Tapas with olives, goat cheese, white mushrooms and roasted almonds

 For the night at our friend's house I also made some tapas.

Unfortunately I couldn't bring most of them with me
since the ones that get marinated have to steep for several hours or days
to unfold their full flavour.

Making tapas is a lot of fun. 

Not only do they taste good and round up a nice summer meal.

The ingredients for tapas are cheap, the food is easy to prepare, looks pretty good and,
when marinated and filled in glasses, makes nice presents for your family and friends.

People are usually pretty impressed by it and homemade tapas taste so much better
then the ones you buy in grocery stores.

Just make sure to get some (small) preserving jars 

for marinating your tapas  in for a few days.

 You will see the preparations are really simple and go quickly.

All you need is the right ingredients and some patience...

Marinated olives

½ tsp coriander seeds

½ tsp fennel seeds

1tsp fresh rosemary leaves, chopped

2 tsp fresh parsley, chopped

2 garlic cloves, smashed or finely chopped

1 tbsp sherry vinegar

230g olives (you can mix black and green olives together)

2 tbsp olive oil 

In a mortar grind up the coriander and fennel seeds.

Mix in the chopped rosemary leaves and parsley, garlic, vinegar and olive oil and mix well.

Pour the mixture over the olives and let it marinate for up to one week.

You might need more oil to cover the olives in the jar.

Marinated goat cheese

150g soft goat cheese (like brie)

6 tbsp olive oil 

1 tbsp whit wine vinegar

1 tsp black pepper corns

1 garlic clove, cut in slices

3 tarragon or thyme twigs (or both...)

Cut the cheese into bite-sized pieces/cubes.

Mix olive oil, vinegar, pepper corns, garlic and herbs together 

and pour the mixture over the cheese.

Let the cheese marinate up to 3 days.

Again you might need more olive oil to cover the cheese bits in the jar.

Marinated white mushrooms

2 tbsp olive oil

1 small onion, finely chopped

1 garlic clove smashed or finely chopped

1 tbsp tomato purrée

50 ml white wine

2 cloves

1 pinch of saffron stigmas

225g white mushrooms

50 ml water 

salt 

black pepper

Heat up the olive oil in a pan. 

Add onion and garlic and on medium heat cook them until soft.

Then add tomato purrée, wine, water, cloves and saffron 

and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Bring to a boil, cover it and let it simmer for 45 minutes.

You might need to add more water in between.

Add the mushrooms to the sauce, cover it up again and let it steep for another 5 minutes.

Have it cool down a bit before letting it cool down completely 

and steep in the refrigerator overnight.

Serve cold.

PS: I added more water to the sauce and ended up having much more sauce than mushrooms. Since the taste of the sauce is pretty strong, especially after adding salt, 

I would recommend to use more mushrooms. 

Rather 300-350g.

Roasted almonds

¼ tsp cayenne pepper

2 tbsp coarse sea salt / sea salt flakes

2 tbsp butter

4 tbsp olive oil

200g blanched almonds

Mix salt and cayenne pepper in a bowl.

In a pan heat up butter and olive oil.

Add the almonds and slowly let them roast for about 5 minutes or until golden brown.

Pour the almonds into the salt and cayenne mix (in order to avoid pouring all the surplus butter/oil into the salt mix, you might wanna strain them).

Turn almonds in the salt-cayenne mix until they are evenly coated.

Let them cool down.

Beer and Honey marinated Pork roast stuffed with figs, olives, almonds and pine nuts

What you need:
900g pork back, de-boned
1 bottle of beer
1-1,5 Tbsp honey
3 Tbsp olive oil
1onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
90g bread cubes
4 dried figs, chopped
8 green olives, pitted and chopped
25g flaked almonds, roasted
25g pine nuts, roasted
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp fresh chopped parsley
1 egg yolk
salt, pepper

Preheat oven to 200°C
Mix beer and honey in a bowl.
Place pork back in the bowl so that the meat is covered with the beer honey mix.
Marinate for 4 hours.
Heat up two Tbsp of olive oil in a pot and cook onions and garlic in it until soft.
Mix onions and garlic with bread cubes, figs, olives almonds, pine nuts, parsley, lime juice and egg yolk.
Use your hands for that!
Season with salt and pepper.

Spread half of the stuffing on flat inside part of the pork back.
Roll up the pork back starting with the thick part.
Use butcher´s string to wrap the pork roll.
Pour one Tbsp of olive oil in a roasting tray.
Place the meat in it and pour a bit (100ml) of the beer-honey mix over it.
Cook for 60 minutes.
Take the other half of the stuffing and form little balls/dumplings.
Place the balls/dumplings next to the pork roast in the tray and cook or another 15 minutes.
Take the roast out of the oven and let it rest for ten minutes.
Slice the pork roast and serve it with the balls/dumplings and the beer-honey sauce from the tray.

My pork roast turned out to be a bit too dry.
Unfortunately pork tempts to do that...
This is what you can do to prevent the meat from drying out:

1. Take meat with enough fat. Fat makes meat tender. So don't shy away from fatty meat.You want your roast to taste good, right? Some fat (we are not talking about thick layers or chunks of fat, just some "fat leftovers"!) will help making the meat soft and juicy.
2. Marinate!The longer the better!
3. use a roasting tray with a lid. In Germany we have something called "Römertopf", a clay pot that you soak in water for ten minutes before using it. The water evaporates in the closed pot keeping the meat moist.
4. slow-cook! 200°C is too hot in my opinion.Take your time and cook it slow using 80-120°C. That takes longer (probably 3 to 4 hours). But it's for the best, believe me!And it will prevent you from having dried out meat, like I had (I should have known better...). Also if you slow-cook you can use less fatty meat! whoa.