Spanish Tapas Fiesta

Well having talked up a tapas night with friends for around 19 months since I got home from and extended trip to Europe I figured that it was about time to come through with the goods and actually make a date for a tapas night at my place. Luckily the weekend was pretty free as I certainly ended up spending a great deal of time prepping for the meal. I spent lots of time reading through various Spanish recipe books and Spanish editions of food magazines. Probably the most challenging of these was the Pintxos book Pintxos de Vanguardia a la Donostriarra that I picked up in San Sebastian on the trip mentioned above. After staring longingly at the pictures in this book and spending a bit of time looking for a half decent translator I determined that a recipe book written in the Basque language was possibly adding an additional and unnecessary level of difficulty - a challenge for another day.

Spoils of the shopping trip

The menu set it was time for a trip to the Re store to pick up some specialty items: Spanish dulce smokey paprika, Sherry vinegar, Pedro Ximenez, chorizo, manchego. Then on to various supermarkets, butchers and supermarkets to pick up the rest. Then let the cooking begin.

The Menu:

Marinated mixed olives

Olives - marinated with chilli, fennel seeds, fennel fronds, garlic, rosemary, thyme, lemon and orange - I used a mix of Sicilian green, pimento stuffed green spanish, kalamata, black roasted and wild olives. The mix gave a good look and the marinade strong enough to infuse flavour into the olives over night. The roasted olives were quite strong and bitter in flavour so certainly not to everyone’s liking so I would probably leave these out next time. 

Roasted capsicums - marinated with sweet smoked paprika, garlic, sherry vinegar, olive oil and flat leaf parsley. Delicious!!! Again marinated over night. Smoked paprika is quite a strong flavour so should be used with restraint.

PX and salted spiced almonds

Salted and spiced roasted almonds – easy delicious though I would probably cut back on the amount of salt used. I combined a number of recipes for this one so included sweet smoked paprika and cumin in the egg white mixture used to coat the almonds then tossed with coarse sea salt and baked in the oven.

Cooking - meatballs and chorizo and chickpeas

Meatballs in a Spicy Tomato Sauce – pork and beef mince with a variety of spices in a tomato sauced spiked with cayenne pepper and peas – didn’t look the most gourmet but tasted perfect.

Chickpea with Chorizo – Often with chickpea recipes I will cheat and use tinned chickpeas rather than dried but this is one recipe where you can’t really afford to do that – the chickpeas are cooked for and hour in stock with herbs and garlic which imparts lots of flavour to the humble chickpea. Plus who doesn’t love Chorizo – had to keep a sharp eye on my brother when he arrived to check he wasn’t picking it all out of the dish…..

Tortilla – potato of course a Spanish classic – can’t count the number of these eaten whilst in Spain.

Ajillo Mushrooms – Shitake, portebello, button, field, shimiji and cooked in sherry with fresh flat leaf parsley.

Rocket, serrano ham, manchego and roast hazelnut salad – to lighten up the tapas. Dressing including wholegrain mustard, garlic, finely chopped shallots.



Crumbing the fritters with Panko crumbs

Duende's Manchego and Corn Fritters with Capsicum Jam – I have eaten these before at Duende and let me say they are pure gold! The recipe is true though and although time consuming I was extremely happy with how they turned out – just like the real thing. If you are interested here is the link - Manchego and Corn Fritters Though as a note make sure you leave yourself plenty of time to make these and be aware that it takes at least 5 pots to make them



Manchego and Corn Fritters with Capsicum Jam 



PX trifle

Dark Chocolate Pedro Ximenez trifle – this was based on a recipe from the 2009 Spanish gourmet traveler – in the GT the recipe had a chocolate ganache as the top layer – I felt this would be too heavy after a meal of tapas so substituted a Donna Hay chocolate mousse which I spiked with cinnamon. Think this would have been better served as an amuse or in a much smaller portion size as even as a lover of PX I have to admit the PX jelly was pretty full on.

When the friends and family were asked which were there favourite dishes just about everyone had a different favourite which always a win – different strokes for different folks and no real losers out of the recipes tried. Props to my brother for his help on some of the photos for this blog and a massive thanks to my beautiful assistant SJ – for her tireless work washing every bowl, pot, knife and frying pan in the kitchen at least twice!

The spread

Let me finally say that any one who thinks tapas is over priced should spend a weekend in the kitchen preparing the stuff – you may find a new respect for that small plate of meatballs, fritters or chickpeas that turn up at your table.