Tapas

Tomorrow 4701 and I will go to a small luchparty. The theme of the luch will be tapas and everyone will bring something. Funny how in english that is called a dutch party while here in Holland it is referred to as an american party!

Anyway, I love every opportunity to cook something more exciting than familydinner so today I went al Nigella and prepared four different dishes.

The secret to cooking in a kitchen as tiny as ours is to keep the dishwasher open on one side and a bag for garbage on the other side of the kitchen. You can also keep the garbagecan open if you like but I prefer not to smell diapers or yesterdays dinner while cooking!

So, a fresh plastic bag and an open dishwasher. That way you can clean stuff up right after using it thus keeping a tiy workspace.
I actually had to giggle while writing "tidy workspace" since at the moment the kitchencounter is probably the only tidy place in this household....*sigh*

The first thing I made were small tartelettes with red onion, chilli, pinenuts and pesto. The spicy chilli give quite a nice contrast in flavour and colour to the sweet purple onions.

Oniontartelettes:

8 sheets of thawed puff pastry
200g red onions, chopped up
1 red chillipepper, chopped into fine rings, I like to keep the seeds in to add tiny bits of hotness in the sweet onions but you can ofcourse remove the seeds
2 tablespoons red pesto
25g pinenuts

preheat the oven to 220 celcius

Gently simmer the onions and the pepper until they are soft but not brown. Add some salt.

cut the sheets of puffpastry in four, creating 32 small squares of pastry.
Using a cookiecutter or a glass, cut circles out of half of the squares. Discard the cut out circles (or use them to make lovely crackers with a bit of salt, cheese or herbs on them) and put the pieces with a hole in them on top of the other squaresm creating 16 small pastry cups.

Fill with a bitt of pesto, a spoonfull of the onions and a sprinkle of pinenuts.
Bake for 15 minutes or until the pastry is golden.


The second dish also involves puffpastry.

Chorizopuffs

preheat the oven to 220 celcius

12 sheets of thawed puff pastry
250g chorizo
250g pistachio nuts
2 eggs

finely chop up and mix the chorizo and the nuts.
Whisk the eggs and keep a small bit seperate. Mix the eggs into the chorizomixture.

Lay out the sheets of pastry and put small rolls of the chorizomixture in the middle of the sheets. Brush the edges with the egg, fold in half and brush some egg on top as well.

You can use some left over pastry to decorate, I used a cookiecutter (or actually a fondantcutter) to put tiny ivyleaves on top of the puffs.

Bake for 15 minutes or until golden.

The third dish is such a fast, small but delicious dish... I cannot make this without tasting way too much right after baking.

Baconwrapped dates filled with cream cheese

1 pound sliced bacon, cut in half
1 pound pitted dates
4 ounces cream cheese

Fill the dates with cream cheese, I used a pipingbag.
Wrap them in the bacon and bake in a pan until the bacon is crisp.
I bet blue cheese would be nice as well!


The last thing I'm bringing to the party tomorrow is a batch of Chocolate Chili Bites. I got the recipe from Chocolate & Zucchini but I added quite a bit more chilli. I love the little hot kick that comes after the bittersweet chocolate.