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Hi everyone, welcome to Potluck Food Talks.

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Today we're going to talk about tapas.

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Yeah, tapas.

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So what's the deal with tapas?

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What is the deal with tapas?

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What do you usually order when you go to a Spanish restaurant?

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So there's a few things that I can like safely say that if they're on a menu in a Spanish

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place, I will always, always order them, especially if it's the first time that I go there.

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Out of fail, if there are croquetas on the menu, I will order them.

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Especially the traditional ones, croquetas de jamón.

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What are croquetas de jamón?

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Croquetas de jamón, I mean, a very, very quintessential Spanish dish made from a bechamel

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base with jamón ibérico in a breadcrumb crust, you know, little fried balls.

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Yeah, it's basically a jamón bechamel, like in a crust.

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Yeah.

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I love croquetas as well.

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I think one of the best I've had, a little bit of stock was added instead of milk to

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the bechamel, like half half.

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Oh yeah.

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And also like there were brown on the inside, there was like super caramelized onions, even

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a little bit of tomato paste and Japanese soy sauce, which is completely non-traditional.

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What the fuck?

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So this was like pure Mami and it was amazing, man.

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It was really good.

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This sounds really good.

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Where was that?

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It was in Onigin in Berlin.

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Oh really?

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That sounds really good.

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Yeah.

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I mean, for me, it's like, it's a must have, you know, and it's probably also like, I will

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go to places that I know have good croquetas just to eat croquetas.

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You know, like if a place has really good croquetas, I'll be like, oh, we have to go

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there and then just order croquetas and have everything around it, you know?

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So yeah, that's definitely a must have.

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What I will probably also always order, especially the first time is a panto mate, which I mean,

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is one of the most simple Spanish tapas that you can order.

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Yeah.

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Literally just toasted pan cristal, Spanish white bread, kind of like a charvata, if you

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want a reference.

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Very crispy, very aerated, toasted.

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And then often, you know, you just take a tomato and you grate it on top of the bread

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and then season it with a bit of salt, a bit of olive oil and, you know, often a bit of

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garlic.

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And that's it.

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That's it.

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Because I've seen people making pan con tomate like in YouTube videos or whatever, and then

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they get super creative and add pepper to it or things that are not supposed to go there.

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This is the magic about it is that there are only four ingredients and that's it.

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I've said many times that I could easily have for my last supper a pan con tomate with jamón

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because this is one of those things that the ingredients talk for themselves.

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So if you have a super good bread, super good tomatoes, super good olive oil and a super

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good jamón pata negra, for instance, you don't need anything else.

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That's by the way, my favorite way of also eating a very good jamón.

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There are discussions about it.

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Some people prefer the same thing, but without the tomato, people that are more purists about

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the taste of the ham.

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I love it this way.

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I totally agree with you.

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It's one of the most delicious things that I can personally think of.

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It's one of the best things that I can think of eating and I totally agree with you.

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I think that sums up real Spanish cooking perfectly.

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It's all about the quality of the ingredients.

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It's completely ingredient focused.

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If you have good bread, good olive oil, really, really poor, good tomato, and then it's so

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simple and it's just not overdoing it.

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Then just a really, really well-made jamón on the side.

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For me, that's heaven, honestly.

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Jamón is also a thing that I will probably always order.

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I think that's it.

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I am also a big fan of anchovies, anchovies.

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Oh yeah.

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That's one of those things that you can really tell.

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First time I had anchovies, I didn't like them.

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You would get this super salty stuff on your pizza that was like, why are you doing this?

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But then when you try, especially the ones you find here in north of Spain, like the

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ones from the Cantaurico, these things are amazing and they don't need anything.

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You just put it on a plate with some olive oil and that's it.

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They speak for themselves.

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Absolutely.

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Yeah.

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For me, those are the must haves for sure.

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And I would say depending on the time of day, maybe, but also tortilla.

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Oh yeah, of course.

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We spoke about tortilla before, but it really shows you the quality of a place, how good

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the tortilla is.

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Also some good Spanish wines, like the most typical ones like Rioja or Rivera del Duero

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when it comes to reds or Verdejo when it comes to the whites or Albarino from Galicia, which

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is also super nice.

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Oh yeah.

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Chacolí, I mean, these kinds of things.

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Yeah.

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Albarino and Chacolí are two of my favorites for sure.

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They're definitely my go-to.

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And that kind of ties it together what the tapas culture actually is.

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You know, it's sort of like grabbing a bite on the go, you know, life on the streets,

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moving from one bar to another.

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Yeah.

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What about you?

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What are your go-tos?

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You know, here in San Sebastian, they call it pinchos instead of tapas.

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And it's its own thing, usually a little bit more elaborated.

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And as you know, what I do here is I go from one bar to the next and I know what's special

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about each specific place, which is the whole thing about doing this.

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But if I'm abroad and I go to a Spanish restaurant besides the one you said, Boquerones.

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Yeah.

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How do you say Boquerones in English?

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Boquerones.

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And toys.

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I mean, yeah, but like it's not really sardines, I guess.

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I know.

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Well, I guess it's...

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Large anchovies.

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Yeah, they're like anchovies, but not the ones brined or salted like the ones you find

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in cans.

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But fresh anchovies deep fried.

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And in general, fried fish, especially in the southern Spain and Andalusia, it's a thing.

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And the way the fish is fried, like Boquerones among them, but also calamari drinks and all

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these kinds of things.

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I think these are things that belong to Atapa's place.

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Same as the patatas bravas.

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It's also like a super classical.

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For sure.

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Also its own thing with its own discussions about what's the right or wrong way to do

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the patatas bravas.

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So what do you think is the right way?

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I'm curious because I'm not entirely sure myself.

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I mean, for me, it has to be like a super concentrated tomato sauce up to the point

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that it's almost sweet.

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But spicy or no spicy?

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Just a tiny bit because Spaniards in general don't like spiciness so much, but just a little

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bit, it's fine.

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And I think that that's the right point.

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And I also like, which is not the most traditional way, but it's also super common, alioli in

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my patatas bravas.

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Yeah, is it not the way to do alioli?

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Is it usually mayonnaise?

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No, no, no.

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It's usually only the brava sauce.

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I mean, the most traditional way.

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Oh really?

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Yeah.

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But I mean, half of the places add alioli to it almost always.

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Yeah.

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Because for me, it's like if I would order patatas bravas and it would come only with

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tomato sauce, I'd feel like they forgot to put the alioli on.

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For me, it's the mix of having the garlicky, fatty alioli and then the sweet, acidic, spicy

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tomato sauce that really makes it.

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And then of course, like really nicely fried potatoes.

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Yeah, exactly.

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And for me, the potatoes shouldn't be, they shouldn't have like too much color.

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It's also its own thing that like the way that potatoes are fried.

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They usually are pre-configured and then fried.

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And yeah, like if you see this potatoes fried until they're like orange, I think that's

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not the most common way to see them.

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Yeah.

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What else?

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Like, Padron peppers usually in other regions here in the Basque Country, you get Guernica

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peppers.

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I remember once I was working in a tapas restaurant in Berlin and I just by mistake said, ah,

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and this Guernica peppers.

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Sorry, I mean Padron peppers.

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And the owner was like, what did you just say?

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Guernica peppers.

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Oh, let's name it like that in the menu.

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That sounds so artistic.

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Like the painting from Picasso and I was like, you know that painting, that painting is about

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a Nazi bombing.

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You don't know what to, you know, it's, you should think about what you're saying.

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Padron peppers, this is also something really nice.

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They're just fried in oil with some coarse salt on top.

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And there is this saying that randomly one of every hundred, it's spicy and can be really

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spicy, but it's just like a lottery.

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You can get one or not, especially with the Padron ones.

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I used to love that as a kid.

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Always when we used to go to these sorts of places, we would order like one or two plates

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of Bimitrese Padron.

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And it was always super exciting to see who would get the spicy one because I really like

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spicy food and half of the rest of my family don't like spicy food.

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So it was always exciting to kind of see when you eat one and it's not spicy, eat another,

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it's not spicy.

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I feel like these days you don't really get any spicy ones anymore.

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Yeah, I think that you don't get good ones anymore as well.

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Like all these peppers, I think they are flavorless.

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Once you get like a broth and like with any ingredient, if you go to the source and try

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like the good ones where they're actually produced, it has no point of comparison.

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And that happens a lot.

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I mean, we just talked about pan con tomate.

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I mean, to make a super good pan con tomate, you need to have a super good tomato and super

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good olive oil and these kind of things.

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Yeah, for sure.

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What about, I mean, especially when we're talking about pinchos, what about gildas?

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Oh man, I love them.

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For me, when I go to a pincho tour, both with friends or because I'm guiding a tour, I always

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try to start with the gilda because well, a gilda is just a skewer with a pepper that

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is slightly spicy, but not so much.

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And as I said, Spaniards and Basque don't like spiciness so much, but a little bit is

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okay.

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So they harvest it before it's too sunny because the sun usually makes the peppers spicier.

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Then you have the anchovies and olives.

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That's it, just three ingredients.

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I think that's it, yeah.

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And the peppers are pickled.

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The peppers are pickled, exactly.

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So you have just everything in one bite and then you have a good drink of whatever you're

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drinking.

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It can be beer or a chacolis.

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And the combination is amazing.

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It's a great way to start.

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Yeah, it's iconic.

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For me, it's like Basque pinchos.

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It's the most iconic pincho, I think.

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Yeah, it was the first pincho that was made here in the Basque country because before

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that you would have whatever, olives or these kinds of things, non-elaborated, just an ingredient

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while you were drinking.

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And this was the sort of food that was served in bars before the 40s.

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And then there was this guy who was a regular client in a place called Bar of Vallès here

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in San Sebastian.

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And he would come and do this.

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He would take a skewer and take three different things, like an anchovy and olive and a pepper.

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And then he started, he would always do that until it became like a standard in that bar.

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And a few years later, this was during Franco times.

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And as you know, San Sebastian is just half an hour from the French border.

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So people would go to France and they were showing this Rita Haywood movie called Gilda.

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And the movie had like this kind of erotic scene where she would like undress her glove

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in a very sexy way.

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And this was the reason they started naming the pincho Gilda, which is the Spanish way

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of pronouncing Gilda.

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That's the story of it.

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Nowadays, it is such a standard that you find Gildas in the pickle section, almost in any

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supermarket in Spain.

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That's insane.

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Yeah, yeah.

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It's super, super iconic.

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I mean, what else?

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I think like things like morcilla and chistora, depending on the time of year.

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Ensaladilla, that's another one.

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Ensaladilla, yeah, which is a mustad, also something that I order all the time, the Spanish

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potato salad, which I mean in Spanish is called Ensaladilla rusa, which means Russian salad,

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which is really funny.

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Yeah.

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There are also other versions of Ensaladilla rusa, I think in Argentina, but it's its own

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thing, but it comes back to this Olivier salad, this kind of Mayonnaise potato salad that

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has many variations in many countries.

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But the one that is done in Spain is usually, well, you have some vegetables, you have like

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sweet peas and carrots and boiled egg, dices of potatoes, tuna, everything mixed and a

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lot of Mayonnaise.

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And sometimes you would get like anchovies on top or olives or these kinds of things

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as well.

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But the one I really liked, Elcano, this fish restaurant in Getaria, has like a smaller

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restaurant, I don't know if it's still open, that was called Elcano Chiqui and it was their

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pincho bars.

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And I had an Ensaladilla there and I'm sure they did someone with the brine of the olives,

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like they probably mixed the Mayonnaise with it or something, because you could really

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taste like this well-condimented briny flavor of olives all over the salad and it was amazing.

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That sounds delicious because I mean, like if you get sort of like average Ensaladillas,

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you know, they're kind of like a little bit under-seasoned.

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They're just kind of like potato and Mayonnaise, they don't really have enough salt, enough

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vinegar.

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So that, yeah, that sounds really, really good.

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What about the fish preserves that are quite common?

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Usually a lot of people think that when something is canned, it's bad.

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Something that is tinned that comes out of a can, but you get really high quality preserved

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seafood here in Spain, especially in the north.

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We talked about anchovies, but Bonito is very common, the one you put on the Ensaladilla.

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But also all kinds of clams and then this type of things.

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Yeah, mejillones, mussels especially, and like this really intense red oil, they're

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absolutely amazing.

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And it's just like you say, you know, like people, when people come from a sort of like

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food culture where canned food is, you know, like relatively poor quality, it's a little

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bit of a surprise to them to have something like seafood, which is already like a very

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fragile product put into cans and then just kind of opened and eating and eaten as it

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is, you know, like cooked mussels out of oil, straight out of oil.

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But you know, it's kind of like with tomatoes in Italy, really high quality canned tomatoes

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harvested at the peak of their ripeness and then sort of like preserved to preserve the

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like full flavor that they have in that moment, you know.

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And like you say, you know, things like ventresca de Bonito, which is, you know, the sort of

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penny part of tuna in, you know, high quality oil is a delicacy, you know.

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It's amazing.

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Yeah, that's probably one of the best ways of eating.

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Like the way people usually know tuna, that this is canned tuna, well, that's the best

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way to eat that kind of elaboration.

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Another one is pulpo afeira.

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Oh yeah.

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Traditional way to make pulpo in Galicia.

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And it's again, something so simple.

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The pulpo has to be cooked up until it's tender.

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Then you have potatoes, olive oil and paprika powder.

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That's it.

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Nothing else.

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Yeah.

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Just a few grains of salt and that's it.

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Yeah, exactly.

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It's always something like good olive oil, you know, and like that's it.

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But yeah, I mean, it usually gets cooked in these big copper pots, no?

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And again, it's fully ingredient driven and it's got all of these dishes, they have such

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a strong sense of terraria and region, you know.

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The local seafood, the pimiento from, you know, it's so quintessentially Spanish, right?

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And it's like so from there.

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That's why it's, you know, Spanish restaurants around the world, like there's just these

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key ingredients that you have to have.

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Otherwise it would be impossible, you know, because this like identity from like connecting

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food to the land and to the local identity is so incredibly strong.

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Yeah, that's again interesting because Spanish restaurants, like let's say you open a tapas

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bar in let's say New York, it will have elements from many different regions.

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When in Spain, that's not so common.

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You go to a tapas place and they have, they don't even think too much about it, you know.

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You will have like meatballs and you get just something while you're having a beer and are

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these traditional dishes and that's it.

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There's something very, very informal, very not, not, not non pretentious at all.

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While abroad, if you go to a Spanish restaurant, they have like the best of every region.

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Like you will have pulpo, something Catalan, something Basque, something Andalusian, something

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from the center of Spain.

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And yeah, I think that that's interesting as well.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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And I mean, it's impossible to think that you would open a Spanish restaurant anywhere

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and not have jamon on the menu, you know?

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Yeah, of course.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Yeah.

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A good platter of different cold cuts, not only jamon, also lomo, chorizo, ensina, these

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kind of things are really nice.

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Cool.

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That gives us another episode.

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That's it for this week's episode of Potluck Food Talks.

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