Recipes: Green olive tapenade baked tuna steaks | Chicken thighs baked with tomato, black olives and lemon

Olives come in more varieties than almost any other fruit or vegetable. Plucked from the tree, they taste bitter, but once preserved they are delicious. My favourite is the Greek variety, Kalamata.

In truth, I simply love all olives, black much more than green, although the green are milder in taste and fruitier. Green olives are also so much more useful than just something to nibble with a glass of wine. They make the most useful pat - tapenade - which can easily be bought in jars but is much better when you make it yourself. They also go extremely well with meat, chicken and fish, as well as enhancing a whole range of vegetarian dishes.

Particularly good with tomatoes, and all members of the onion family, notably with garlic, olives are very good with citrus fruits, especially lemons, limes and oranges.

They can also be used in scones and bread-making, and in dressings for salads and with cooked vegetables - as in today's spinach recipe.

But be warned, don't buy ready-stoned olives in jars as the only taste is that of the preserving brine while the olives invariably have a texture like rubber. Olives are better preserved with their stones in, so buy them like that and cut the stones out yourself - our website has a useful gadget to help you do just that.

Green olive tapenade baked tuna steaks

Tapenade can also be used as a spread on toasted sliced French bread or crostini.

6oz/170g best quality green olives you can find, stoned

finely grated rind of 1 lemon

large handful of parsley, tough stalks removed

1 fat clove of garlic, boiled in its skin for 1 minute, then drained, skinned and chopped

pint/140ml olive oil

6 tuna steaks

Make the tapenade by putting the stoned olives, the grated lemon rind, parsley and chopped garlic into a food processor and whizz, adding the olive oil. Scrape this mixture into a bowl - as it sits, the olive oil rises to the surface, so mix it well before using the tapenade.

Cover a baking tray with a sheet of parchment. Put the tuna steaks on this, and divide the tapenade between them, spreading it evenly over each. Bake in a moderate heat, 350F/180C/Gas Mark 4 for 15-20 minutes, depending on the thickness of the steaks, but 15 minutes will give just pink tuna, 20 rather more cooked through, if the tuna is about 1cm thick.

Chicken thighs baked with tomato, black olives and lemon

This is such a good recipe, quick to prepare, and so good to eat, with boiled Basmati rice.

Serves 6

12 chicken thighs, skin on

3 red onions, skinned, halved and thinly sliced

2 tablespoons olive oil

contents of 3 tins of chopped tomatoes

finely grated rind of 1 lemon

1 level teaspoon caster sugar, teaspoon salt, about 20 grinds of black pepper

a pinch of dried chillies

about 24 black olives, stones removed and the olives chopped

chopped parsley, to strew over the surface of the finished dish

This needs to be made in a wide saut pan or in a roasting tin which is uncovered during cooking.

Heat the olive oil in a saut pan and fry the sliced onions over moderate heat until completely soft - about five to seven minutes. Then add the contents of the tins of tomatoes, the lemon rind, sugar, salt, pepper and chillies, and the chopped and de-stoned black olives. Bring this to a gentle simmer, then put the chicken thighs into this, skin side uppermost, above the level of the tomatoey mixture. Bake in a moderate heat, 350F/180C/Gas Mark 4, for an hour - the skin on the chicken thighs should be crisp. Bake for a little longer if you need to. The tomato mixture around the thighs will shrink as it cooks, so that it is very thick when it comes to serving.

Spinach with black olives, garlic and tomatoes

This is a delicious vegetable dish, to dress up any plain grilled or baked chicken or fish.

SERVES 6

1lb/450g young spinach leaves - this looks a vast amount, but the spinach wilts down so have no fear of excess

3-4 tablespoons olive oil

about 20 black olives, stoned

4 fat cloves of garlic, simmered for 2 minutes then drained, skins removed and the garlic chopped

6 tomatoes, each skinned, see method below

about 20 grinds of black pepper teaspoon salt

Start by packing the spinach leaves into a saucepan containing three tablespoons water. Cram the lid on the spinach and cook for barely a minute over a high heat - just long enough for the spinach to wilt. Then, cool the spinach, and squeeze the excess water from it. Put the cooled spinach on a board and chop it.

Skin the tomatoes, by stabbing each in two or three places, and pouring boiling water over them, leave for 20-30 seconds before draining off the water. Slip the skins from each tomato and cut each in half. Scoop away the seeds and slice each tomato half into four or five slivers.

Heat the olive oil in a saut pan. Add the skinned chopped garlic, the chopped spinach and the de-stoned chopped black olives. Add the pepper and salt, and stir over moderate heat for a couple of minutes, then add the tomato slivers. Cook just long enough to heat through the contents of the saut pan. Serve warm, or cooled, in which case trickle another tablespoon of olive oil over the surface.

TOP TIP: Olives are not only delicious but they are rich in iron, vitamin E and are high in fibre

For beginners' wine courses in Edinburgh and Glasgow, see www.rosemurraybrown.com