Saturday Night Tapas

Whenever I decide to host a dinner party, I spend hours thinking about the perfect menu. This involves flipping through cookbooks and stacks of food magazines and looking through foodgawker. It's not just about what I want to eat, and what I think my guests will like, it's about trying new things and experimenting.

So when my family came over last Saturday evening, I decided on tapas. A little of this, a little of that...it's easy to please everyone and it furthers my skill in readying many dishes at once. For this meal, we started with gruyere and chive gourgeres, which I adapted from this recipe. Served with a garlic lemon chutney that I'd gotten while in New Zealand, they were cheesy and light and a great start to the meal.

I always like to have some sort of clams or mussels for tapas, so I opted for Ina Garten's Grilled Clams with Basil Breadcrumbs. I made a few changes, however: I used Manila clams, and just sauteed in a pan until they opened, and skipped the melted butter in the breadcrumb mixture (the olive oil is quite enough). And instead of jarred sundried tomatoes, I used vacuumed-packed, no-oil sundried tomatoes, which were just as good without the extra oil.

Another dish was the Black Eye Peas with Chorizo and Chimichurri, though I used linguisa instead of chorizo. I love black eye peas; they remind me of my childhood in Arkansas. The chimichurri was a combination of olive oil, piquillo peppers (get them at Williams Sonoma), paprika, garlic and sherry vinegar and struck a nice, tangy balance to the rich sausage.

Every tapas menu should have one vegetable dish, even though it's tempting to feast on nothing but cheese and meat! I made an old favorite of blanched haricot verts tossed in a lemon juice/olive oil/anchovy paste dressing and topped with thinly sliced manchego cheese and cherry tomatoes.

This final savory dish was supposed to be octopus with paprika oil, but I had a bit of a disaster with the octopus, so I opted for shrimp at the last minute. It's so simple: just bake the peeled and deveined shrimp in a pre-heated 400 degree oven for 6 minutes. Drizzle with paprika oil and garlic chips (to make, put 1/2 teas. of smoked paprika, 1/2 teaspoon of sweet paprika, 1/4 cup olive oil and thinly sliced garlic into a pan - cook over low heat until garlic crisps; remove garlic and strain oil through a paper towel to remove paprika sediment) and a touch of sea salt and you've got a truly authentic Spanish tapas dish in minutes.

For dessert, I went with something I have been wanting to bake for a very long time: Japanese cheesecake. It's super light and fluffy, with the texture of a slightly-dense angel food cake. I topped it with some blackberry coulis that I made with frozen blackberries and sugar. A light but decadent way to end the meal.