It's been an Espanol weekend!!!

This past long weekend has been a lazy one for me. I stayed home and cooked. I shared my results with my neighborhood friends.

On Sunday, I grilled some bread w/ Spanish olive oil, cut some garlic cloves, ripe tomatoes, Manchego cheese, thyme salt and more Spanish olive oil. This is the best community appetizer or maybe I should say tapas. Everyone had to rub their own garlic, tomato, sprinkle salt and more olive oil on their own piece of bread - pan con tomate!!! This was a hit.

Then at Bob's, I made a mussel ceviche, with lemon juice, fresh ginger, shallots, parsley, garlic, lemon thyme, and olive oil. It was very good and it actually gave "Olive Tree's" version some competition.

Monday night, I was brave and made 4 new tapa recipes:

1. gambas ala plancha - grilled prawns w/ Spanish olive oil & salt
2. fresh sweet peppers ala plancha - grilled shishito peppers w/ Spanish olive oil, thyme & salt
3. chorizo stuffed calamari w/ grilled onions - the stuffing was a mixture of chorizo sausage, portobello mushrooms, onions and rice
4. salted cod & patatas croquettas w/ aioli - fried mashed potato & salted cod mixture
   

I brought these tapas upstairs to Cliff & Tim's and they loved all four recipes.

This tapas thing is delicious, but it surely takes a lot of time to prepare. Specifically the last two recipes.