spanish tapas cookbook and dinner

jen and dan picked out a great little spanish cookbook for my birthday present a couple months ago titled "classic spanish cooking: recipes for mastering the spanish kitchen" by elisabeth luard.

the cookbook is full of interesting recipes ranging from tapas to dessert and shellfish to legumes, covering pretty much the entire pantry. luard's writing style is unique; she describes cooking techniques that rely on common sense and observation versus measurements of capacity or time. for example, in preparing meat for skewers, she writes, "all the pieces should be neatly trimmed and no bigger than a baby's mouthful." or, when broiling shrimp in the shell, "the heat should be fierce enough to blacken the shells a little."

luard's cookbook reads much like a memoir of a spanish grandmother's cooking lessons, full of short stories and history but ever-focused on the good of the dish and whatever was in season and locally available. i found her recipes offer a sort of freedom, free of precise measurements and rigid structure you find in today's cookbooks, a sort of refreshing reminder that cooking is an art where you taste as you go and season by hand, not simply a scientific process to be followed.

there were many great-sounding recipes in here and i wanted to share them with a willing guinea crowd. so what better way than to invite jen and dan to our house for an evening of spanish tapas, featuring recipes from the cookbook they gave me!

dinner started a little later than i had anticipated. although i was only cooking for 5, i sorta miscalculated the time i needed to prepare the 6 tapas recipes i had picked out. that's 6 whole dishes made from scratch. that's a lot of cooking.

no matter. i sent out a small dish of setas a la parilla, or mushrooms grilled with garlic and parsley. i didn't have access to the type of mushrooms specified in the recipe (orange tear or saffron milk cap) and made do with small portabellos, grilled cap-side up on a grill pan until juices formed in the cap. garlic and parsley were added at the end just long enough to soften the flavors a little. i then chopped these up to top slices of baguette. along with some slices of manchego cheese and salted marcona almonds, it provided a nice first tapas. unfortunately i was too busy getting the other 5 tapas ready to take a picture.

a couple of wine glasses later, dinner was ready and we all sat down and started passing round the dishes.

a steaming-hot pot of almejas en vino de jerez, or clams in sherry, announced the beginning of our spanish tapas meal. the recipe was very simple and the flavors of garlic and fresh parsley blended beautifully with the dry sherry. i originally wanted to use black mussels here but the market was out of them. the manila clams were great though, with a slight hint of sweetness to their meat.

next was pisto de berejenas, or braised eggplants. this, while a little time intensive to make, was a hit, especially spread on crusty baguette swith warm slices of manchego cheese. another simple dish, i pan-fried diced eggplant with caramelized onions and a bit of cumin seed and salt and pepper. that's it. it takes time to caramelize the onions and fry the eggplant to a soft consistency. but when it's done... oh so good.

for this tapa, albondigas en salsa, or meatballs in tomato sauce, i recruited jen and dan's help to form the meatballs, a sort of pre-dinner entertainment. i've always read it's best to have something for guests to help with so they feel immediately at home and part of the action. so before jen and dan arrived, i had started the tomato sauce which was flavored with red peppers, sherry, bay leaf and cinnamon stick and let that simmer while i combined the meatball mixture which consisted of half ground beef, half ground pork, bread crumbs and egg, flavored mainly with onion, cumin, coriander, and parsley. after the meatballs were formed, they were then browned and finished off with a simmer in the tomato sauce. this was my favorite. the cumin and coriander in the meatballs coupled with the cinnamon and bay leaf in the sauce lent an exotic taste to the tender, moist meatballs. mmm.

the favorite of the nite, which surprised me, was a homey and hearty dish, arroz a la cubana, or cuban rice. this consisted of cooked risotta rice layered with a basic tomato sauce flavored with chile powder and allspice, caramelized plaintains, and 4 fried eggs. so simple, yet so good together.

about halfway through dinner, i got up from the table and fired up the stove one more time to quickly prepare this dish, gambas pilpil, or shrimp with garlic and chili. i wanted to keep it as hot as possible for serving, per luard's notes, hence waiting to cook until we were fully ready to eat it. i heated a good amount of olive oil and tossed in sliced garlic and whole, dried red chilies to season the oil with garlic essense and a huge amount of firey heat. the shelled shrimp took just a minute or two tossed in the hot oil to cook and that went quickly onto the table. everyone's first reaction? "whoa, that's got some bite!" indeed it did. the chili peppers had added a piquant zing to the shrimp that was quite memorable, but not hot enough to burn the tastebuds. fantastic. they disappeared in a couple minutes.

with all that salty savory-ness, we needed a contrast for dessert. jen and dan had brought a couple pints of excellent ice cream from bi-rite creamery, including roasted banana and the oh-so-tasty salted caramel.

and as if that wasn't enough, we enjoyed some baked treats from tartine bakery as well.

they also brought a fabulous spanish wine to wash everything down, a 2003 legaris reserva tinta fina (100% tempranillo) from the ribera del duero wine region in spain. smooth, ruby fruit and an elegant finish. highly recommended with the dishes prepared here.

thank you jen and dan for the thoughtful gift and a great nite of spanish tapas, wine, and friendship! we need to do it again soon...