Important question: if you could only have one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be? Although I’m a die hard pizza enthusiast, I would definitely choose what my Mum refers to as ‘pic and tec’ – a buffet of lots of yummy foods to pick at. I am a massive tapas lover – give me a spread of cheese, bread, olives and cured meats and I’m definitely in my happy place. I love having tapas for lunch at the weekends as we’ll often have a big brunch around 11am, and so by mid-afternoon I just want a leisurely, light meal.
The most important ingredients for a weekend tapas spread are olives, warm bread, olive oil, chorizo, parma ham, and several different cheeses. Today we had a lunch courtesy of Olive It, who sent us an array of Spanish treats to enjoy. We coupled the Aceitunas olives, manchego cheese and chorizo with Carbonell olive oil and balsamic vinegar and warm corn bread (we cheated with the corn bread a bit as it’s more American than Spanish, but we had one in the freezer and I thought it would make a great accompaniment (it did).
We enjoyed a glass of red wine, dipped the bread in oil and balsamic vinegar, nibbled on the creamy manchego cheese and munched on the chopped chorizo, which had a slight chilli kick to it – delicious. The highlights were definitely the olives though, not too salty, not too sweet, but just right – and with a lot of flavour.
Olive it also produce various recipes to inspire people to embrace using olives in their cooking (I don’t need any convincing, I am a total olive addict) – their latest recipe is mussels cooked in a green olive, serrano ham and white wine sauce – yum.
Are you a lover of tapas? What’s your favourite lazy weekend lunch?