Today on May 8th, we took a “Tapas” cooking class! I have really been looking forward to this class! As I have grown up with my mom who is a great cook, I was excited to share this experience with her!
We started off the class by learning some history of Tapas! When the civil war ended in Spain Francisco Franco ordered any tavern owner to offer free tapas when people who came in would buy drinks. This preventing the country from hunger, which they were heading towards after shortage of food after the civil war. In 1978 the Royal Academy of Spanish Language recognized tapas as a word for a small shareable dish that you have with drinks. The main drinks accompanied with tapas is beer, wine, cider, and vermouth. Vermouth is a fortified wine that is very common in Spain.
The class was split up into six groups and we all made different tapas. We made Montadito of Tuna-stuffed piquillo peppers, stuffed eggs, tortilla de patatas, pan come tomate, gazpacho, and calamares fritos a la Andaluza. My group made Gazpacho. Gazpacho is traditionally a dish from Andalusia, where olive oil and vegetables are abundant, and summers are very dry and hot. However, the origins of gazpacho as a desmigado dish, is prior to the use of vegetables in its preparation and dates back to the era of al Andalus.
Ingredients: ripe tomatoes, cucumber, peppers, onion, garlic clove, day old bread, oil, vinegar, and salt.
We started to make our gazpacho by cutting all the fruits and vegetables into small pieces and then putting it into the blender. When it was blended enough we strained it and added in salt, oil, and vinegar. Sophia, Katie, Jessie, and I had so much fun!
At the end of our cooking, we had a presentation of all the tapas. This was so fun to see everyone’s tapas and the experience they had from the cooking class.
