Some time ago my husband celebrated his 50th birthday. We had some family over to be part of the celebrations. But what to serve our guests?

Well as my husband really likes to spend time in the kitchen, he wanted to be in charge of the catering himself. We decided on a couple of tapas and today I will tell you the recipes of the tapas we made.

Meatballs and falafel with tomato sauce and tsasiki

Meatballs – Ingredients to serve 25:

2 kilo of minced meat (we always choose a mixture of pork and veal), 2 eggs, bread-crumbs (out of a packet), seasoning

Method:

• Mix the minced meat with the eggs and breadcrumbs (best way to do this is by hand).
• Season to taste. We like to add salt/pepper/paprika powder and curry powder.
• Make little balls (3 cm diameter).
• Melt some butter in a pan and add some olive oil.
• Cook the meatballs until brown on all sides and until cooked through.
• Don’t put up the heat too much are you’ll burn the meatballs!
• When you have to cook a lot of meatballs, do it in different batches, don’t overfill your cooking pan.

Falafel

We bought ready-made falafel for the vegetarians amongst our guests. Make sure to know how many vegetarians you’ll be serving for as to adjust the amount of falafel you buy.

As the falafel were ready-made, we just had to bake them in a pan, adding some salt and pepper. We served them with some parsley so it would be clear which balls were the meatballs and which ones the falafel!

Tsasiki – Ingredients to serve 10:

As we served several sauces with the meatballs, we made tsasiki for about 10 and we had plenty!

450 grams of Greek yoghurt, 2 cucumbers, 5 tablespoons of good olive oil, 2 cloves of garlic (crushed), juice of one lemon, 1 tablespoon of finely chopped mint

Method:

• Grate the cucumbers.
• Put the grated cucumber into a sieve, cover with 2 teaspoons of salt and let it leak for at least 5 minutes.
• Push as much liquid out of the grated cucumber as possible.
• Mix the cucumber with the greek yoghurt.
• Add the olive oil, the lemon juice and the crushed garlic.
• Season to taste: we just used a bit of salt, lots of black pepper and a tablespoon of finely chopped mint.

Tomato sauce – Ingredients to serve 10:

3 tins of chopped tomatoes, 2 fresh tomatoes, 1/2 red paprika, 2 stalks of celery, 1 large onion, 1 clove of garlic (crushed), 2 bay leafs, 2 sprigs of rosemary

Method:

• Fry the onion and garlic, add the paprika and the celery in olive oil until the vegetables are slightly brown.
• Add the tins of tomatoes and the chopped fresh tomatoes.
• Add the bay leafs and the rosemary.
• Cook until all vegetables are tender.
• Season (we added salt, pepper, paprika powder and curry powder) and blitz the sauce (take out the bay leafs and the rosemary before blitzing…).
• You could pass the sauce through a sieve (but we didn’t).
• We added some fresh parsley before serving.
• If you want the sauce to be spicier, you could add a couple of drops of tabasco.

Meatballs/falafel with tsasiki or tomato sauce is so good! Everyone likes it 🙂 You can serve this hot or cold. We served it cold, so we could make everything beforehand which made it easier on the evening itself!

Green asparagus with Serrano and aioli

Green asparagus with Serrano – Ingredients to serve 25:

1,5 kilo of green asparagus, 400 grams of Serrano (or Parma) in slices, olive oil, pepper

Method:

• Cut the lower third of the asparagus (don’t throw it away… it’s perfect to make some asparagus soup!).
• Put some good olive oil in a baking tray.
• Cover each asparagus in half a slice of Serrano and put them in the baking tray (next to eachother, not on top of eachother).
• Drizzle some more olive oil on top and season with black pepper (don’t add salt as the Serrano is quite salty on its own!).
• Put in the oven (200°C for about 10 minutes, depending on how thick the asparagus are, it might take a little longer).
• Serve while hot.

Aioli – Ingredients to serve 15:

5 cloves of garlic, juice of 1 lemon, 1 eggyolk, 250 ml of good olive oil, black pepper and a bit of salt

Method:

• Crush the garlic in a pestle and mortar.
• Mix the eggyolk with the crushed garlic.
• Let someone pour the olive oil in very slowly whilst you whisk the mixture.
• When you’ve added about half of the olive oil, mix in the lemon juice whilst whisking constantly.
• Season to taste.
• Then slowly add the remainder of the olive oil. Stop adding oil when you’ve got a good consistency. You might not need all the olive oil… or you might just need a tiny bit more…
• Before serving the aioli, we added a bit of chopped parsley.

You can prepare everything beforehand and just put the dish in the oven minutes before you want to serve it to your guests. This really was a winner, especially amongst the adults!

Camembert with bacon

Ingredients to serve 25:

750 gram of Camembert, 200 gram of sliced bacon, corn salad

Method:

• Slice the Camembert into small wedges.
• Bake the sliced bacon.
• Pour the bacon on top of the camembert and let it rest for a while to make sure the Camembert gets covered in the juices and melts a bit because of the heat of the bacon.
• Serve with the corn salad.

This is another very easy but very tasty dish! I love the combination of the Camembert with bacon! We served it with some corn salad to give it a fresh touch.

Mozarella/tomato tapa

Ingredients to serve 25:

3 cups of mozarella balls, 25 cherry tomatoes, 1 paprika (I used an orange one), basil, corn salad, black pepper

Method:

• put a piece of mozarella, a cherry tomato, a leaf of basil and a piece of paprika on a toothpick
• put it on some corn salad to serve
• season with black pepper
• sprinkle some parsely and extra virgen olive oil on top

This is yet another easy tapa to make. You can make one as an example and ask your kids to make the rest 🙂 As the mozarella dries out a bit, you can’t make this long beforehand!

Garlic mushrooms

Ingredients to serve 12:

900 grams of mushrooms, 10 tablespoons of olive oil, 4 gloves of garlic (finely chopped), 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice, 8 tablespoons of freshly chopped parsely, salt and pepper to taste

Method:

• clean the mushroom and chop them up into 2 or 4
• heat up the olive oil
• ad the chopped garlic and let it brown for about a minute or until light brown
• add the chopped mushrooms en cook them on a low heat (so they soak up all the olive oil out of the pan)
• turn the heat low and allow all fluids to evaporate
• add the lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste
• add the chopped parsely and let it all simmer for about a minute

I don’t like mushrooms myself, but I’ve heard that his is a really great dish 🙂

Chicken wings with sweet and sour sauce

Now this was the easiest dish… we just bought ready-made chicken wings that we heated up in the oven and poured some sweet and sour sauce in a bowl and hey presto… done! This was a favourite amongst the youngsters 🙂

These tapas were meant as a snack and we served them with a variety of bread. If you want to make an entire meal, I’d add a couple more tapas like: patatas bravas, another veggie dish and some fish as well.

Do you like to eat tapas? Which ones are your favourites? Tell me in the comments!

Love, Kathleen