Heavenly Olivver Taramasalata

Greek food can hit the spot like no other. And this little adventure began, like many, with spotting a large pack of smoked fish roe discounted to pennies - well, 3 bucks - at the local shop.

It had to be done: a beautiful, smooth taramasalata, the traditional Greek fish dip that’s a creamy, dreamy blend of fish roe, lemon juice, and (quality!) extra virgin olive oil olive oil.

Add warm pita bread, perhaps a few slices of crisp cucumber, a few tomatoes sprinkled with oregano… and we’re in mezze heaven.

Anyway, if you have a food processor, this is dead simple.

Here's how:

Just throw 300 grams of bread (no crusts), a small red onion roughly chopped, and 100 grams of smoked fish roe (scraped out of the skins, leave those out) in the blender. 

Get it whirring and slowly drizzle in 100-150 ml of lovely olive oil (we used Olio Guglielmi ’s 'Le Monocultivar' Peranzana), until the consistency looks good.

Then add the juice of one lemon.

Now, the killer touch. Home made taramasalata can look a little underwhelming colour-wise, so we added a small piece of roasted beetroot to give it that seductive pink glow.
Only has to be a smidge of beetroot to do the job; you could use canned, or even a pea-sized lump of fresh.

And kalispera! 

There you have it: Heavenly Olivver Taramasalata.

Top tips: don’t add salt. Go sloooooow adding the EVOO as you observe the consistency. If you want it less strongly flavoured, lower the smoked roe amount and raise the bread. Some people say use stale bread, we used fresh ciabatta and it worked fine. Will keep in the fridge (in a container) for up to a week.