Mi tarde de tapas y de tostas…

… Lots of tinto del verano even though it’s hardly summer and lots more cocktails! But I’ve still got the Spanish/Madrid bug in me.

I woke up at about 9 today, a whole hour after I had intended to get up. And spent the next 5 hours in the kitchen cooking! I made salmon and potato balls, chorizo in red wine, fried calamari, garlicky stewed chicken, meatballs in homemade (well, everything’s homemade, right?) tomato sauce, Spanish omelette; Jayna bought no-cook chorizo and parma ham.

This was my first attempt at cooking Spanish. It probably would have been faster if I hadn’t had to check my cookbook once every few minutes. I never thought I’d be able to make fried calamari [well] but it was really very easy. I’m going to do it again soon as I’ve still got the seasoned flour.

I do have a few regrets for today. The biggest was that I was so flustered that I didn’t whip out the camera in time to take some photos of the spread. And I didn’t get to cook a couple of the dishes that I had bought ingredients for because I didn’t have time (prawns in garlic) and I’d forgotten to marinate the meat before (marinated lamb with pineapple). But we polished everything off with just a tad leftover for brunch tomorrow and are very happy troopers.

Updated 1 Jan 2010 with photos from my G1/Nokton, photos taken by Jayna.