A (virtual) dinner for bloggers

Julie has tagged me for this meme : Which Menu Would You Serve Blogging Friends For A Welcome Dinner Upon Their First Visit to Your Home? It was created by Angelika of The flying apple, and a very good idea it is.

My big quandry is, would I give my food blogger friends what I give my friends from Madrid? My failsafe options are curry, or tagine, or bottarga, or Nigella´s ham in Coca-Cola. Or else I cook a big pot of soup, bake biscuits or focaccia, and plump everything on the table, just like that.
Hardly what you´d give someone from abroad, who´s in Spain for just a few days.

Thinking hard, I´ve finally hit on this solution. I haven´t cheated. I could have taken cover under the virtual screen, and told you I´d make an entire menu from Justin Quek. But this is a dinner you might truly have chez moi, Scout´s honour. It´s ethnic, it´s pretty darn delicious, and it keeps to my rule of “make as much as you can the day before”.

We eat in the kitchen, if we´re less than six, so you´ll be sitting at the table, sipping whatever you want to drink, and while I get everything more or less ready, you can start on the aperitivo. This is a prize for the puntual people. In Spain it´s still considered rather dashing to be late, so somebody will turn up 30 minutes after everyone else.

The latecomer will miss it, and will be sorry later when he learns that I gave you the best jamón from Malandares, some pretty awsome olives I buy in bulk from the market ( I think today I´ll go with Camporeal, from Madrid itself) and boquerones en vinagre from the fish store. I drizzle some good olive oil and fresh parsley on these, and they´re as good as home made.

Then we´ll have marmitako. I love this dish for many reasons, but one of them is that it´s perfect make-ahead food. I´ll just warm up the potatoes and cook the fish in five minutes just as we´re all sitting down.

I´ll give you crusty bread, and some green salad, to lighten up.
Normally I wouldn´t make a pudding, because a carefully chosen bowl of fruit is so good. But since you´ve come from so far away, I might just go crazy and give you a beautiful glossy tarte tatin. Or I might make hot chocolate pots. Or maybe I´ll just open a tub of agujeros de Filipinos, an addictive little biscuit thing.

We´ll all end up sitting on the floor in the living room, sipping a late drink and annoying my neighbours. Isn´t that a lovely dinner for blogging friends around the world?

This is open to all comers, and as Julie says, I can´t think of anyone I wouldn´t have. But I´ll pass the torch on, just in case, to a few people, all around the globe.
That´ll be Guru in our own Canary Islands, Neil in Australia, Julie in Florida, Stephanie in NYC, Carolyn in Zimbabwe, and Mixirica in Brasil. Can´t wait to see what thye´ll give us.