Tapas

I became intrigued by Spanish tapas in the late 1980’s when Penelope Casas released her first edition of Tapas. I had no idea about tapas previous to that, but was immediately taken by the idea of eating a vast array of small plates. Strangely, the idea never took off in the US, although a lot of foodies kept saying that it would. There was a great, traditional Spanish restaurant in the town where I grew up called Maison Catellano that had a few traditional tapas as appetizers, and the owners were smart enough to not push the idea that tapas aren’t appetizers but an entirely different way of eating. Though they’ve since closed, they had perhaps the best garlic shrimp I’ve ever had. Their sauce was richer and thicker than what you normally see. It wasn’t a light olive oil and garlic type of sauce but a richer, Catalan-like brown sauce that I once heard the owner describing as taking all day long to make. In fact the shrimp were almost an afterthought in this dish. I could have eaten the sauce with crusty bread and never missed the shrimp (which were in fact always perfectly cooked).

There were a few tapas places in Portland at times, but again, they never seemed to catch on, and they had the drawback of also being fairly expensive if you wanted to eat enough tapas for a meal. There was one place, however, called La Catalana, that had great Catalonian food and also great tapas (again served mainly as appetizers). They were reasonably priced, and had a great Spanish wine list. Alas, they too, have closed and now my tapas cravings are normally satisfied at home. It’s ironic. In Spain, no one cooks tapas at home. Tapas is something you eat a tapas bar with friends, but in Portland, I have to cook them at home.

The secret to making tapas at home is to start early. Tapas is something that’s leisurely. You eat a plate of something now and have a drink. Then you eat another one a little later and have another drink. If you don’t start until you’re starving, you push yourself into making half a dozen small pates at once. I prefer to do them spread out over time, so I can still relax and enjoy the company and the drinks. It being my birthday, I took the day off and ran around with my wife to several stores to get the requisite battery of Spanish staples: Serrano ham, garlic, shrimp, tomatoes, potatoes, sherry vinegar, Manchego cheese, pickle Piquillo peppers, mushrooms, etc. I was also picked up a bottle of Saison Dupont and a bottle of Rochefort 8 (see my previous post about Rochefort 10). Many people think that you’re supposed to have sherry with tapas, but I’ve read that the only people who drink sherry with tapas in Spain are tourists. Most Spaniards actually drink wine or beer with tapas, and I think that both are great choices, as is sherry even if it‘s only for tourists. I love good sherry and like to have an excuse to drink it. Even though the prices have gone up in the last decade, the sherries from Emilio Lustau are still incredible values. They are some of the finest wines in the world and are generally still below $20 a bottle (even though they were under $10 only 10 or 15 years ago). If the only sherry you’ve ever had is Harvey’s Bristol Cream or Dry Sack, you need to track these down and taste them. They’ll show you that sherry is world class and isn’t some tipple for old ladies and club members.

I didn’t have a definite plan of what to make, but it being my birthday we also stopped at Powells (http://www.powells.com/) so I could buy a copy of Jose Andres’s Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America and Casa Moro by Sam and Sam Clark. I’ve never had Jose Andres’s food but his book is phenomenal and shows the upscale side of the tapas that Penelope Casas introduced us to almost 20 years ago. It’s great source for inspiration and well worth it for anyone who loves Spanish food. Moro is a Spanish restaurant in London that makes Spanish food that shows the Moorish influence in Spanish food. This is the second cookbook by the husband and wife team and a more pan-Mediterranean one than the first one, but it still has a lot of traditional Spanish influenced food. I popped open a Pelican IPA (http://www.pelicanbrewery.com/) which is still one of the great NW IPA’s and got started.

The first course wasn’t a traditional tapa, but one of my own invention whose ingredients and method was thoroughly Spanish. I fired slices of red potatoes in olive oil until they were browned and crisped. I put a slice of Manchego cheese and a slice of piquillo pepper on the top and then topped it with a black olive half. I served three potatoes rounds per serving and we had a quick bite before my wife went back to making the overly complicated chocolate cherry roulade that she knows is my favorite (more on that later). Although the IPA wasn’t the best choice from the beers I had on had, it was open and worked well to cut trough the richness of the cheese and olive oil.

The next tapa was sautéed mushrooms with garlic, thyme, and olive oil, which is a pretty traditional tapa. It’s white button mushrooms sautéed in olive oil until they’re browned. Then you add some garlic and thyme and sauté it briefly (don’t burn the garlic). Finally you deglaze it with sherry and add the parsley. I served them over slices of country bread to soak up the juices. In a perfect, non-lazy world, the bread would have been toasted, but it was till wonderful. Simple and straightforward, but with clean, pure flavors. I opened the Saison Dupont to go with it, which was remarkable. Its crisp spiciness makes it one of the most versatile beers with food. The mushrooms could use a bigger beer, but the Dupont will work with the next few dishes as well.

Third up was a small tomato salad with sherry vinaigrette, blue cheese, shallots, and basil. The tomatoes were orange Italian sweets from the farmers market and ere incredibly sweet, so they stood were a natural foil to the vinaigrette. The basil isn’t traditional, but I have a lot of basil and it’s a natural with tomatoes. It was nice to have a more acidic cleaner flavored dish at this point to help clean our palates. The Dupont’s crispness was a perfect match.

Fourth was chicken thighs cooked with garlic, piquillo peppers, Serrano ham, and sherry. They were basically sautéed and had small amount of sauce which required a small amount of the country bread to soak up. Again, it wasn’t complicated, but was reminiscent of some of the most fundamental flavors of Spanish food. I switched to the Rochefort 8 for this one, because I wanted to finish with the bigger beer. The chicken was remarkable. The sherry, chicken fat, and olive oil emulsified into a remarkable sauce. The chicken was tender and juicy and the peppers and ham added to the complexity of the dish. Rochefort 8 may not have been perfect with it, but it’s hard to go wrong with any deeply flavored dish and this beer.

The final tapa was the most simple and the probably the best: Grilled shrimp wrapped with Serrano ham. It had no added salt, pepper, or olive oil. It was just Serrano ham and giant shrimp. It was cooked just enough to crisp the ham and to cook the shrimp through. I served it with a squeeze of lime and it was amazing. More proof that sometimes the simplest dishes are the best. The Rochefort had warmed up and the brown sugar and fruit cake flavors (as my wife described it) worked with the smoky, salty, rich flavors of the shrimp and ham. A dollop of aioli would have been nice, but, frankly, would have masked the pure flavors. It was a memorable three hours and five courses.

A cake is a requirement on a birthday and my wife had made my favorite cake, which is chocolate cherry roulade from the incredible cookbook Kaffeehaus by Rick Rodgers, which is one of the great dessert cookbooks of all time. Rodgers has chronicled some of the most decadent desserts from the Austro-Hungarian coffee house tradition. We were able to score an autographed copy several years ago. This cake is from the “simple cakes” section, which should put a shudder into anyone who wants to venture into the “complex cakes” section. This cake is a thin chocolate cake rolled up as a roulade with a stuffing of gelatin thickened whip cream and pitted cherries (which are at their peak right now here in Oregon).

I picked up a De Boomgaard Framboise which is a sweet, raspberry beer with a distinct sweet cinnamon note as well as a nutmeg-like spicy undercurrent. It’s as wonderful for dessert as the sweetened lambics from Lindemans, but has the advantage that it doesn’t try to pass itself as lambic (it’s labeled as Belgian beer with spices and raspberry juice). The cake is amazing. The chocolate layer is flavored with cocoa and is egg rich and toothsome. It’s sturdy enough to wrap the cream and cherries, but is still supple, and more importantly, it isn’t too sweet like many cakes. The cherries were organic cherries from the farmer’s market and were perfectly ripe so they didn’t need any additional sweetening at all. It was perfect with the beer (or rather the beer was perfect with the cake which was the real star). It’s one of the best cakes I’ve ever had and I look forward to it every year. Overall it was a remarkable meal that took four, leisurely hours to eat and embodied what the entire tapas lifestyle is about.