Blood Orange Tapenade Citronette � Cheating and proud of it!

Sometimes you just have to cheat. I was planning to serve a beautiful seared Ahi tuna loin. I wanted to slice it and serve it on an olive Tapenade. This is a classic combination in the Mediterranean, but I had one problem, I didn�t have the hour it was going to take to shop for, and mince the 12 ingredients that go into my Tapenade recipe. Lucky, I live near a Trader Joes (a CostPlus World Market, or Whole Foods would have also worked), so I went in and bought a jar of prepared green olive Tapenade. Before it went into the basket I carefully checked the ingredients� nothing but vegetables and spices! It was incredibly close to the one I make from scratch, and so I decided to use it guilt-free.

When I got home a quick taste-test confirmed my belief I had made a great decision. It tasted great and I was ready to move on to the tuna. So the point is, if you�re going to �cheat� and use prepared foods, make sure they�re high-quality and all natural. Now, this Tapenade would have made a great accompaniment for my seared tuna all by itself, but I decided to dress it up with some blood orange juice and olive oil as you�ll see in this demo. Bye the way, this mixture is fantastic on almost anything from grilled fish to roasted vegetables. It�s low-carb (as in almost no-carb) and since a small amount goes a long way, it�s also fairly low-cal.

4 tbl green olive Tapenade
1 small blood orange (or half a regular juice orange)
2 tbl olive oil
salt to taste
cayenne to taste