| food
& drink Recipes Tapas UK Tapas Drinks Alcohol Food to try Cheese |
 Spain has a huge variety of wonderful food
and wine apart from the paella and Rioja that everyone knows. Included on this page
are some personal favourite recipes from all over the place; I
would also recommend Jacki Passmore's
book which is set out regionally. But first a word about tapas for the
uninitiated! |
Some bars list their tapas menus but the best way is to go in and peer into the long glass covers that sit atop the bar itself to see what there is. The best thing to do is to point to what you want, order drinks if you haven't already, and then say where you are sitting. Of course you can sit up at the bar and eat, and in fact this is slightly cheaper (less leg work for the barman!). As with drinks and coffee in spain, you pay when you leave. Notice that the Spanish have no qualms about dropping their litter on the bar floor - in fact the way to spot a good tapas bar is by the mounds of litter on the floor around the bar!
Midday and after 5pm are the best times for variety of tapas because that's when the Spanish themselves eat them (between meals!). The only confusing thing about tapas is the size of the portion you are likely to get which varies with establishment. A true 'tapa' will be only a mouthful for one person; whereas a 'racion' is a bigger portion - usually about the size of a teaplate. Make sure you ask about the size of the plate before you order a dozen!The Spanish thing to drink with tapas is a dry (fino or manzanilla) sherry, or a glass of tinto (red wine) or cerveza (beer). Of course gin & tonic is wonderful too ... just not terribly Spanish!
Expect to pay between 1-2€ for a tapa; 3-4€ for a racion.
The following are some recommended tapas and Spanish restaurants in the UK - if you find one you want to recommend, please e-mail details.
LONDON AND SOUTH EAST:
El Toro Loco
7 Cambridge Park, Wanstead, London E11 2PU Tel 0208 518 8111
Small bar/restaurant, serving
good tapas - all the usual dishes - and larger meals.
Cubalibre & Bar Havana
72 Upper Street, Islington,
London, N1 0NY (020 7354 9998)
Cuban restaurant that
offers a selection of 6 tapas for £6.95 lunchtime and evenings (except
Saturday).
Fino
Charlotte Street, London W1
(020 7813 8010)
Stylish venue with prices to match.
Very nice tapas but at £65 a head with drinks, it should be! Fixed price
mixed menus at £20, £28 and £40 a head but portions are small.
The turron dessert delivered 3 squares of turron (there were
4 in our party) and we really had to push it to get the extra square out of
them. Watch the G&Ts - £6 a go. Excellent
service from friendly (mostly) Spanish waiting staff. Comfy cocktail bar
where you can spend even more money. The entrance is not in Charlotte
Street but around the corner.
Los
Barriles
8a Lamb Street, Spitalfields, London E1 Tel 0207 375 3136
Atmospheric bar/restaurant with
excellent tapas and dinner menu. Good, fresh fish. The bar is dark
and sawdusty; always buzzing. Prices a tad on the expensive side.
Open 11.00 - 11.00. Closed Saturday night.
NORTH EAST:
Cafe Bar
1880
21-23 Trinity House Lane, Hull (01482 610460)
Small, newish bar serving tapas. Not very Spanish - more wine bar
style, but seems popular. Open Tues-Sun 12.00 - 11.00 pm.
NORTH WEST:
Esteban
40 Lark Lane, Aigburth, Liverpool
South (0151 727 6056)
Fairly modern Tapas restaurant in the very trendy
part of Liverpool that's known as Lark Lane.
Everything from pinchitos to authentic Spanish
morcilla. Gambas pil pil and a really good
selection of veggie foods. It's got an outside
patio area and serves great breakfast.
Staff are Spanish,
bilingual and very friendly. 3 tapas for £7.00 Mon
-Thurs between 5
and 7 pm and the choice is very good.
The restaurant is split into smoking and non-smoking.
Very child friendly - 9/10.
Recommended by Ken Carr
La Casa Vieja Restaurant
6-12 Bickerstaffe Street,St. Helens,Merseyside (01744 454613)
La Casa Vieja restaurant is a Small bar/restaurant, serving good tapas - all the
usual dishes - and larger meals. Not the cheapest but excellent food and a very
good atmosphere, with the owner of the restaurant also speaking Spanish. Recommended
by Janice Ince
La Tasca Restaurants Ltd
Unit 3, Queen Square, Liverpool L1 (0151 709 7999)
La Tasca Restaurant has a buzzing atmosphere bar/restaurant with excellent tapas.
The bar is very busy. Prices reasonable. Can be a long wait on a Saturday
evening. Recommended by
Janice Ince
La Tasca is a flourishing chain of
tapas bars across the country - perhaps if anyone has tried any other branches
they could let us know.
La Tasca @ Covent Garden, London WC1 is
just as good - recommended by
Deborah Willis
| Churros The Spanish version of a doughnut! Find them on market stalls - ideally get them just as they've been fished out of the hot oil, with a sprinkling of sugar. Or, be very Spanish and eat them for breakfast dipped in a cup of thick chocolate. |
WHOLE OF SPAIN:
Paella - famous saffron rice dish - maybe with seafood, or meat or both.See recipe.
Tortilla Espanol - egg and potato omelette See recipe.
Bocadillos - French bread sandwiches with usual fillings such as atun
(tuna), tortilla (see above), chorizo (spicy
salami-style sausage), jamon (Spanish cured ham, like Parma
ham), queso (cheese)
Bacalao - dried salt cod. Good in seafood salad or casseroled in
tomato sauce.
Macedonia - fruit salad (often tinned! Ask if it's fresh - es
de fruta fresca?)
Flan - the ubiquitous creme caramel
TAPAS
Albondigas - meatballs
Boquerones - raw anchovies marinated in garlic, vinegar and oil
(like miniature 'roll mops'!)
Pescaditos - fried whitebait
Ensaladilla - potato, peas, tuna and hardboiled egg
chopped small and mixed in mayonnaise
Croquetas - fried croquettes of ham or fish or vegetable
Muslitos de Mar - crab claws (sometimes made from reconstituted
seafood)
Patatas bravas or al i oli - fried potatoes with either tomato
spicy sauce or garlic mayonnaise
Jamon - a plate of wafer thin cured ham
Queso - a plate of Manchego usually
Calamares - fried squid rings
Chipirones - fried whole squidlets
MALLORCA: Click
here for more detail on the following
Lechona -
roast suckling pig
Coca - Mallorcan 'pizza'. See recipe.
Pa amb oli -
bread rubbed with oil, salt and garlic
Trempo
- summer salad
Sopes Mallorquines - winter vegetables 'soup'
Frito Mallorquin - a fry-up of offal
Ensaimadas - fluffy pastries
Sobrasada - a coarse pork meat paste flavoured with paprika
Tumbet - like ratatouille but with potatoes
CATALUNA: Click here for more detail on the following
Pa amb Tomaquet - tomato bread
Arroz Negro - rice cooked in squid ink see
recipe
Fideua - a sort of paella but made with broken spaghetti instead of rice
Espinacs a la Catalan - spinach with raisins and pine nuts
Suquet de Peix - fish and potato soup
Sarsuela - seafood stew
Carn a la brasa amb al i oli - chargrilled meat with garlic mayonnaise
Botifarra - blood sausage
Crema Catalan - Vanilla creme brulee
ANDALUCIA
Pavia - battered and deep fried - could be bacalao
or prawns see recipe
Fritada variada - mixed battered and fried fish and seafood (they
like fried fish in Andalucia!)
Gazpacho - the beautiful salad soup (only to be eaten in the
summer when the tomatoes are ripe).
Salmorejo - the Cordoban version of Gazpacho, served slightly thicker.
Sweets and cakes -
Seville is the place for these
Cheese
Spain has some wonderful cheese! Most varieties tend to come in three different stages: mature (curado), semi-mature (semi curado) and 'young' (
Manchego Made from sheep's milk, it's a firm cheese with good flavour.
It comes from the La Mancha region but can be found everywhere.
Mahon Menorca's cheese. Good
flavour; slightly bendy texture in the semi curado astate. Whole cheese is
a rounded square with orange rind.
Cabrales Strong, Asturian, blue cheese. A little goes a long way! In a ripe state, it has the texture of cream cheese and is good spread on toast.
Idiazabal From the Basque
country. A strong, crumbly cheese with smokey flavour.
Tetilla The Galician cheese with the distinctive 'teat' shape.
Iberico One of Spain's most popular cheeses, made all over the country, from a blend of ewe's, goat's and cow's milk - the 'Cheddar' of Spain!
For
in depth information on the cheese of Spain and how they are made, visit
www.cheesefromspain.com.
| If tea is a no-no in Spain (is it the milk, the
water or the method?!), the coffee certainly makes up for it! No sloshing mugs of
watery, grey liquid there! Coffee comes in three main guises: |
| Cafe con leche - a large, hot-milky coffee to drink for breakfast - certainly NOT after lunchtime! |
| Cafe cortado - a small, strong coffee with just a shot of hot milk, usually served in a glass on a saucer. Perfect anytime - ask for simply 'un cortado'. |
| Cafe solo - a small espresso-style black coffee. If you just ask for 'un cafe' that is usually what you get. |
| Of course you can get a version of our English/American watery-grey style coffee if you really want: ask for 'un Nescafe'! |
Non Alcoholic
analcoholico
- Granizada - a 'slush' in fresh orange or lemon flavour
- Horchata - a drink made from tiger nut milk
- Bitter Kas - a bright pink Tizer type but not so sweet
- Fanta Limon, Fanta Naranja - the usual fizzy lemon and orange
| Spirits | Gin is the bargain as plenty is made in
Spain and well, thanks to the British navy introducing it to Menorca long ago.
Reliable Spanish makes to look out for are:
If you ask for un GinTonic you will probably be given Gordons as it's more expensive; you can specify by asking for 'un GinTonic de Larios'. The measures are always generous - if you can fit all of the tonic in, you've been hard done by! |
| Wine Una botella de vino - a bottle of wine Un vaso de vino - a glass of wine Vino de la casa - house wine Tinto de la casa house red |
Red (Tinto): the best
known of course is Rioja and plenty is drunk  in Spain. The cheaper Riojas are
usually younger and won't have the distinctive oaky flavour we associate with Rioja.
If you want oak, get a Reserva; the Gran Reservas are considered the best, but they
are very heavy - sometimes too heavy to accompany a meal. The predominant grape here
is Tempranillo, so if you enjoy full-bodied red wine look for the grape name on other
wines. Other excellent wine regions to look for on the label are:
A refreshing, light drink is Tinto de verano, which is red wine diluted with lemonade and plenty of ice. White (Blanco): Riojo comes in white as well! The quality and variety of whites is not so great: the best known white is the Albarino which comes from the cooler north of Spain. If you're into white wine why not try a Cava, the Spanish champagne at a fraction of the price? The sweet Moscatel wine makes a fragrant accompaniment to pudding. Sherry (vino Jerez): Sherry comes from the very south of Spain and is a complicated topic. It's a fortified wine that comes in different guises depending on how much brandy is used to fortify, how long they are aged, whether they come into contact with the air and whether they're re-fortified. The stuff we tend to know in England barely represents the Spanish idea. In Spain sherry is usually dry: the dark brown ones we know as 'cream' sherries' are really just sweetened Amontillados or Olorosos. An ice cold glass of Fino or Manzanilla sherry is the perfect accompaniment to tapas. Montilla Muriles: is the Cordoban version of Sherry, and likewise comes in Fino and Oloroso. The sweet wine is made with Pedro Ximenez grapes and is very smooth. Sangria: Take one large jug and half fill with red wine. Add a shot of brandy, a glass of orange juice and top up with lemonade. Chuck in fruit and ice. |
| Liquers Licores |
The following are a few of the
many after dinner drinks in Spain (although you may see a few of the stronger ones being
drunk very early in the morning!)
|
| Beer Una cerveza, por favor! |
Most people know San Miguel, a fairly
bland but refreshing lager beer. Stronger and more flavoursome beers to look out for
are:
Una cerveza media will get you about half a pint. Una caña (pronounced canya) for draft beer. |
| Cider Sidra |
You are most likely to come across cider in the north of Spain, where apples grow better than grapes. It is not carbonated but gets its fizz from being poured from a great height. Once it loses this natural fizz, Spaniards tend to discard it and get a fresh glass .. depends how quick you drink, I suppose! |
RECIPES - please feel free to
contact me to see if I have a particular recipe, or indeed to add one of your own.
Submit a recipe
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