Tapas! Sangria! Cray Cray!
After reading Smitten Kitchen’s recipe “Spinach and Chick Peas,” I knew I just had to host a tapas dinner.
We all know that the first necessity for any tapas party is sangria. Extra fruity wine with ice? Yes, please. Especially on a day like yesterday, when Chicago weather resembles spring and makes everyone just want to be outside.
My classic go-to recipe for Sangria (found at Allrecipes.com) is as follows:
Sangria
1 bottle of red wine (a decent cheap wine like 3 Buck Chuck is perfect)
1 orange
1 lemon
1 lime
1 cup orange juice
1 1/2 cups rum
1/2 cup sugar
Combine wine, rum, orange juice and sugar into a pitcher and stir. Then add sliced fruit and let chill for as long as you can before drinking. Stir before, mashing the fruit a little bit and enjoy!
The recipe is simple, quick and fail-proof. You can substitute vodka or cachaça or even spiced rum… whatever you have on hand. This time around I didn’t have a lime, so I went without… still delicious. Don’t have enough booze/want less boozy drink? Make it with 1 cup rum, or 1/2 cup… the options are endless! Experiment. I highly recommend it.
The culprits: Christina, Lila and me. The tapas dishes: goat cheese baked in tomato sauce, bacon wrapped dates and spinach and chickpeas.
The first dish that was served/ready was Christina’s goat cheese baked in tomato sauce. The recipe is rather easy, and a basic version of it can be found at Whole Foods’ website. It’s just a block of goat cheese with some marinara/tomato sauce heated for 25-ish minutes at 350 degrees served with garlic bread. It sounds (and is) simple, but it is one of those classic cases where good ingredients come together to make delicious food.
Goat Cheese Baked in Marinara Sauce
Block of Goat Cheese
Tomato Sauce
1. Place cheese in baking dish.
2. Surround with spoonfuls of sauce.
3. Cook for 25 minutes at 350 degrees.
4. Serve with garlic bread.
Lila made bacon wrapped dates, which none of us had ever made before. After googling the matter, we realized that it was simply a matter of wrapping uncooked bacon around the date and cooking them long enough under a broiler (thanks Martha Stewart).
Bacon Wrapped Dates
Bacon
Pitted Dates
1. Wrap dates in bacon.
2. Place tray of wrapped dates under broiler.
3. Cook to desired crispiness.
As I said earlier in the post, this dish was the reason I invited people over to begin with (yes, not the sangria). The final result was delicious, but my brain couldn’t help thinking it tasted like a variation of channa masala. Must be the cumin and tomato flavors.
Espinacas con Garbanzos (Adapted from Smitten Kitchen)
1 15-ounce cans of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
3 tablespoons olive oil
8 oz spinach, washed
A hefty 1-inch slice from a loaf of bread, torn/shredded into little pieces
1/4 cup tomato sauce
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
Pinch of red pepper flakes
1 1/2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon paprika
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Lemon juice, to taste
1. Place a large saucepan over medium heat and add half the olive oil. When it is hot, add the spinach with a pinch of salt (in batches, if necessary) and stir well. Remove when the leaves are just tender and set aside.
2. Heat more olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Fry the bread for about 5 minutes or until golden brown all over, then some more oil and the garlic, cumin and pepper. Cook for 1 minute more or until the garlic is nutty brown.
3. Transfer to a food processor along with the vinegar and blend into a paste. Return the mixture to the pan and add the drained chickpeas and tomato sauce. Stir until the chickpeas have absorbed the flavors and are hot. Season with salt and pepper.
4. If the consistency is a little thick, add some water. Add the spinach and cook until it is hot. Check for seasoning and serve with paprika on top, or on fried bread toasts.
And for proof that we were having a good time— Cray Cray showed up! (I told her I wasn’t taking a picture of her and then did anyway, which is why Christina is laughing.)
‘
When Christina told a coworker what we were doing last night, he thought it didn’t sound like fun. Apparently he must not have good cooks among his group of friends.
All in all a successful tapas dinner. Good friends. Good food. Good times.
