Wednesday, January 07, 2009

January 1st Tapas Meal

We had our fifth New Year's Day Tapas meal. For those new to the blog, this means that the children help my dh make a great Tapas meal for me on New Year's Day. Tapas dishes are from Spain and are usually small ones. You get a small taste of the dish. That is why we usually have 7-9 dishes during a tapas meal. I usually don't have to do anything except maybe locate ingredients or offer advice if the recipe is confusing. So first some prep pictures.



First Course: Deb's Marinated Olives. They turned out to be very spicy with an Arabian taste to them.


Also in the first course - Aaron's Egg and Tuna wrapped in Ham. They were boiled egg halves with homemade mayonnaise and marinated tuna and wrapped of course in boiled ham. Very tasty.


Second course: Grilled Shrimp. The shrimp were kept in their shell and drizzled with salt and olive oil. After 15 minutes, you grilled them and then put some lemon juice over the cooked shrimp. They were amazingly good. Stephen helped with this recipe.

Third Course: Aaron's Orange Salad. It had orange slices, golden raisins, very thinly sliced red onions, minced almonds, and dressing. Everyone liked this one.



Fourth Course: Stephen's Cod wrapped in Chard. Stephen wrapped the chunks of cod and some ham in blanced swiss chard leaves. It was served over a bed of mushrooms that had been sauteed. This was very good as well, though not all of the children liked it.



Fifth course: Nathan's Meatballs in Saffron sauce. Fantastic. Maybe the best dish of the evening.



Sixth Course. But he also had the pork loin with the pomogranite marinade served over rice. It wasn't too fruity and was very moist and tasty.


Deborah finished off the meal with her Fried Custard. She had made the custard the night before with my dh and then he (not her) pan fried it and rolled it in cinnamon sugar. We finished that whole plate!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have you found a good source for saffron? I understand it can be pretty pricey.

The tapas look great. I think the only repeat from last year was Deb's olives. Nice variety.

~Betsy

Technoprairie said...

Saffron is pricey, but at least you don't use too much per dish. I bought mine at Meijer.

Actually the olives were different this year. Last year the olives were Thyme Scented Olives (marinated with herbs and thyme) and this year they were Sevilla style marinated olives (marinated with anchovies, cumin, vinegar, lemon juice).

Anonymous said...

Hey, that first picture with Deb doesn't show olives! I demand blog accuracy!

Technoprairie said...

Sorry about that. Now Deb's olives are there.