again.  Keep the processor running and add the butter one piece at a time until the dough forms a ball.

and put it in the refrigerator for at least 20 minutes.  Melt the butter in a skillet and slowly saute the onion until it's caramelized. 

Make the black olive tapenade. 

Now, you're ready to start assembling the tart.  Preheat your oven to 450 while you assemble.  The recipe calls for rolling out the tart dough.  I simply form a circle, put it in the tart dish and push it into place.  I do this for two reasons.  One, I don't want to incorporate any more flour than necessary into the dough and two, rolling it out is a total mell of a hess. 

Once the dough is in the pan, spread the tapenade over it.

Then, spread on your onions.  The recipe calls for just one onion.  That's what I do when I'm serving this as an appetizer.  But, most of the time we have this for dinner so I use three large sweet onions.

Finally, you're going to put on the toppings.  The recipe calls for two anchovies, diced.  Well, let's just say we LOVE anchovies.  Think I've got enough tins of the little fishies in my pantry?

LOL - now you know - I have 18 tins plus three jars of white anchovies and another of marinated anchovies...  Yes, we did just stock up!  So, I typically put on about eight anchovies. 

Next, a bunch of kalamata and cracked green olives.  I've been known to make this with all kalamata if I'm out of the good green ones...

Finally, a handful of crumbled goat cheese.

Now, you're ready to put it in the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes or until the crust is a lovely golden brown.