If you love Spanish tapas, but don’t have neither the time to laboriously prepare your own fiddly ones, nor the money to splurge on professional Spanish tapas catering, here are my now-not-so-secret tips to help you prepare your own super simple tapas that will still leave a taste of Spain in the mouths of your guests.

Grazing boards are all the rage at catered events, we should know, and you can check ours out here. But if you’ve already spent your catering budget on paella, why not create your own? Have fun with it and be creative! The key is to stick to Spanish flavours, Spanish cured meats and cheeses, olives, and almonds. You can also add your favourite dips and crackers. Decorate with seasonal fruits and nuts.

The word ‘tapa’ literally translates to ‘cover’ as tapas were traditionally a slice of bread placed on top of a wine glass to keep flies out. Then overtime, bartenders would add some meat, cheese or fish on top of the slice of bread to make it into a more substantial snack.

Tortilla, crab, and jamon with manchego tapas

So for your DIY tapas catering, why not stick to the traditional tapa, and prepare an assortment of varieties of toppings to slices of crusty baguette to this such as:

anchovies and olive oil
rubbed with tomato and olive oil (rub garlic first for extra bite)
olive tapenade
thinly sliced Jamon serrano, or Manchego cheese
chorizo
marinated peppers

Tapa of tomato rub, jamon and crispy sage leaf

These require no further cooking, other than assembling. Make sure your bread is the best quality baguette you can find.

If you are feeling a bit more adventurous, but still want to keep your cooking time to a minimum, you could try your hand at:

Tortilla de patata – the quintessential Spanish tapa, the potato omelette
Garlic Mushrooms
Spanish meatballs
or just fry up some chorizo with lemon

And finally, no Spanish tapas event would be complete without the traditional Spanish Sangria, which is actually much simpler to make than it sounds. For recipe, click here.

Que aproveche!