How Do You Define Tapas?
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How Do You Define Tapas?
Or maybe let's not define it.
I was happy to see José Andres recently declare “U.S. Tapas Week” in his newsletter. I like thinking about tapas.
Several years ago, Spain’s Royal Academy of Gastronomy announced that the country’s Ministry of Culture would seek protective status for tapas. This protection would come by way of UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List, which aims to safeguard “traditions or living expressions” of cultural knowledge, practices, and skills. Flamenco, for instance, is already listed. So is the violinmaking of Cremona, Italy, Chinese shadow puppetry, Estonian smoke saunas, Slovakian bagpipe culture, and the Mongolian coaxing ritual for camels.
Traditional foodways only make up a small part of UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list—Croatian gingerbread, Armenian lavash bread, cuisine from the Mexican state Michoacán, and the vaguely-worded “Gastronomic meal of the French” are all protected. But more and more regions have pushed to list and protect their own traditional foods. Naples pizza makers, for instance, aggressively lobbied for Neopolitan pizzaiuolo to make the UNESCO list.
“Tapas are the very model of food,” Rafael Ansón, the Spanish Royal Academy of Gastronomy’s president said during the lobbying push, insisting that tapas represents not a specific dish, but a “way of eating” and a living cultural practice that deserves preservation.
Now, I’m all for safeguarding fragile practices and traditions, but this one always sounded like a bad idea. Of all the world’s food, it would seem tapas does not want or need to be protected. What makes tapas great is that it’s so open-source and open-ended, ready to be adapted by any culture.
Thinking about tapas also makes me think about one of my strangest trips. A decade ago, I was invited to be a judge at Spain’s national tapas competition, the Concurso Nacional de Pinchos y Tapas, in Valladolid. This invitation came as a surprise. Surely, in my time, I’d enthusiastically sampled quite a lot of tapas all over Spain, and had written about it.
Tapas, as I saw it, was more of an accompaniment to the wine or beer or spirit and not the other way around—the opposite of how food and drink is usually paired. Still, I was no expert, not even close. And I didn’t even really speak Spanish very well (or, like, at all).
Regardless, I arrived in Valladolid and was whisked on stage in the city’s fluorescent Millenium Dome, being fed more than dozen tapas in front of television cameras, announcing to the viewing public that the plates in front of me were “muy bueno!” and scribbling my opinions down on very official score sheets. My panel was specifically judging the dishes of culinary students from around the world, from as close as neighboring Portugal to as far away as South Korea. Student chefs from Israel, Turkey, Sweden, Italy, Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. sent out their best interpretations of tapas. As the plates arrived one by one, the bubbly television host boasted about how wonderful it was that tapas had become so “international” and that it was “Spain’s great culinary gift to the world.”
Among the judges, there was much solemn discussion over what defined tapas. There was general agreement that it should be eaten in one or two bites, and it should not require a utensil beyond toothpicks or fingers. “Would I eat this standing up?” one judge asked. When a young chef served us a delicious poached fish in a soupy broth, served in a bowl, to be eaten with a spoon, the judge next to me pushed it aside and declared, “This is not a tapa.”
One of the key categories was “Productos,” with an asterisk explaining that this meant we were to judge the use of “products and ingredients typical of Spanish gastronomy.” Apparently, there had a been vigorous debate at the prior year’s Concurso, when a member of the Royal Academy of Gastronomy had vehemently insisted, “Tapas must be prepared using Spanish products!”
The winner was a woman from Seattle whose decidedly non-Spanish tapas, “Delicias del pacifico” was a skewered trio of cured fish and potato spheres that invoked the flavors of the Pacific Northwest. She’d used bacalao, but a few Spanish eyebrows were raised.
After I returned from my experience as a tapas judge, I became hyper-aware of how the word “tapas” was used at home. And to be honest, I also became little insufferable about it. There are really good places to eat tapas in America, even in somewhat unlikely places, such as Morcilla in Pittsburgh or Malagón in Charleston.
Mostly though, the word “tapas” in the U.S. has simply become a synonym for “small plates,” which years ago became our dominant form of popular dining. These days, “small plates” or “tapas” is often just the most efficient way for a restaurant to turn the table in less than an hour and extract $200+ from you. But real tapas are more than just small plates, and perhaps the Spanish Royal Academy of Gastronomy was fed up with this sort of misappropriation.
Once upon a time, I actually got to speak about tapas with Jose Andrés himself, who for decades has been the premier tapas advocate in the U.S. At our lunchtime meeting at Jaleo, Andrés told me, “UNESCO can try to protect everything, but at the end of the day, what tapas has become doesn’t necessarily reflect what tapas is in Spain. But, you know, Spain as a whole is also still in need of defining itself, too.”
It’s odd to think about how recent a phenomenon that tapas really is for Americans. When Andrés opened his first Jaleo in 1993, the word was still relatively unknown, though interest in all things Spanish was growing after the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. “Tapas has been a trojan horse, bringing Spanish cooking into the mainstream,” he said.
As he and I talked, Andrés really tried to get at the heart the philosophical question of “what is tapas?” He took a few stabs at coming up with a suitable answer. “What is the box where tapas lives? How do you define it? If you ask 50 million Spaniards, they will give you 50 million definitions,” he said. “Is tapas a whole bunch of dishes, or a way of enjoying life? I would say both.”
While we talked, we were served plates of Iberico ham, tinned fish, croquetas de pollo, razor clams, garlic shrimp, and ensaladilla rusa (the so-called “Russian salad”) with potatoes, tuna, aioli, and trout roe. At one point, Andrés proposed what called The 20-Inch Rule. “If you put it here”—pushing the ensaladilla rusa to the middle of the table—“it’s tapas. If you put it here” — pushing it in front of himself—“I’m now not sharing. So that’s not tapas.”
Then suddenly he said, “Let’s not sit down. Come with me.” And he took the plates to the bar. He cleared out all the chairs at one end of the bar and then we stood talking facing one another. “Ok, my friend,” he said. “This is tapas. This is the spirit of tapas anyway. The informality of the moment, sharing the same plate.”
He talked about tapas being “a commitment of people, being together, going from place to place, sharing experience.” That, in the end, may be the part of tapas that’s hardest to capture at home. In Spain, you rarely stop at one spot for an entire evening of tapas. Spanish cities boast a mass of bars with lots of different house specialties, and the tradition of the tapeo (or tapas crawl) is about crowds, movement, eating standing up, and being so casual that you often just toss your toothpicks and napkins on the ground when you're finished.
Andrés took a toothpick in his hand. “To make people eat with a toothpick. Now, that’s cultural,” he said. “In the U.S., in the end, they all want to sit. It’s cultural. Sometimes you try not to fight certain cultural things.”
So can dishes prepared by a home cook ever be called “tapas” or must tapas always be served in bar? That, again, is very hard to say—outside of the basic rules of being one or two bites that can be eaten standing up with toothpicks or fingers. In the end, it probably boils down to whether or not you use Spanish ingredients.
With that in mind, the three tapas recipes from Andrés that I choose include here are purposefully vague. The recipes call for some Spanish ingredients—piquillo peppers, chistorra sausage, membrillo—but is a stuffed pepper or “pigs-in-a-blanket” specifically “Spanish”? A nectarine is decidedly American produce, but if you put a Spanish anchovy on it, does it become a tapa?
Even though, once upon a time, I served as a tapas judge, I have no idea how to answer that question. And no one else, apparently, does either.
A Trio of E-Z Tapas To Try At Home
These are adapted from José Andres’ book, Made in Spain: Spanish Dishes for the American Kitchen.
Grilled Nectarines with Anchovies
Nectarines and anchovies sound like an odd flavor pairing, but they actually taste amazing together, especially with this dressing. You can also use boquerones, which are anchovies marinated in vinegar—or experiment with any type of tinned fish and stone fruit combo. Note: The dressing—calling for slightly sweeter, full-bodied Pedro Ximénez vinegar—is the same one used in the stuffed piquillo pepper recipe below.
For the dressing:
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon Pedro Ximénez sherry vinegar
2 tablespoons shallot, minced
2 scallions (white part only) thinly sliced
Salt and pepper
For the nectarines:
Ripe nectarines
Baby arugula
Anchovy filets
Toothpicks
For the dressing, whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, shallots, and scallions, seasoned with salt and pepper. Set aside.
Halve and pit the nectarines and grill them, face down, on medium-high heat, for 4 to 6 minutes until carmelized. Allow them to cool, then slice the halves into quarters.
Arrange nectarine quarters on a serving plate. Top each quarter with 2 to 3 baby arugula leaves and half of an anchovy filet, and secure with a toothpick. Drizzle dressing over the bundles and serve immediately.
Seared Piquillo Peppers Stuffed With Cheese
Jarred piquillo peppers can be found pretty widely at this point, from Trader Joe’s to higher-end specialty retailers. There are a lot of recipes that call for piquillo peppers to be stuffed with soft goat cheese, but Jose Andrés suggest the harder sheep’s milk cheese Roncal. Other Spanish cheeses such as Mahón or Manchego also work well.
For the dressing:
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon Pedro Ximenez sherry vinegar
1 shallot, minced
2 scallions (white part only) thinly sliced
Salt and pepper
For the stuffed peppers:
Olive oil
Piquillo peppers
Roncal/Mahón/Manchego cheese, cut into 2-inch sticks
Fresh thyme
Fresh parsley, chopped
For the dressing, whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, shallots, and scallions, seasoned with salt and pepper. Set aside.
Slide a stick of cheese into each piquillo pepper (they usually come sliced but obviously cut the top off if they’re whole).
Heat the remaining olive oil in a medium pot over high heat. Add the peppers and brown on both sides until the cheese begins to melt, about 30-60 seconds. Transfer the peppers to a plate, drizzle with the dressing and sprinkle with thyme and parsley, and serve immediately.
Chistorra Potato Wraps With Membrillo Aioli
These Spanish-inflected “pigs-in-a-blanket” will be the greatest rendition you’ve ever tasted. Chistorra are long, skinny, slightly spicy, Basque-style chorizo, which you’ll wrap in crispy potatoes and dip in the quince-paste aioli. You can also cut standard-size cured chorizo links lengthwise into quarters to achieve the effect needed here.
For the membrillo aioli:
1 large egg
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove, peeled
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
½ cup vegetable oil
Salt to taste
6 ounces membrillo (quince paste)
Break the egg into a small mixing bowl. Add 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, the garlic clove, and the lemon juice.
Using a hand-held blender, blend at high speed until the garlic is fully puréed into a loose paste. Then, little by little, add the remaining olive oil as you continue blending at high speed. If the mixture appears too thick when you begin adding the oil, add 1 teaspoon of water to loosen the sauce. Continue by adding the vegetable oil and blending until you have a rich, creamy aioli. The sauce will be a light yellow color. Add salt to taste.
Combine equal volumes of aioli and membrillo and mix in a food processor until creamy. The aioli can be made ahead of time and keeps for 3 days in the fridge.
For the chistorra-potato wraps:
1 large russet potato, peeled
4 cups Spanish extra-virgin olive oil
8 ounces chistorra chorizo, cut into 2-inch pieces
Toothpicks
Using a mandolin, thinly slice the potato lengthwise. You need about 20 of the largest slices. Put the potato slices in a bowl filled with ice water.
Remove a potato slice from the ice water and pat it dry with a paper towel. Lay it on a clean work surface and place a piece of chorizo in the center. Fold the potato slice over it, like a soft taco shell. Pinch the slice closed around the chorizo, and secure it by threading a toothpick through the edges of the potato. Repeat with the remaining potato slices and chorizo, creating a total of 20 bundles.
Line a baking sheet with paper towels. Heat the olive oil in a medium pot over medium heat to 325 degrees F. Working in batches, fry the bundles until the potatoes are golden, 2 to 3 minutes. Transfer them to the paper-towel-lined baking sheet to drain as you work. Allow the oil temperature to return to 325 degrees between batches.
Carefully remove the toothpicks while the bundles are still warm, to prevent the potato slices from breaking. Cover loosely with aluminum foil to keep them warm until ready to serve. Serve alongside membrillo aioli. Serves 4 to 6.