Jan 28 2010
Theme Night II: Tapas
For dinner Santa brought Dougal a rather lovely little plate, described as a tapas plate. Santa also brought him a Waitrose mixed spanish cured meats platter as Santa has ever such discerning taste, so she does.
On Friday we did our own attempt at Tapas in order to do these components justice.
I didn’t use any especially authentic recipes, more just what I got a feel for from reading around online. But the dishes comprised, clockwise from bottom: Champiñones al Ajillo; Cured Meats; Gambas al Ajillo; Chorizo a la Sidra.
All tasted and looked pretty stonking. The prawns were slightly marred by this being a last-minute-planning meal. The best Leith could come up with on a Friday evening was teeny frozen prawns. Not very substantial, hardly the big beady eyed beasts I’d envisaged. But truth be told it didn’t matter as the flavours were there- it was just a bit like eating weirdly meaty popcorn! The chorizo in cider wasn’t quite in the Oh my days! league of when I had it with Uncle John and Anna in Muswell Hill in London in 2000, but sometimes you can never recreate the first time!
ooh you do eat well in Leith Walk. It looks yummy.
Recipes? The chorizo a la sidra sounds great. What did you do?
as I said it was a combination of recipes seen on the internet. In the end I dried fried (which is to say no additional oil) the chorizo and then added a good glug of cider (I think it was Weston’s Organic…. probably not authentic at all!) and let it reduce down. It probably ought to have been sweeter. Other recipes marinaded the salami in cider first and then cooked it down slowly. Other, other recipes used chorizo sausages and fried them before slicing them up.
Absolutely. That’s the way I do it. Read all the recipes and then make up my own mind. Sometimes it works…
For instance, the black beans are going to get cooked up with some, probably whole, carrots and onions to make them extra tasty. Mind you with all the other stuff maybe that’s not necessary.
However, the idea came from a black bean “salad” recipe my friend Sue gave me, authentic greek, I believe, she being married to one. I’ll send it to you:)