A Tapas Feast

I love tapas. Last summer I went to Barcelona and enjoyed plenty of tapas that included all kinds of fish, meat and cheese. Now it is January and temperatures have dropped to freezing cold and therefore my way of dealing with the ‘January Blues’ was to bring a little bit of Barcelona into my Berlin kitchen. This is a perfect weekend treat.

Here is a selection of the tapas I made. I also served some king prawns and catalan tomato bread on the side.

Patatas Bravas:

Ingredients:

4 or 5 small/ medium potatoes (peeled and diced into small cubes)

chorizo (chopped into small chunks)

sunflower oil

1 tbpsn paprika

1 tbspn oregano

black pepper

Preheat the oven to gas mark 5/ 190 degrees celsius
Add the potatoes to a pan of boiling water and leave to boil for around 5 mins
Drain the potatoes and place into an oven dish with the chorizo
Season with the paprika, oregano and black pepper and add around 2 tbpsn of sunflower oil. Mix well and place in the oven for 25 – 30 mins

Dates Wrapped in Bacon:

Ingredients:

Handful of dates

streaky bacon

black pepper

olive oil

Wrap each dates with a small amount of bacon. You may find that 1 streak will wrap around 2 – 3 dates. Keep doing this until you have the amount you want.
Drizzle a small amount of olive oil in a small oven dish and add the dates wrapped in bacon to the dish. Season with black pepper
Place in a preheated oven (medium to high heat) for around 10 mins (turning the dates over after around 5 mins)

Mussels steamed in White Wine and Chili

fresh mussels (whatever size you want. I could only get 1kg and had to make the lot but you can use much less as it is part of the tapas)

175ml dry white wine

fresh parsley (chopped)

garlic olive oil or standard olive oil

juice of half a lemon

1 tspn dried chili flakes

Heat the olive oil in a large/ deep saucepan and add the chili flakes and a pinch of salt
Pour in the white wine, lemon juice and then stir in the fresh parsley
Add the mussels to pan and put the lid on leaving the mussels to steam on a medium heat for around 8 – 10 mins and the shells have opened up
Pour the mussels into a serving bowl and garnish with more fresh parsley

Romesco Sauce: A Catalan favourite and perfect with prawns

Ingredients:

3 medium/ large tomatoes

1 tbpsn ground hazlenut

1 tbspn ground almonds

olive oil

2 cloves garlic (crushed)

1 red pepper (finely chopped)

fresh parsley

black pepper

juice of half a lemon

Add the tomatoes to a bowl of boiling water and leave for 2 mins. This my favourite way of making my own tomato sauce. When you take the tomatoes out of the water you will find that skins easily peel off in your hands
Heat some olive oil in a saucepan and add the crushed garlic, red pepper and a pinch of salt
Finely chop the tomatoes and add to the pan bringing it to a medium/ high boil for around 5 mins
Turn it down to a medium heat and stir in the hazelnut, almonds and lemon juice
Leave to simmer for around 5 – 10 mins or until the sauce has thickened