A little piece of information about Tapas
Recipes - In Spain, dinner is usually served between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. (sometimes as late as
12 midnight), leaving significant time between work and dinner.
Therefore, Spaniards often go "bar hopping" (Spanish: Ir de tapas) and eat tapas in
the time between finishing work and having dinner. Since lunch is usually served between 1 and 3
p.m., another common time for tapas is weekend days around noon as a means of socializing before
lunch proper at home.
It is very common for a bar or a small local restaurant to have 8 to 12 different
kinds of tapas in warming trays with glass partitions covering the food. They are often very
strongly flavoured with garlic, chilies or paprika, cumin, salt, pepper, saffron and sometimes in
plentiful amounts of olive oil. Often one or more of the choices is seafood (mariscos), often
including anchovies, sardines or mackerel in olive oil, squid or others in a tomato based sauce,
sometimes with the addition of red or green peppers or other seasoning. It is rare to see a tapas
selection not include one or more types of olives, such as manzanilla or arbequina olives. One or
more types of bread are usually available to eat with any of the sauce-based tapas, and you can
prepare all of this by yourself with easy tapas recipes and enjoy the evening with your
friends.
In Madrid, Castilla y León, Asturias, Extremadura, and in parts of Andalucia, when you go to a bar
and order a drink, you will often get a tapa for free. As a drink, it is usual to ask for a corto
(small beer), a chato (glass of wine) or a mosto (grape juice). In several cities, there are entire
zones dedicated to tapas bars; each one serving their own unique dish. In León you can find the
Barrio Humedo, in Logroño Calle Laurel and in Burgos Calle de la Sombrerería and Calle de San
Lorenzo.
Sometimes, especially in Northern Spain, they're also called pinchos (spelled
pintxos in Basque) in Navarre, the Basque Country, Cantabria and in some provinces like Salamanca.
They're called that because many of them have a pincho or toothpick through them. The toothpick is
used to keep whatever the snack is made of from falling off the slice of bread it is attached to
and to keep track of the number of tapas the customer has eaten. Differently priced tapas have
different shapes or have toothpicks of different sizes. The price of a single tapa ranges from 1.00
to 1.50 euros. Another name for them is banderillas (diminutive of bandera "flag"), in part because
some of them resemble the colorful spears used in bullfighting.
In Andalusia, tapas can be "upgraded" to bigger portions, equivalent to half a dish
(media ración) or a whole one (ración). This is generally more economical when a tapa is being
ordered by more than one person. The portions are usually shared by diners, and a meal made up of
raciones resembles a Chinese dim sum, Korean banchan or Middle Eastern mezze.(source:
wikipedia)
So why dont you start right now with our Easy Tapas Recipes and enjoy the fun?
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