Tapas Extravaganza

My food photography has been feeling very neglected lately.  Which is a shame because a) food photography is one of my first loves and b) the weather and light is perfect right now for taking glorious and delicious pictures.  Kirsten to the rescue!  After her trip to Spain a couple weeks ago, she called me up and *asked* if she could bring all the supplies to make a crap ton of tapas with me.

Uh, yes.  Thank God for a friend who not only shares my love of pretty food but also my love of taking pictures of it.  So not only did we have a great day in the kitchen cooking together, but we photographed to our hearts' content with no husbands harrumphing in the background!  

And it was so delicious!  So so delicious.  These are gorgeous boiled eggs with sauteed red peppers, capers, and dill.  

And here we have a really cool traditional Spanish tortilla.  Yes, it's called a tortilla.  No it's not what we think when we say tortilla.  Kirsten also studied abroad in Spain a few years back and this is a dish that her house mom used to make for them.  It's basically a potato-chorizo-cheese omlet... in a skillet.  Topped with mayo.  And the leftovers are even better than the original!  This was so good I'm going to make it as a meal sometime.  YUM.

Stuffed cherry tomatoes!  They were filled with black olives and capers... with a lemon garlic aioli.  So so good!  We were talking while we cooked/photographed/munched about why tapas are so popular in Spain and wouldn't you know K's tapas cookbook has a whole little intro section about it?

Fun fact: tapas came about because it's so dang hot in Spain that the restaurants try to minimize the amount of time they're cooking in the heat of the day.  So people would get drinks in the late afternoon as well as a few appetizers (tapas) to tide them over until dinner... which isn't usually until 9pm!  I think it was literally that people would order a drink and the bar would top it with a piece of bread to keep the flies out (the word tapa means lid or cover!) and then things got more elaborate with some meat and cheese or something on top of the bread.  In the end, tapas became so popular that when we went to Barcelona we almost couldn't find a non-tapas restaurant.  Not that we're complaining.  They love to just make delicious meals out of a variety of tapas... a delicious mix and match game. Mmmmm.

So Kirsten spent hours in her own kitchen the night before prepping all this stuff... making the chorizo empanadas and crab tartlets ahead of time.  All I really contributed was good company and a pineapple salad with mint and lime. 

It was so nice to be busy in the kitchen with a friend.  It's been awhile since I really cooked because when the weather gets hot I just want a big salad with some sliced meat and cheese or something easy.  But we had so much fun cooking... and drinking Tinto de Verano (summer wine) while we caught up on each other's happenings.

While we were plating and photographing the food, I caught Lily "taking pickers" too.  I love that they use the binoculars as a camera, even though they have a pink camera!  Super cute.  They also ate or at least tried everything on their plate.

Perhaps they didn't enjoy the pretty-factor and much as Kirsten and I, but all four of us still had fun!  K and I ate so much we had food babies, but it was well worth it!

Anyone else cooking up any summer goodies lately?  Let me know, I could use more inspiration!