Tapas For 3 Or 30

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

This week's installment comes with a warning: when announcing the meal plan for the evening, be sure to enunciate. Failure to do so could result in impressionable teenagers and men with selective hearing somehow misconstruing the word “tapas” (which can sound suspiciously like top-less, as in 'Hey, let's go to the tapas bar around the corner.') into an entirely different dinner suggestion than what is intended.

Tapas-style dinners, or meals made of small plates, are the perfect solution for a casual get-together or a last minute lazy weekend dinner meant for lingering over. It is a style of eating that is meant for sharing, as the small plates encourage guests to try a little of everything. It is conducive to preparing in advance or at the last minute, as many classic tapas dishes can be served at room temperature or reheated to order. If there is a larger meal to come, tapas serve perfectly well as a precursor to the main event. This is such a flexible way of dining, you can use it to feed groups of three or crowds of thirty.

Traditional tapas are Spanish in origin. There are a couple of theories related to their exact beginnings, one of which credits King Alfonso the Tenth, who, due to an illness, had to eat food every time he drank wine. He then declared that everyone else must do so as well so as to have food soak up the alcohol. Another more practical and plausible story is that serving tapas on plates atop wine glasses was a way for taberna owners to keep flies out of the wine glasses of their patrons. Whatever the real reason, bar owners began selling small-portion foods that would fit on those plates balanced atop the glasses to give their patrons something to nibble on. These small bites varied from cured olives, manchego, and jamon, to more prepared dishes such as shrimp and garlic, sautéed mushrooms in olive oil, tortilla espagnola, and smoky chorizo.

Today, the tapas style of eating has become somewhat of a craze. It seems every restaurant from Italian eateries to American nouvelle cuisine has a tapas section on their menu if not an entire menu made of “tapas” sized plates. You can be sure that Kobe sliders and salmon tartare in mini waffle cones were no Spanish import.

Whatever the tapas trends, the original style has much potential in the everyday kitchen. Keeping simple foods on hand such as cured olives, a couple of good cheeses and cured meats, and Spanish almonds provides the makings for almost a meal by itself. If you have olive oil, eggs, potatoes, and plenty of garlic--staples in most kitchens anyhow--then you pretty much have what it takes to bring the cooked items in your tapas spread to an authentic Spanish level. Potatoes fried in olive oil topped with a fried egg so that the yolk oozes over the plate can’t be simpler or more quintessentially Spanish. And not-so-typical tapas like brussels sprouts can be made Spanish with the simple addition of sherry vinegar. Lastly, a tapas spread would just not be complete without jamon of some sort. But I like my pig in the chorizo form. Sauteed with garlic, chili and shrimp. Now that is a tapas that might need to be Super-sized.

Armed with a spread of pig, potatoes, egg, garlic and plenty of wine, you will be certain to have enough food to top the plates on the glasses of an army or a few. So feel free to invite as many people as you can fit around a table, just be sure to enunciate.

Serves/Makes: 4

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/4 teaspoon red chili flakes
• 1/2 pound chorizo sausage
• 1/3 pound large shrimp, peeled and deveined
• kosher salt

Serves/Makes: 4

• 2 cups olive oil
• 1 pound baby Yukon gold potatoes
• Kosher salt
• 1/4 cup finely chopped parsley
• 2 eggs

Serves/Makes: 4

• 1/4 olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 pound Brussels sprouts
• salt and pepper
• 3 tablespoons sherry vinegar