You got some Spainin' to do!

"A Spain in my neck"?
"Tapa the mornin' to ya, lass"?
"Basque in the sunshine"?

You know what's not silly? Our latest GCN adventure - Vamos a Espana!

During the planning stage, T-Bone thought about making his own mayonnaise for the rosemary aioli, but thought it a bit crazy. The day, BriGuy mentioned making their own butter. Ok, this thing is about to get serious. We need to buy a cow and some chickens to do it right. Next time!

Along with the food shown below, drunken goat cheese was served with the first round, along with Spanish olive oil and Fig balsamic vinegar and sliced baguette for dipping.

As with any celebration - Spanish or otherwise - wine is a given. The CMS is one our favorites and failed to falter for that evening (or any other):

T-Bone came up with this little ditty on the fly when out shopping - sliver of jalapeno & an anchovy fillet on top of a slice of jicama w/a drizzle of Spanish olive oil. For the adventurous eaters, the payoff was a nice little spicy/salty/crunchy reward:
The brushetta was a work of passion with multiple steps taken the night before. Toasted bread supported honey-baked portobellos, arugula, sauteed red onions, roasted red peppers:

All topped off with a drizzle of fresh rosemary aioli:
Well worth the effort:
For the turkey meatball tapa, BriGuy worked some magic with the red sauce. In his own words, he "opened can of Ragu, added dried oregano and dried parmesan cheese". We're about 90% that he's joking, but you never know with him. Actually, there were witnesses to their creation and no evidence of jarred sauce, so we're up to 95% now. We hear that fresh garlic, thyme, tumeric, scallions and manchego cheese were involved in the red sauce. As for the meatballs (after consulting the Godfather) a slice of bread soaked in cream was substituted for bread crumbs. This (aside from completely ignoring the red sauce instructions) was the only modification to the recipe. Amazing:

Classic Spanish tapas dish - Gambas al Ajillo, which either means "Where is the library?" or "Garlic Shrimp". The shrimp, fresh (non-frozen) and wild, flown in same-day from the Gulf, were acquired from the good guys at Fresh Fish Co. We used dry sherry instead of cognac, but either way, don't forget the baguette for sopping up the sauce:
Now what makes GCN as fun as it is (besides the wine, the company and the food) is the very real possibility of utter and complete failure of a dish. That and the possibility of losing a finger or two. Up until now, BriGuy and TBone have been extremely lucky in the delivery of complete dishes AND being able to count to 10 on their respective hands. Until now.

Senors and Senoritas, I present to you the first complete failure in GCN history - Tortilla Espanola - the Spanish potato omelet. The ironic part is this is a very simple dish to make - fry some potato slices, add some eggs, flip. The flip is where it all fell apart due to the stainless steel pan (note to the kids: use Teflon!):
Now for the next round (I think we were up to four now), it was the heavyweight bout - grilled scallops and marinated grilled flank steak.

These utterly beautiful scallops were procured from a fishmonger at Fresh Fish Co. They made us weep at first sight:
You don't mess with perfection, so a simple bamboo skewer, some sea salt and fresh ground pepper makes this:
Bit of olive oil and throw them on a hot grill for a very short period of time:
produces these plump, flavorful big beauties:
Served with fresh herb fusilli pasta featuring roasted fennel:

After marinating about half a cow over night in his own secret mixture and cooking the flank steak on the grill, BriGuy dragged the meat through a herbey resting butter:

Sliced up and served with blue cheese. The secret to handling blue cheese easily is freezing it, so it crumbles easy and doesn't melt or get mushy on you:
Even though all of us - BriGuy, TBone, SO, Anna Banana, MelPop, Syrah and CMS (not the wine) - were stuffed to the gills, there's always room for dessert. We just didn't know what was coming - cinnamon chocolate mousse with cherry-port sauce. AKA "the most delicious thing in the entire world".

Splitting and pitting a pound of fresh bing cherries, T-Bone add some fig preserves, ruby port and cinnamon and boiled for a bit:

Some homemade chocolate mousse later:
Marry the two together, add some whipped cream:
And a cherry on top!


This time we've compiled all the recipes used into a single document, as well as the shopping list we used to collect all the ingredients. A printable copy can be found here.