Simple, no fuss chicken tapas recipe
A couple days ago while I was out promoting our wines at Whole Foods, a customer there asked for a a really simple to make recipe for a Spanish themed party. I make a chicken dish as tapas at home that I thought would be perfect. Here is the recipe I gave her:
- 4 chicken thighs (skinless)
- 1 tsp Spanish Pimenton (Paprika) smoked works best
- 2 tsp olive oil
- 8 garlic cloves, sliced
- 1/4 cup dry white wine
- 1 bay leaf
- pinch of salt
- fresh chopped parsley (garnish)
First, cut the chicken into bite sized pieces and season liberally with the smoked pimenton (Hungarian paprika works too but add a bit of red pepper).
Heat the oil in a large saute pan and fry the garlic slices for about a minute. Remove the garlic and set aside on a paper towel to drain the oil.
Now add the chicken pieces to the pan and cook, turning occasionally, for about 10 minutes until the chicken is browned on all sides. Add the wine and bay leaf and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for another 10 minutes or so until most of the liquid has evaporated.
Add the fried garlic pieces, mix well then season with the salt.
Serve it on a plate and sprinkle the chopped parsley on top.
As a more robust variation, instead of the parsley you can add warmed chopped green olives.
Simply delicious desserts that are simple to make
During the last couple of weeks there has not been much happening in the cellar. Whenever I could extract myself from a rather overwhelming backlog of paperwork and accounting I would retreat to my kitchen to play. So one day, maybe about a week ago, we had a couple friends come by and stupidly I forgot to pick up dessert at Whole Foods. The oversight wound up turning into an evening of happy desserts. Here are the recipies for the winners of the night:
Fried Goat Cheese with Honey
1/4 pound of a creamy goat cheese
1 small red onion, finely sliced
1 egg, beaten
flour
1 tsp sugar
Spanish olive oil
Honey
Fry the onion over medium heat until it is really soft then drain off the oil, add the sugar and carmelize. As soon as thats done, chill it. Next, form the goat cheese into 4 equal size balls. Dip cheese balls in egg and then lightly cover in flour. Fry in a shallow pan of olive oil until golden brown. Put the carmelized onion in the center of a plate and arrange the cheese balls evenly around it. Drizzle the cheese with honey. Serve with Sherry if you have it!
Crostini with Chorizo and Bittersweet Chocolate Drizzle
Spicy dry cured Spanish Chorizo, cut to 1/4 inch slices.
3 oz bittersweet dark chocolate (Guitard wafers are great for this)
A baguette
Olive oil
Preheat the oven to 375. While waiting for the oven to heat up, add a couple tablespoons of olive oil to a frying pan and briefly sear both sides of the chorizo. Set aside the chorizo and brush the chorizo infused olive oil onto the crostini slices– one side only. Place the crostini onto a baking sheet and cook for about 10 minutes. Melt the chocoalte wafers or chips over a low heat. When the crostini is done put a slice of chorizo on top and drizzle it with the melted chocolate. Serve with a full bodied Tempranillo.
Simple but tasty tapas you can do at home
One of the thing I here whenever I start talking about serving a Spanish table is that cooking Spanish style (or iberian in general) is very complex. I can tell you that it’s just not true. Or rather that it doesn’t have to be. If I was I could not do it. I have an adversarial relationship with my oven. So if it ain’t range top or grill, I’m screwed… and so are my guests. The good news is there is so much you can do with Tapas.
As an example, a couple months ago I was perusing the menu at Sala 19 and decided to start adapting a couple of the tapas dishes to ingredients I can get here in Fresno. I can’t get real Iberico ham here (I’d like to…) so Proscuitto can be exchanged. You can get it at virtually any supermarket deli counter. Does that make the recipe Italian? Maybe. Does it matter? Not really!
So the recipe goes something like this:
DATILES CON JAMON (dates with ham)
16 dates (preferably pitted)
1/4 pound thick cut procuitto (about 1mm thick)
unsalted almonds
First pit the dates if its not done already. The stuff in 1 almond into each date and wrap the date with a 1 inch by 4 strip of prosciutto. Place in a 400 degree oven just until the proscuitto just crisps up. If you don’t get on well with your oven either, the grill works fine too.
Serves 4
The salty meat plays off the sweetness of the dates perfectly and it almost melts in your mouth!
Even better, the prep takes maybe 15 minutes. Pure simplicity.
Tasting the 2003 Pujanza Rioja
Last Thursday we had the first Tempranillo and tapas night at my house. Several pals dropped by (mostly for the novelty of watching me cook) and tasted a bottle of rioja I’d recently picked up in our local wine emporium. Our rating system is pretty straight forward: the scale is 1-5 stars with one being horridly vile plonk (I’ve judged a few in competitions, though thankfully its rare) and 5 stars which is a wine you should run, not walk, to buy.
The 2003 Pujanza Rioja is a blend of 90% Tempranillo and 10% Graciano. Our consensus is that it has medium bodied aromas of cherry, raspberry and white peppercorn. The predominant flavor is of raw cocoa powder and light red cherry. The wine was served with two Spanish dishes: Plate 1: A mild chorizo baked in a moderately spiced variation of patatas gravas. The wine went very well with this dish. Plate 2: A chicken and spicy chorizo pealla.
The wine as a stand alone and with Plate 1 got a consensus rating of 3.5 stars but with Plate 2 it did not fare as well; the wine simply lacks the body to stand up to the richer flavors in the paella. So for this pairing the wine gets 3 stars.
Overall the 2003 Pujanza Rioja is a decent but unexciting 3.5 star value at $25 so long as its paired with mild dishes.
Another day, another restaurant
This time I found a killer tapas joint in Manhattan. Sala One Nine. Creative dishes such as dates stuffed with almonds and wrapped with bacon are simple and delicious. The wine list is rather limited, though they do have a Mensia which is the grandfather of cab franc, but the food is simply scrumptious. If in NYC this place is definitely worth a visit.
