The weather hardly stirs memories of noshing on olives and calamares on a warm balmy evening in Barcelona, but its gonna be nice at some point, so you just know that you are gonna want some tapas some night. Bottle of chilled rose wine, few nibbles while the sun sets. Lurvely.
I'm just in that sort of mood.

Almejas

Dunno what the name of this clam recipe is, so just "Almejas" will do. I've had this sort of dish countless times, and love all types of clams.
They're cooked in a sauce made with white wine, onion, garlic, tomato and paprika.

1 small onion
1 large tomato
2 cloves garlic
Tomato Passata
Paprika - the mild version
A dried chilli
Loads of flat leaf parsley
Dry white wine
Kilo or so of clams

Chop the onion and the garlic, and fry with a good pinch of paprika in a good few glugs of extra virgin olive oil until softened. Chuck in a bay leaf if you have one, crush the dried chilli and throw that in too. Add a few glugs, maybe half a glass or so of white wine and a few tablespoons of the passata. Not too much passata, it'll taste like crap bottle pasta sauce if you use too much.
Now add your clams. Cover, and cook for a few minutes until the clams are opened.
Finish with lots and lots of freshly chopped parsley, and season with salt and black pepper and serve up with some lemon wedges, and decent WHITE bread. Some sort of rustic stuff, but certainly not brown or black bread. Gotta be white.

Get whatever clams you fancy. Poseidon on viktualienmarkt is probably your best bet. They normally have several types of clam of offer. You can use mussels if you want, but then you may wish to forget adding any tomato and passata, but just use onion, garlic, white wine, then finish with cream and loads of parsley for a simple moules marinieres.
The sauce would also even work with prawns very well.

Quick point on mussels and clams. Get them home, and put in a sink full of cold water. Remove the breads from the mussels, and just give them all a quick clean. Any that are open, and don't close when you tap 'em are dead. Throw them away. Likewise, any that don't open when cooked are also not good to eat.

Stuffed Cherry Tomatoes.

Ok, bit poncy, but tasty.
Get a tin of tuna, and add some mayonnaise, chopped chives, parsley and a little lemon juice to make up some easy tuna mayonnaise. Carefully slice the tops of the tomatoes, and with a little sharp edged spoon, scoop out all the seeds and stuff, but don't break the tomato skin. Sprinkle a little salt inside each tomato, and leave upside down on some kitchen towel and let the watery juices soak out. The toms will taste better.
Fill each tomato with the tuna mayo mix, and put the lid back on, securing by pushing a little cocktail stick through it. Could pop a little green olive on top too. In Donostia in NW Spain, they'd add a rolled up marinated anchovy to the stick- not salty ones, really sweet. A small slice of marinated sweet dill herring might be good.
They are nothing special, but a tasty little munch all the same.

A good way to go is to slice up a baguette, and just secure different toppings to the bread with a cocktail stick. Lightly toast some bread, and rub with garlic, drizzle olive oil over it, add rock salt, rub with fresh tomato...loads of ways to prepare the base, and then just put things on top. Pieces of ham, salami or cheese are easy of course, just make them varied.

Halved peppers are good, filled with some chopped tomato, strips of anchovy, couple of olives, a basil leaf or two, some feta cheese - then baked in a hot oven until soft and the cheese browning.

So are grilled marinated vegetables.
Slice aubergines and courgettes lengthways (looks better), sprinkle with salt and leave for 30 mins in a colander. Rinse and dry well, then rub each piece with olive oil and sprinkle with dried herbes de provence. Then either grill the slices, cook on a griddle, or roast in a tray in a hot oven. Oven is best. Just toss all the slices in oil, and throw in some entire garlic cloves, and maybe a dried chilli or two. Roast until golden brown in places, and softened through. Put in a bowl; add some more oil, lemon juice, and salt and leave to marinate until cooled. Place a strip of aubergine on a strip of courgette, roll up, and secure to a bread slice with a stick. Drizzle some of the marinade over, and finish with fresh parsley.
N.B. German mother in laws love this shit. Seriously, you just cannot go wrong. Roast off some peppers and plum tomatoes too, and serve all the veg hot on couscous, you are onto a winner...

Grilled mushrooms also go well on bread, again drizzling oil onto the bread first, and maybe some rock salt.

Gotta have cold meats for tapas, and you could get some jamon serrano, but there are good german meats too that will be alot cheaper. Also serve up some green stuffed olives, sardines - canned are better than fine. People forget how damned good tinned sardines are. Get Italian ones though.
If you see them in a shop, buy yourself frozen calamares unless you are OK with gutting squid, and working with batter and deep fat frying! You'll make a mess. But the frozen ones I have had here have been OK, with a cold cold beer and plenty of lemon juice.

That’s a bit long as a post, but I am about to go to the market to get clams, so I got all excited about that, and now want to cook tapas. Well nice, well easy, perfect summer tucker.