Tapa means “lid,” that is clear. But much else about the origins of Spain’s famous little dishes is hard to pin down exactly. The tradition of having a small bite to eat with a drink in this manner probably began sometime in the eighteenth (or was it nineteenth?) century when a lid—in the form of a small saucer—was placed on top of a glass of sherry in the south of the country to keep out the flies. Crafty bar owners began to add a delicate slice of cured jamón, a couple of salty fried almonds, or maybe even a thin slice of salted and cured tuna loin known as mojama on the saucer as an enticement to come to the bar. (And the saltiness of the typical tapas surely was an enticement to drink more.) Tapas grew into an entire culture and way of eating, especially in the south, where many of the recipes in this chapter originated.
Apart from a small dish of olives, tapas are rarely free with your drink anymore, and it seems that bars rarely offer only one or two as they once did—though that doesn’t mean that they don’t have one or two specialties that people go there to eat. While just about every village has a bar serving at least a couple of tapas, some places in Spain are particularly well-known for them (Sanlúcar de Barrameda and San Sebastián, to name two of the most famous), while other towns have a street densely lined with tapas bars (such as Calle Laurel in Logroño, La Rioja). Galicia is known for its seafood tapas and the Basque Country for its mini-masterpieces called pintxos, a style of tapas that come mounted on a slice of baguette and held together by a toothpick. In those bars, with a small glass of local, spritely young white wine called Txakoli (or equally small glass of beer called a zurito), you generally pay by the number of toothpicks on your plate at the end. In the 1980s and 1990s, these were miniature showcases for the culinary creativity of la nueva cocina vasca (new Basque cooking), that led the wave of avant-garde Spanish culinary expression.
The key point about tapas is that they are social—something eaten among friends. You meet, have a drink, and enjoy something as simple as some mussels with a vinaigrette (see page 94) or more elaborate offerings like marinated and stewed pork ribs (see page 81). While some might go home for dinner after a tapa or two, others move on to another bar for their specialty, and then onto another. There is even a verb for this eating and traveling from bar to bar: tapear. In noun form, it’s called a tapeo.
I have included a few typical tapas in other chapters, as you frequently find them also served as something more substantial. Spanish egg tortillas are an example, or potato salad (see page 56). Conversely, almost any savory dish in this book can be prepared and served in smaller portions as part of a spread of tapas. Meatballs, for instance, rolled a touch smaller, make an excellent tapas dish (serve with cocktail forks or even toothpicks). So do callos (Galician-Style Tripe with Garbanzo Beans, page 269), but serve these with spoons.
In preparing tapas, serving sizes vary greatly, and I have given them here assuming that the dishes will be served either as an appetizer with, say, a glass of iced dry vermut (vermouth) before a meal, or as part of a number of tapas for a rather festive gathering.