Tapas Chaos

 

Martini: not necessarily advised before cooking

I love tapas. And cichetti, and mezze, and tasting meus, and indeed any style that allows me to eat lots of delicious little courses. It’s not, however, the kind of food which is designed for home cooking. Lots of little fiddly things, each of which need to be eaten fresh? Hmm. Nevertheless, this is what I decided we were going to eat for Saturday dinner – after a Confined Cocktails martini.

The idea for this came from the fact that I’d randomly decided to add Padron peppers to an Ocado delivery, and that we had ham croquetas as part of an order from a local meal delivery place – which is run by the guy who used to be the chef at our favourite local tapas bar (Harbour Tapas in Whitstable, if you’re ever down this way). So, aware that I had cooking chorizo in the freezer, I had tapas on my mind.

I’m not sure how long it’ll be before I feel up to actually going out for tapas again in person, even after my second jab which is still a few weeks away (it coincidentally got brought forward when I moved it to another vaccination centre, so I can’t move it any closer). I think I always thought that once the vaccination programme really got going, cases would dwindle so much that it would be easy to stop worrying. I suppose it might still happen, but, with the Delta variant – and especially if rumours about not vaccinating under 18s prove true – I’m not sure it will. Which means at a certain point, I’m going to have to start ignoring case numbers, and my own worries, and just get on with doing things. Normal things. Which is a slightly scary prospect, especially if all the remaining rules on mask-wearing, etc are dropped.

So, maybe attempting home-catered tapas was an attempt to remind myself why going out is good. Anyway, it went like this: in the afternoon, I made patatas bravas sauce and romesco sauce to go with asparagus. This idea came from Ben Tish’s Moorish, although I actually used the Quick Romesco recipe from Ed Smith’s On The Side, as it’s very easy and tasty: simply blend a jar of roasted peppers with almonds, paprika, olive oil and sherry/wine vinegar. You can either eat cold or warm up; it also freezes well and is very good in a fish finger sandwich.

Asparagus with romesco sauce

In the evening, post-martini, the first job was to prepare the potatoes: we decided to roast rather than fry them, as it was simpler, and otherwise we might have run out of frying pans. So, we got them going, then put the asparagus in to roast, and started warming the sauces. 

Once the asparagus was ready, we ate that with the romesco sauce as a first course - it's a really good combination.

Padron peppers, suitably well sizzled

Then I fried the padron peppers – I do this mainly with a lid on the pan, which helps to soften them. After eating those, the pre-made croquetas went in the oven, for the last of the potato cooking time. We served the potatoes with the bravas sauce (Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe), and then lastly, fried the chorizo as our final dish. Phew!

It was all delicious, and not half as chaotic as it could have been,

Croquetas and patatas bravas

although it did mean cooking and eating the entire meal took up pretty much the whole night. Still, it filled some time while I wait for my second jab…