Spanish tapas

So I have arrived in Spain for some sun, sea, sand and of course a foodie adventure!

After having my bag lost by the airline and waiting around for it (for 48 hours!), I was finally able to go out and taste some real Spanish food. I am staying in a small coastal town in La Herradura, Costa Tropical, Granada. It’s a holiday destination for Spanish people with only a handful of foreign tourists dotted around. This means the food around here is authentic (no Sunday roasts or English breakfasts up and down the strip) and it’s great value! Being a holiday town the beach front has plenty of restaurants to choose from. With such variety I followed my instinct (like most of you would) and went for a Spanish tapas bar bustling with locals.

Taking my seat in the sun I ordered ‘dos cervezas’, that's 2 beers to you, so my partner and I could refresh ourselves after a walk along the beach, and with the beers came a plate of fried anchovies with crumbly cornmeal which had been fried what appeared a small amount of white beans and garlic. It was both an interesting and delicious little dish with those salty little anchovies seasoning the cornmeal perfectly, the textures working together beautifully and it helped the beer go down too :)

Next up was ham and cheese croquettes, crispy on the outside and warm, gooey, meaty cheesiness on the inside. I love these things as they are such a great snack, and it’s one of those styles of food which is so tasty you can find variations of it all over the world. For example remove the cheese and you could easily find this in Chinese dim sum or on a plate of Indian pakora. I could eat plates and plates of these but unfortunately I think that wouldn't do my beach toned body much good...

Tapa’s most famous dish is probably potatas bravas so this had to be ordered. I love making this dish and think I have it perfected (so will be sharing the recipe with you soon!), this restaurant version had a base made from what tasted like bottled crushed tomato sauce flecked with insanely hot chillies. These chillies weren’t like the ones back home but had a very peppery flavour (like eating black pepper) but with the heat of birds eye chillies. I think your going to like mine better ;)

We then got a plate of octopus thinly sliced with matching potato doused in olive oil with a generous sprinkling of paprika. The octopus was served cold but it had been cooked to perfection, soft, rich and wonderful. Not much more to say about this simple dish except that I could eat it all day! Finally we had a small plate of hard Spanish cheese slices soaked in olive oil with crouton like little slice of bread. It gave us a nice sharp cheesy finish to our lunch.

Small plates they may have been but they were certainly filling. Or maybe I was feeling full due to the blazing sun, the 30C heat or..ummmm…perhaps all those beers had something to do with it too… Now I know why the Spanish have a siesta, I’m going for a lie down… Please tell us about your experiences of tapas on the Costas in the comments below or share this with your Spanish food loving friends! Michael Robinson