Dehydrated Olive Tapenade

I got my hands on some extremely fresh wild salmon over the weekend, and though I knew how I would cook it (on my flat griddle, skin down, 10 minutes, until skin is potato chip crisp) I was groping a little for a sauce until I remembered a neat idea from the Alinea cookbook - an olive oil jam made of dehydrated olives.

I don't own a dehydrator.  But I've done well dehydrating tomatoes in the oven at 170, so I put some shriveled, oil-cured, thasos olives in the oven on a low burn and forgot about them for about 7 hours.  They emerged further shriveled, tough jerky like pellets of concentrated olive flavor.  I pitted them, and then set to with my mortar, pestle, and good Cretan olive oil until I got a smooth paste.  The resultant sauce was a fantastic, salty, counterpoint to the salmon with a texture that differed markedly from standard issue tapenade or olive paste (i.e., tapenade sans anchovies).   This is a highly recommended building block, and it's going to make further appearances all summer (this seems an obvious element of an updated greek salad, or a great sauce for baby lamb chops or rack of lamb).  It is salty, however, and care should be taken  when pairing with cheese or other intensely savory ingredients.