Tapas Party

Back from my trip yesterday, I woke up in typical jetlagged fashion this morning at 3am.  Until I upload my photos, here is a look back at a tapas dinner party we threw for our friends last month.  Although we only started prepping a few hours before, the beauty of this type of party is that it can be as little or as much as you make of it.  Following the Barefoot Contessa's golden rule of stress-free entertaining, we didn't make every dish from scratch.  There was the cheese and meat plate we put together with fig jam and the mixed olives bought from the deli.  Fresh caught prawns bought from the store to go with our homemade lemon butter dipping sauce.  And as far as cooking, everything was pretty simple.  We stuffed piquillo peppers (from a jar)  with tuna fish, mayonnaise, and lemon juice.  I tossed evenly-cut potatoes with Spanish paprika and oven roasted them.  I made a homemade aioli to go with that.  There were roasted curry chickpeas. Oven roasted chicken wings.  Simply-cooked asparagus.  

And then there was dessert.  Since M. is gluten-free, we whipped up a gluten-free mixed berry crumble.  There wasn't any measuring going on.  In a bowl, I thawed a bag of mixed fruit with a little sugar.  I put some brown sugar, rice flour, and gluten-free oats in the food processor.  Then I slowly added cold chunks of unsalted butter.  I pulsed the mixture until it got a crumbly texture.  I mixed the fruit with the crumble, adding extra crumble on top, and baked it in the oven at 350 F for about 45 minutes.