My favorite dish of the evening was pickled mackerel, (escabeche), described as ‘fish in vinegar’. It didn’t sound all that appealing, and when I saw the amount of work involved in filleting these small fish I was quite glad that I chosen to do the meatballs instead.

these annoyed-looking mackerel are destined to become my favorite dish of the evening, escabeche…

However, as one of the women later commented, “it tastes a lot better than it sounds”, and I agreed with her. It wasn’t the raw pickled roll-mop of my imagining but rather cooked fish mixed with onion and carrots, and delicious.

escabeche, or pickled mackerel, much better tasting than it sounds!

The lamb meatballs (albondigas) in a tomato-pepper sauce (my choice to cook) was my second favorite dish. As I was making them I suspected that they probably needed more spicing, especially as we had considerably more meat than the recipe called for, but I didn’t have a clue on how to check the spicing in raw meat.

So I just went ahead and started to roll the 80-odd meatballs. Chef Eric appeared, took a scoop of the meat mixture and popped it in the microwave. Once cooked he had a taste and yes, it needed more spices, but it was too late by then, and we had to wait and add them later during the frying process, less satisfactory to my mind. But what a great way of checking uncooked meat! I will remember that.

albondigas in a tomato-pepper sauce

Other tapas included chicken croquettes (croquetas de pollo)…flat bread with vegetables and clams…

roasted asparagus wrapped in ham accompanied by a home-made sun-dried tomato mayonnaise (the mayonnaise was superb!)…
and sauteed garlic mushrooms…For dessert was the creamiest, most decadent rice pudding I have ever had. All that was missing was a light white wine, perhaps a Burgans Albariño, a Spanish vino verde with its slight effervescense and fresh citrus notes…

Albariño Vino Verde