Many months ago a number of board members - Ignacio and Fernando among them - were posting some great recipes so we all know you guys can cook. I friend of mine is having a major birthday and friends are having a black tie & evening dress cocktail party in honor of it. I need to come up with a couple of elegant tapas to bring. Now, I am not the world's greatest cook and do want to have my offering be both elegant and good. Needless to say, it must be Spanish - that is what people expect - and what I like.

The guests will all be bringing food as there are at leas a hundred people coming - which means, I guess, that I need to bring enough tapas for at least 25. (is the math right? I figure if half the guests bring something we are more than covered)

I pulled my favorite Penelope Casas cookbook out last night - drooled alot but didn't get really inspired ....

So any and all suggestions will be most appreciated. Please - no calamares - I'm alergic

Gracia!!!!!

Chef Fernando at rescue!!!!

Here is my offer (feel free to ask for further details if you don't now the recipe):

- Potato omelette (tortilla española), cut in small pieces and served on a slice of french bread
- Croquetas
- Empanadillas
- Small bread baskets with mushrooms fried with a hint of garlic
- Chistorra/chorizo frito in small pieces, over a slice of french bread
- Patatas bravas (potatoes with a spicy sauce)
- Patatas alioli (garlic and mahonese sauce)
- Cured ham, sliced
- Pantumaca (french bread with a sauce of natural tomato and some drops of olive oil)
- Pan de ajo (french bread with butter and garlic)
- Olives
- Spanish cheese slices

I will think about it and will come later with more ideas. Now I'm going for lunch.. mmmmm :p

Fernando

Hola Chef Fernando -
Thanks for coming to my rescue but I what I really need is the actual recipe ... and absolutely no tortillas española. I love it but I can not - even with your original recipe and set instructions from way back when - recreate it. Mine comes out either too olive oily or it sticks to the pan ... :o

Please keep trying after your lunch ....

Hi Puna - My favorite source for recipes is epicurious.com. Go to "browse" and narrow to "spanish" then under course pick "appetizer". I pulled up 38 recipes.

I'm taking my first culinary school class at night and I just wrote my first paper on "the foods of Spain"! I'm not good enough to have acutal recipes for you, though. I know gambas al ajillo are pretty easy to make if your host lets you use a pan to cook them last-minute. And I think last month's "real simple" magazine had a recipe for some easy empanadas that looked really good. The rib-eye and goat cheese empanadas on epicurious would be good (with refrigerated dough, maybe?) with some roasted red peppers rolled up on toothpicks with a little bit of spanish cheese - I forget the name of the cheese... Or maybe little tiny cold individual servings of gazpacho in espresso cups or some other tiny disposable pary cups.

I know how hard tortilla is to make! I screw it up a lot when I make it.

Hi Puna,

Here’s a recipe for an elegant tapa. I’ve made the mussels many times in both Spain and the US to rave reviews. It’s easy to make, and since it’s cold, it’s easier than a hot tapa to take to someone’s house. The recipe is from a neat little book titled The Best of Spain - a Cookbook (Evie Righter, editor)

(I was also thinking that if you made pollo al ajillo, and just cut the chicken in small cubes that could be speared with a toothpick you’d have a very nice, easy, and delicious tapa.)

Mejillones en Vinagreta

2 dozen mussels, cleaned (I’ve noticed in the States they tend to come quite a lot cleaner than in Spain. You hardly have to do anything besides rinsing them. And the ones from New Zealand are REALLY delicious!)
9 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons minced onion
2 tablespoons finely chopped roasted red pepper
3 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
salt and freshly ground pepper
1 hard-boiled egg, minced

Drain and rinse mussels. In a large pot with about a cup of water steam them over high heat. This goes quickly. Discard any that don’t open, and remove the ones that do open soon after they do so. Separate the mussels from their shells and reserve half of each shell. (Throw away the rest.) Clean shells and refrigerate.

In a bowl whisk together the oil and lemon juice. Stir in the onion, roasted pepper, 2 tablespoons parsley, salt and pepper. Add the mussels and stir. Cover and refrigerate a few hours or overnight.

To serve, return mussels to chilled half shells and spoon more marinade over them. Sprinkle with minced egg and remaining parsley. Arrange on a large platter.

Enjoy!

Puna:

I am not very good at the kitchen, so I doubt I posted any, but maybe (perhaps one of the few courses I can make or I copy/pasted it).

I'll think of something spanish and elegant for your party, in the meantime, I enclose a couple of threads I found in this website regarding typical recipes:

One

Two

A third one

Another

5

6

Hope this helps a bit (by now).

You guys are wonderful! Keep the ideas coming, por favor -

Diane, you figured out my concern immediately - I was planning on doing gambas but with that many people attending, my concern was an overly needed kitchen - and, besides, I want to enjoy myself.
You mussels recipe is a definate will do - thank you sooooo much! It's perfect - easy - elegant - and do ahead!

As you might all guess, cooking is not what I consider a truly pleasurable activity

Chicagan - epicurious.com has now been book-marked as a favorite for future reference. Thanks for sharing -

Keep all the brilliant, tried and true recipes coming .... need a couple more!

Ignacio - I'm going to pull up your links later today when I have a few moments - but I'll bet your name and Fernando's will show up on more than a few - as I recall I printed out a couple of amazing gazpacho recipes .... that I should probably reprint because there are tomatoe drips all over the ones I have

Just had time to pop in and out of Ignacio's links - gazpacho (as above noted) and many versions of patatas bravas (due to MM's love of the dish along w/ calamares)- but not really what I need - cocktail party tapas ....

all this talk of food is making me hungry. I ate some great patatas bravas at a place in brookline,MA last week. The sauce is the sauce that they use in the canary islands.Not the traditional picante in madrid.It was sooo gooood.

MOJO!!! mmmmmmm.....

Hi "Punita"!

It's been tough to think of an apetizer that you can make in quantities and bring somewhere in perfect conditions!
An idea would be to make crab paste filled puff pastries (crab tartles?, I mean 'tartaletas de cangrejo'), either medium sized or smallish like canapés, it's up to your taste, that you either can buy ready-made or make yourself depending on your cooking ability and "oven situation" (I still don't own one!), and then spoon the crab paste into them. The recipe for it could not be simpler, it's just mayonnaise mixed with chopped onion, some minced lettuce, and finely cut up surimi sticks; and you can place small shrimps on top of each one for a great presentation. Of course this dish is much better when the mayonnaise is homemade, but you don't want to go causing people to get salmonella! , so you might as well use a good bottled one.
In Spain it's much more common to see this tapa made with only the crab(surimi sticks), the onion and the mayo spread on slices of bread, but I've thought that to make it more "elegant" and avoid the bread "stale look" you could substitute it for something that preserves beautifully and add the lettuce and shrimp for a finishing touch. Other presentation idea would be to decorate with avocado pieces, but either you rub a lot of lemmon in them or they'd turn dark so I don't recommend it in this case...

You don't need recipes for a lot of the stuff: it comes directly out of cans, like
Mejillones en escabeche,
Sardinas,
Anchoas,
Aceitunas;
and you're halfway there.

Puna...here's something you may like...paella salad. It's something my aunt and I made for a party a few years ago and everyone loved it.

Start by making yellow rice with chicken stock and seasoning to taste. Allow to cool. Make a vinegrette and pour over the rice, add enough to flavor the rice but not to make it soggy.

Now, at this point you may decide to serve it in a serving tray or mold. If you use a mold line it with plastic wrap, place the rice in the mold and press, making sure the rice sticks together to form the mold and place in the refrigerator. If you decide to serve in a tray then just place in the fridge to cool.

When the rice cools remove the mold and place on platter with lettuce or other dark green leaves. Decorate with boiled shrimp on the sides of the mold and strips of pimentos, add sliced green olives on top of the mold and serve. Leave a bowl of extra shrimp and olives on the side. The shrimp may be placed on top of crushed ice to keep fresh.

I'm resurecting this because I still need some ideas for tapas for the "cooking challanged"

Diane's mussel recipe is a must -

Pim's crab 'paste' is the second must - thou without the puffy pastry shells you mentioned! There is a better than average source of baguettes in town ...

Pim - you have no stove - I have stove but can't bake. The last time I tried serious baking was in Hawaii where (at the time) there was absolutely no proper bread by European standards and the only decent bread was carried via suitcase-full from San Francisco when returning home.

I wanted - no I craved good bread - crusty bread -baguettes - pan - so off we went to buy special baking pans, yeast, and all the other multitude of stuff that making bread consists of - no bread maker - I wanted REAL bread ....

Instead, I made a huge number of baseball bats that the neighborhood kids used to supplement their questionable soccer skills .... :p

End of my baking career ...

Eddie - despite the above saga - I'm loathe to "open tins" as a solution .... thou I have to admit - the thought crossed my mind!

Puna,

For me the easiest and the most delicious tapa are the fried fish I had in Malaga. I use a mix of sardines, smelts, and calamares, that and a glass of Sangria or Jerez and you can begin to believe that you are in Andalucia.

First dip the fish in a bowl of two beaten eggs, then lightly coat them them with VIGO cracker meal, or a bread mix. I fry mine in Canola, but this recipe is better, it uses Spanish olive oil.




Fried fish assortments

This gastronomic specialty from Andalusia combines the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet with the pleasure of relishing the flavour of great sea fish. The fried fish assortment is the extraordinary result of dipping very fresh fish in hot, clean, virgin olive oil. It barely touches the oil, only a few seconds, and the result is excellent. The most popular ones are to be found in the provinces of Malaga, Seville and Cadiz, although you can also sample them elsewhere in Spain.
http://www.spain.info/TourSpain/Gastronomia/?Language=en

However, Eddie's ideas are great too! Also very common,and delicious is a plate of serrano Jamón with slices of Manchego cheese, pour a tad of olive oil and spanish sherry vinegar, a few spanish olives and its fantastic!. Present them in a Spanish Paella clay dish with a few white asparagus, and tomatoe slices.

Buen provecho!

Puna. I have giving it a though here and there while y Dominican Republic vacations (I am still there).

You see, it is pretty difficult for me to guess what can be elegant for you re food. For me, mussels are not specially elegant.

BUT I can tell you one thing I would serve, prety typical and original (if it does not get too expensive because of the ingredients)...

... in Burgos they call them cojonudos , and they are like canapes made of a loaf of french-like bread with a fried quail egg, plus some small fried green pepper and maybe some txistorra. I am not pretty sure of the exactitude of the ingredients, if you are interested I could confrim back home (I ll be there on saturday).

Am I the only one here who thinks that once, at least most, fried foods get cold (totally)....they're pretty much a no-no? (unless you can re-heat them somehow, that is).
Specially; fried eggs, peppers, aubergines, asparagus, fish, potatoes, squid, etc........

That's the BIG problem I see with having to bring a dish somewhere, there's surely no shortage of possiblilities otherwise.

Pim, fortunately, here in the U.S. it is generally not a problem to bring in warm or hot dishes. There are several warming caseroles that one can bring in a hot dish. They are easily available at stores like Wal Mart and quite inexpensive. I do it all the time at our monthly Faculty meeting, where we all bring our favorite dish. I bring Croquetas de Jamon, my specialty, and theirs, apparently since they always request it!

pim has - once again - stated my problem! Fried food does get cold (at best - and greasy at worst). With that many people, all in formal dress - I really don't want the odor of frying food wafting through the host/hostess house.

Honestly, I figure too many others will be cooking and why should I add to the problem -

I can use a fondue warmer (sterno) to keep one tapa warm but really prefer to go with cold dishes - if needed I can always do Spanish cheeses & decorate w/ pimentos, olives and cold asparagus ....

Booklady - your wonderful fish had me salivating at 7:30 am - and the first 6 hours of the day I can handle only coffee - preferabley cafe con leche .... That recipe (minus calamaris ) is a must for cooking at home! Just reading it and imaging the aroma had me back in what I refer to as home (my heart's home) ....

Ignacio - enjoy the DR and stop thinking about my cooking needs! Enjoy yourself - and go surfing &/or para sailing .....

Bueno, Puna, you are right the smell may be too much for a black tie affair, but it is great for a country or better yet a beach picnic. I generally just use smelts. And with Sangria and some delightful Spanish CD's on the background, I can pretend I am in España.

Pim, here is the carrier that I bought at Wal Mart for $29.00, on sale, of course!!!
and it comes in a nice carrying case. It is called Gourmet Tote!

Hi Puna!
I don't know if I'm too late but here is a recipe that sounds quite interesting, easy and is served cold. I think is a new version of the famous "Jamon con melon".
http://www.tienda.com/recipes/jamonmelon.html

Chus

Chus -
You are not to late - the "event" is this Saturday. I don't have chorizo on hand (I very rarely eat meat so it isn't something I have keep in the house and no time to order from Tienda). I tried using proscuttio as a substitute once - it doesn't work -

We still need to get together I have just been buried with work and stuff for the past few months - but I do think raising the "I love and miss Spain" contingent in the area for tapas and rioja needs to be on the agenda!!!!

Take care - and thanks for the food suggestion~

Party is over - and a mucho gracias to Diana for the Mejillones en Vinagreta recipe & to Pimi for the Crab 'Paste" - on thin sliced baguettes (the pastry was more than I wanted to deal with) and decorated as suggested!

Both worked out perfectly and were wild gastromic successes ...

Again - thanks everyone for coming up with some great ideas

Puna

Nice team work, hey Puna?!

Mmm, it seems my lunch lasted too many days

I'm glad you had a good time Puna. Yesterday I saw a recipe book at home and remembered this post. So just for the record and the next time:

- Slices of fried sausage wraped with bacon
- Fried onion (fry with olive oil after spreading a little bit of flour)
- Chicken slices with honey-moustard sauce

Perhaps they are not the most typical tapas, but are things I have eaten here both in restaurants and at home

Fernando