RICHARD FRISBIE - Easy Party Food with Spanish Tapas

Easy Party Food with Spanish Tapas

     Want to spice up your next party and still have time for your guests? Try serving them Tapas. Tapas, those one-or two-bite appetizers from Spain, are easy to make and gorgeous to look at - and they taste great, too!  With a little planning, and some preparation done a day or two before, anyone with a few hours to spend in the kitchen can turn out spectacular looking plates of food. Here's what it takes for a tapas party for 10 to 12 guests.

PREPARATION - get a good bottle of Spanish olive oil. For the wine you'll need 4-6 bottles of red rioja and 1 or 2 of your favorite dry white. Plan to make the filling for the empanada 1 or 2 days before the party. The homemade mayonnaise and the tomato spread can be made the night before. Take the pizza dough out to thaw then, too.

INGREDIENTS - 2 lbs boneless chicken thighs, 1/2 lb imported ham sliced thin, 3/4  lb Chorizo (hard Spanish) sausage, 1 lb med shrimp cooked, peeled and cleaned, 1 dozen eggs, 28 oz bag of small potatoes (any color - mixed if you can get them) boiled and cooled, 1/2  lb wedge of Spanish hard cheese - remove the bottom rind and cut cheese into thin triangular slices - reserve half to garnish the tapas plates. Remove rind from the remaining half and cut the slices into smaller triangles (about the size of the large olives), lg jar Spanish (small) olives stuffed with pimento drained, sm jar anchovies drained, 1/2 lb mixed large green and black pitted olives, small jar roasted red peppers drained (reserve), julienne half, puree the other half adding enough reserved liquid to make the consistency of heavy cream, 4 loaves French bread, small roll of goat's milk (farmer's) cheese, 1/2 tbs. smoked Spanish paprika,  some cornichon pickles, olive oil, one frozen pizza dough, bunch of parsley and toothpicks

MAYONNAISE - 1 egg, 1 cup olive oil, 2 tbs. cider vinegar, ½ tsp. salt, 1 tbs. smoked Spanish paprika, 1 tbs. dry mustard.
Put 2 tbs. olive oil and all the other ingredients in a blender or processor and turn on. Drizzle all the remaining oil into the mix slowly until you have mayonnaise. Cover and refrigerate for an hour or a few days for the flavors to come together. Use within 4 days.

EMPANADA - 2 lbs boneless chicken thighs (skin removed), 1/3 cup Chorizo sausage chopped, 1/3 cup white raisins, 1/2 cup white wine, 1/2 cup chicken broth, 1/3 cup pitted Spanish olives chopped, pizza dough (thawed to room temperature), 2 lg onions halved and sliced, & 2 cloves garlic chopped, 2 bay leafs, 1 tsp. smoked Spanish paprika - salt & pepper to taste.

THE FILLING - Heat a few tbs. olive oil in a medium sized frying pan, brown chicken both sides, set aside. Saute onions, garlic and bay leafs  in same pan, adding oil if necessary, until onions are soft - not browned. Stir in chorizo and paprika for a minute, then add olives, raisins, wine and broth, and heat to boiling. Chop the chicken and stir into the sauce. Reduce heat. Simmer covered until tender, about 25 minutes more. Remaining liquid should be thick. If not, continue cooking a few minutes uncovered until it is, then remove from heat, discarding the bay leaf. Add salt & pepper to taste, set aside, uncovered, to cool while you make the crust. Or cool, cover and refrigerate for up to two days.
PREHEAT - oven to 400 degrees.

THE DOUGH - halve, form into balls, oil one and set aside wrapped in plastic. Flatten the other on a floured work surface and roll out into a 10x15 rectangle. Transfer to an oiled shallow baking pan - one you can almost slide the empanada out of when baked - and spread with the chicken mixture. (Don't spread it too thick, even if that means not using all the mixture. You can always mound any leftovers on bread for a few extra tapas.) Leave a one inch wide edge clear, and brush it with water. Roll out remaining dough and lay on the filling, fold the edges in and press together with the back of a fork, to decorate, as you would a pie. Cut a hole the size of a quarter in the center to allow steam to escape.

BAKE - on the middle rack of the oven until golden brown (35 to 40 min) brushing with olive oil after the first 15 minutes, and again when you remove it from the oven. Cool in the pan briefly, then slide onto rack to finish cooling. Serve warm, or room temperature, within four hours, cut into 18 squares.

TOMATO SPREAD -  1 can 28 oz and 1 can 14 oz diced tomatoes - drained (reserve liquid for other use), 6 garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced.
Saute garlic in olive oil in a medium frying pan until soft (not browned) and add tomato. Stir and simmer 25 minutes or so to cook - more to a marmalade, not a paste - and cool. Can be done a day ahead and refrigerated, covered. Bring to room temperature before using.

VARIOUS TAPAS - Slice the remaining chorizo thinly on the diagonal. Spread on baking sheet and bake at 300 degrees for 10 minutes. Arrange on paper towels to soak up the grease. After boiling the potatoes and reserving the ones for the tortilla, cut the remaining potatoes in half and toss with some olive oil to keep moist and not discolored. Hard boil remaining eggs, peel and cut in half across width. Trim the bottoms of both so they stand on end (wide side up) to form the bases for tapas. Alternate them on plates around small bowls of the mayo dusted with Spanish smoked paprika. With the various olives, pickles, red peppers, anchovies, chorizo slices and cheese triangles arranged on your work surface, alternate ingredients on a toothpick and stick each into a base. (example - Spanish green olive, black olive or cheese,  lg green olive stuffed with rolled up anchovy or half a gherkin pickle, chorizo) When the bases are filled, finish the mixed ingredients on a toothpick with another olive and arrange them in a small dish.

    For the other base, slice bread 1/2 in thick, brush with olive oil and bake at 300 degrees briefly - not to brown, but to "firm up". Arrange a slice of ham on each slice of bread and drizzle with olive oil. Spread the remaining bread slices with the tomato mix, smear the farmer's cheese over it, and arrange shrimp on the bread, drizzle half with the red pepper sauce, and the other half with the mayonnaise. Pop both briefly under the broiler until bubbly, but not brown, decorate with any leftover red pepper strips and serve.

TORTILLA - 3 eggs, 6 sm potatoes cubed, sm onion diced - salt & pepper to taste. (HINT: If you make this last you might have a few pieces of chorizo, cheese or ham left to chop finely and add.)
Heat 2 tbs. olive oil in a med frying pan or omelet pan. Sauté the onion until clear, add the potatoes, any bits of left over meat, and fry, stirring carefully to keep from breaking up, until the onions are golden. Beat the eggs in a large bowl. Add the salt and pepper (any left over cheese?) and stir in the potato mixture. Add oil to pan and when it is hot, pour in the egg mix. When it is set (after a few minutes) turn over. With some practice you can flip it, but to be safe, invert a plate over the pan and turn out onto the plate, then slide it back into the pan. Cook over medium heat for 4 minutes and slide out onto a clean plate. May be served warm or room temperature, within 4 hours. Traditionally, this is cut into wedges, and served on a pedestal cake plate. It is the mainstay of every tapas bar.

    The accompanying photographs are of two tapas parties I gave over the Holidays. Average prep time was 2 hours in the days before the party, and 4 hours on the day of the party. I worked right up to the arrival of the first guest, so don't plan any last minute housework, or chores. Get them done ahead of time.

    There you have it! Set a decorative table and be sure to have your camera handy. This food looks too good to just eat.

NOTES - click on the images to read the captions. I did this party twice a few weeks apart to perfect the recipies and my skills (and because I wanted to have 2 parties!) The images from the first party are on the dark table. If you look closely you'll see that I even tried my hand at bacalao & pil pil sauce (cod &  garlic oil) but it was too complicated to recommend it here. See my article"May Cod Be With You" to learn more about this dish.

Richard Frisbie, FOOD Correspondent:

RICHARD FRISBIE is published twice a month to Gather Essentials: Food 
It is a food junkie's take on growing, raising, preparing and - above all else - eating food. Together we’ll explore the trends, addictions, equipment and regional specialties that make up the sometimes mundane and sometimes sublime cooking and dining experience. You can keep up with my other postings and Gather activity by joining my Gather network -- just click here [Inset link to namespace] and select the orange “Connect” button on the left-hand side of the page --- I look forward to hearing from you.

BIO - Richard has been writing culinary travel articles for more than five years as a columnist for his local newspapers, and as a regular contributor to the many Hudson Valley, Catskill Mountain and other regional New York publications. His most recent addition to that list is a wine column called “Fruit of the Vine” for Life in the Finger Lakes magazine. Online, he writes frequent articles for EDGE publications and Travel Lady, as well as Gather.

You can read all of Richard's articles plus you’ll find him and other Food Correspondents, plus celebrity chef content and plenty of other Foodies at Food.gather.com