In this installment
Tips for a tantalizing tapas dinner
Cod Stuffed Piquillo Peppers
Artisanal Manchego Cheese
Arbequina Olives
Olive Oil & Anise Tortas
Tips for a tantalizing tapas dinner
In Spain, dinner doesn’t start until 10 PM (and those are the early birds), but they don’t wait that long to start eating. Tapas and pinxtos (translation: snacks and appetizers) are enjoyed at wine bar after wine bar in pretty much every town you’ll visit in Spain. This is the way to eat: small dishes, big flavors, nice wine, great conversation. You can figure a lot of stuff out over a few glasses of Rioja, some cheese, and great nibbles…and you won’t have to cook a thing. Just open and serve!
- Crack open the tin of stuffed piquillos.
- Spoon some of the sauce on a plate then lay the stuffed piquillos on the sauce and serve with a butter knife ’cause it’s that easy to cut.
- Let the Manchego come up to room temperature, serve on a plate or cutting board with a sharp enough knife.
- Open the jar of olives and drain the brine. Dump the olives into a big enough bowl and serve with a smaller bowl for the stones (pits).
- Serve the tortas on a plate piled up and broken so folks don’t feel bad about taking a whole one.
Cod Stuffed Piquillo Peppers
Piquillos, if you haven’t met them before, are the prince of roasted peppers, grown in the Navarre valley in northern Spain, roasted over beech wood and hand peeled with no water or oil ever added.
If you’ve ever tried to roast and hand peel your own peppers, shredding them and leaving tons of burnt pieces attached, you’d never believe it could be done. I didn’t, until I visited El Navarrico, our stuffed piquillo maker, and saw it before my own eyes. Amazing! Six women standing side by side peeling peppers faster than you’d peel an orange!
Piquillo flavor beats any other roasted pepper, and their flavor is strong enough to handle being stuffed and sauced. Here the stuffing is salt-cured cod, soaked and cooked to silky smoothness and the sauce is a simple rustic tomato sauce. It’s a stellar tapa and easy to serve. Crack the tin, spoon some of the sauce on a plate then lay the stuffed piquillos on the sauce and serve with a butter knife ’cause it’s that easy to cut.
To turn the tin into a meal, make some pasta or rice then put the closed tin of stuffed piquillos into a pot of boiling water for 3-5 minutes to heat up the contents. Then CAREFULLY open the tin with oven mits or tongs and dump all the contents over the bowl of pasta or rice and serve!
Artisanal Manchego Cheese
Manchego is to Spain what Cheddar is to England: a near legendary cheese, often chosen by both connoisseurs and novices alike.
It’s made from the milk of Manchega sheep, which graze on the plains of southern central Spain called La Mancha. The name La Mancha is derived from the Arabic word manhsa, meaning land without water. It can get pretty hot in this part of the world, so the fact that Manchega sheep can produce milk under these conditions is quite rare. The Manchegas’ milk capacity is quite astounding, especially considering they graze mainly on dry pasture and grain stubble fields.
One would think that under these conditions the milk would be low in fats, but quite the opposite is true. Manchega milk is very fatty, which results in a rich, full flavored, fragrant cheese with a subtle, salty, tang on the finish.
After years of effort, we’ve come up with a source for traditionally made, hand crafted Manchego that lives up to its reputation. In Spain, Manchego can be bought at different stages of aging… anywhere from a few months to over a year. The cheese we have is aged a minimum of six months.
Manchego is delicious simply cut into wedges and eaten as is. It’s also a plus in the kitchen. You can grate it on to casseroles, soups or salads. It will bring a taste of the Spanish heartland and a swirl of Spain’s colorful cuisine to your table. But if tapas is your thing, simply set out the wedge and let folks slice off what they will.
Arbequina Olives
These small brown beauties are the olive of Catalonia, Spain, and a must for the olive lover in your life.
Too small to be harvested by mechanical methods, the care and time it takes to hand pick arbequinas is a testament to their quality and reputation. Brownish purple in color, they have a unique nuttiness that makes them easy to devour by the handful, especially if you dress them with a bit of olive oil and orange rind. Remember to use two bowls: one for the olives and one for their stones (pits).
Olive Oil & Anise Tortas
When a quarter of your weight is olive oil, you stand a good chance of being delicious. These tortas are made with that much olive oil plus wheat and sugar and a touch of yeast…that’s about it. The dough is rolled out and shaped by hand before being baked to a flaky, sweet, bright (thanks to the anise), crispy disc that goes great with coffee, tea, wine, and more. Complex in flavor and completely satisfying in texture, these tortas are the type of treat you can enjoy any time of day, but they’re the perfect way to wrap up a tapas inspired meal, like the one you just put together.