A beautiful sunny Sunday and what better way to prepare for the England v Germany match than a couple of glasses of wine and tapas from some of London's best Spanish restaurants.
The three day Tapas Fantasticas festival was held on the South Bank and was a showcase for wines from Rioja. However, it was the various food stalls that grabbed my attention.
I love tapas, but it's not one of Grace's favourites so I don't get to have it as often as I would like, so I decided to fill my boots whilst I was there!
I did a quick reccy of the site and decided to start with some manchego cheese, quince jelly and some acorn fed jamon iberica from 5J Iberico Ham House. The cheese and quince were both good (it's a great combination), but the ham was disappointing. It was such a hot day and the ham had been left out in the sun. This meant that it wasn't at it's best, as it was almost baked. Sadly I also decided to record this rather than photograph it, so don't have the pictures to go with it.
Not to be deterred I decided to go back to an old favourite: chorizo. I'd spied a stall that was selling chorizo lollipops with pear aloli and I wasn't about to miss out! The chorizo had been deep fried and was very good - not at all greasy and the accompanying aloli was light, tangy and accompanied it well.
Also on the same stall was a slow cooked, pork sandwich, which was served with a grilled pepper. The pork had a sweetness to it and was delicious.
The next stall was from the El Faro restaurant and they had the biggest choice of dishes.
Unsurprisingly though I went for the morcilla sausage with a piquillo sauce and rocket leaves. I love morcilla (similar to black pudding) and this was fantastic. Grilled perfectly it was soft, tasty and delicious. The accompanying piquillo sauce gave a bit of heat and, together with the peppery rocket, provided a good contrast to the morcilla.
Next up were a couple of chicken skewers. These had been marinated in paprika and lemon juice and were packed full of flavour. They were served with a pesto dressing and at £1 per skewer were a bargain.
I hadn't had my full protein fix yet and decided to finish off with one of Brindisa's famous chorizo sausage buns. If you've ever been to Borough Market on a weekend, then you've probably seen the queue for these at their takeaway.
Served simply with a roasted pepper, rocket and a drizzle of virgin olive oil the real star of the show is the chorizo. It had that lovely coarse, chewy texture and was packed full of flavour.
To finish off with I decided to go for some churros. The last time I had these was about three in the morning in a cafe in Madrid and I've probably romanticised them a bit in my head, as these were slightly disappointing.
The dough was quite heavy and the accompanying chocolate tasted a little cheap and runny. Overall they weren't as good as I remember and i'm not sure if it's my memory or this particular version of them that's to blame. To be fair, most other people seemed to be wolfing them down and loving them.
Overall, I spent a lovely couple of hours at Tapas Fantastica. It was well organised, not too busy, had some good music playing and was at a great location. Fingers crossed they'll hold it again next year.
I left with a full belly, a slightly light head from the wine I'd consumed and feeling confident for the football - the less said about that the better...
Websites from some of the stalls I visited:
