These recipes are from Tapas: 100 Everyday Recipes (Parragon Books, 2011), which I picked up at an airport somewhere. I think the range is available from most bookshops. Each recipe has a lovely photo to illustrate it. There are five sections: ‘Nibbles’, ‘Made with Vegetables’, ‘For Meat Lovers’, ‘For Seafood Fans’ and ‘Of Eggs and Cheese’.
From the ‘Nibbles’ selection, we made courgette fritters. The courgette is sliced thinly, tossed in flour and paprika and coated in an egg mixture. The slices are then fried and sprinkled with sea salt. The book recommends serving the fritters with pine kernel sauce, in the end we didn’t make this to cut down on cooking time.
Also from ‘Nibbles’, are crab tartlets, which we made with tuna instead. We have eight metal mini-quiche tins which are handy for things like this. The recipe makes twenty four tartlets but our cases are bigger so we filled the eight and had a little spare pastry left.
Next we made tuna rolls, from the ‘For Seafood Fans’ chapter. Tuna rolls we have made before, although we tend to alter the recipe. We don’t use the capers or red wine vinegar. The tuna is rolled up inside strips of pepper. The instructions are to grill the pepper and then peel the skin off, but we don’t tend to bother but just cook them enough to soften them. The recipe says to coat the peppers with the dressing but we usually marinade the tuna in it instead. The roll is held together with a cocktail stick (ours are decorated because they all come from cup cake kits).
The recipe for the cannellini dip is from Phil Vickery on the BBC Food website. The beans were mashed up with sesame seed oil, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic and rosemary. However, the result was more like a paste than a dip. Next time we’ll need to thin it down much more.
Other recipes we have tried from this book include potato wedges with roasted garlic dip, fresh mint and bean pâté , aubergine rolls and mixed beans and peas. I’d love to try the deep-fried Manchego cheese.
For such small dishes, tapas food can take a surprisingly long time to plan and cook, but the colours, textures and tastes of the dishes make it well worth the effort.
Photo Credit: book jacket from http://www.amazon.com.