Spanish Food

As my blog reader, you know that I love the Spanish food of Tapas. I am enamored with how you can create beautiful small plates with such simple ingredients. So, I decided to share with you some of those yummy ingredients that you can easily get by going to your local specialty market or by visiting my favorite place online for buying GREAT Spanish food, La Tienda.

Here’s a list of some delicious ingredients. Then visit my Tapas Small Plates page to get some great ideas for Tapas. Enjoy!

Jamón Serrano or Serrano Ham is the famous dry-cured ham of Spain, with Jamón Ibérico the king of Serrano hams. Depending on the recipe, its easy to replace with bacon, or your local ham – such as York ham or Virginia ham.

Chorizo is Spain´s spicy sausage. Other Spanish sausages include Morcilla, made from blood and similar to English black pudding, and Butifarra – a white sausage made from pork, tripe, and pine-nuts. If you can’t find it, you can always replace with a spicy sausage, black pudding, or white sausage from your
own country.

Piquillo Peppers – are small, pointed red peppers from the region of Navarre, which are canned and sold throughout Spain. Replace with canned, ordinary red peppers, or roast a fresh red pepper yourself.

Saffron – is derived from a certain strain of crocus, and used to flavor and bestow that golden-yellow color to dishes.

Cheese – Spain has numerous regional artisan cheeses and, when a certain one is specified, a description of its type follows in brackets, [hard, soft, blue, etc.] Use your local equivalent.

It’s great if you can use authentic ingredients from Spain for your Tapas and cooking Spanish foods, but if not, then use the equivalent. It’s all good!