Veggie Tapas

Spain isn't best known for it's vegetarian food and I should know as I was given meat in 'vegetarian' dishes twice in one year on two seperate holidays! But there are a few veggie tapas dishes that you can make at home to bring a touch of the holiday home. So here are three of my favourites:

All dishes serve 1:

Oilves and ‘Manchego’ cheese

I only really decided I liked olives in the second year of uni because of bad food envy and I didn't go on holiday last year so this was the first time I tried proper spanish olives in Spain. They were so good I ate them every day! Vegetarian manchego cheese is very hard to find, so if you can’t get it you can use another vegetarian nutty cheese such as Gruyere, Gouda or Emmental.

50g manzilla Olives

30g manchego cheese

Olive oil

Mixed herbs

This is an easy one, basically mix all the ingredients together and cover with as much olive oil as you want!

Paella

(Obviously this isn't one portion, I made it for my family too!)

I went through a bit of a paella addiction phase a while ago and ate it all the time! I think the fact that I still want to eat it a 400th time is a testament to how tasty it is! This recipe is really easy to make too, perfect student/late night dinner food.

Olive oil

¼ red pepper

½ onion

75g paella rice

4 tbsp dry white wine

250ml vegetable stock

¼ tsp turmeric

¼ tsp paprika

50g frozen peas

Lemon wedge to serve

Heat some olive oil in a pan, add the onion and pepper and soften for a few minutes then add the rice. Cook the rice until it starts to turn see through, cover with the white wine and let it absorb. Then add the stock and simmer for 15 minutes. Add the peas, turmeric and paprika and stir well then cook for another 5 minutes. Serve with lemon wedges.

Fried potatoes with ali oil

Ali oil is basically just garlic mayonnaise, if you want you can make it yourself but it's probably one of those things that is nicer from a jar (unless you are somehow super good at making it). I tried making it myself, and although it tasted okay it was really garlicy and I couldn't face eating it because I knew it was just made of egg yolk (egg is weird). Any way, I only just discovered ali oil and even better, I've just discovered that you can buy it in Morrisons (hoorah) so if you want a simple tapas dish this is all you need to do:

Take 4 baby potatoes per person and cut into rounds, heat oil in a pan until very hot and add the potatoes. Fry for around ten minutes until soft, then remove from pan and place on kitchen towel to absorb the oil. Put in a dish, cover with ali oil and enjoy!

Here's the ali oil recipe I used

P.s If you want vegan tapas you can marinate the olives with pepper, herbs ect and mix garlic with vegan mayo for the ali oil. The paella is already vegan!

Posted in: vegan, vegetarian