Spanish Dinner Party

Since the last few dinner parties we've thrown were with my friends, figured it was time to invite Uly's buddies for a change. Uly and I have been really into tapas recently, so we decided to go with a Spanish theme for our dinner last week.

We started off with some cold tapas so people have something to munch on while we finished up the paella and the hot tapas. I just had to have some Jamon Serrano, so we served that over Pan con Tomate (tomato bread), the same way I've had it at some other tapas restaurants. Too bad the Jamon Iberico was just way too expensive, but the Serrano ham was still yummy. We also had a Manchego-Apple salad, which is pretty much just cubed Manchego cheese and apples, chopped walnuts, drizzled with Spanish olive oil and sherry vinegar. The original recipe called for Murcia Al Vino (Drunken Goat) but Uly doesn't really like goat cheese and I like Manchego better anyway. Finally, we had an assortment of chorizo to round up the cold appetizers. To drink, we had 2 kinds of sangria, one with red wine and one with white wine, since it was pretty warm still so it was nice to have a cold drink. Too bad I didn't get any good pictures of these since I had Uly's camera set up wrong (that's the last time I mess around w/ his SLR). Maybe next time I'll just make him take the pics or just use my point-n-shoot.


We then served the hot tapas together with the main course. Uly and I did all the prep earlier, and split up the hot tapas so it only took us around 5-10 minutes to get all of them done. Uly made 2 kinds of shrimp, Gambas a la Lima (shrimp with lime), and Gambas al Ajillo (shrimp with garlic...it also had some chili in it). I prepared the Champiñones al Ajillo (garlic mushrooms) and Sharleen's favorite, Pimientos de Padrón (Padron Peppers). They were kind of pricey but taste so good and are so worth it...too bad the season is pretty much ending. They call it the "Russian Roulette" of peppers since most are not spicy, but occasionally you get a really hot one...pretty fun to try to guess which ones they are!

For the main course, we had Paella (but of course). Uly and I made it once before so at least we had practice. This was our first time using a real paella pan though and I was glad it went well. We use the recipe from "The Best Recipe" cookbook from Cook's Illustrated and it was really good, though I would like to try some other recipes sometime. I thought we did a pretty good job timing everything. I was about halfway done w/ the paella when the guests arrived, and it was done by the time we were ready to sit down on the table. We just let it rest while we did the hot tapas, then we were all able to sit down and eat everything together. With the hot food, we drank a bottle of Spanish wine that Dave and Sharleen brought, and also opened another Spanish bottle we had in our cellar.

For dessert, we had flan and some Spanish cheeses. Initially, Uly just wanted the flan only, but I just couldn't resist getting some cheese when I was at Milk Pail the day before. At least it gave the guests a choice if they didn't feel like eating something sweet. I used a pretty standard flan recipe, and decided to make one giant flan instead of individual ones to be eaten family-style. For the cheese platter, we had more Manchego (we bought a giant piece of it at Costco) and Mahon, and served it with some Marcona almonds and membrllo. Had these with some port and the rest of the red wine.



I gotta say, this dinner was not as formal as my last couple dinner parties, but Uly wanted something casual for his buddies, and you can't really go too formal with a Spanish/tapas theme anyway. It's good to mix it up though, and I'm glad we get to try to prepare different kinds of dinners. Good times!



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