• Tapas – what is it?
• Montaditos – what to fill mini sandwiches with?
• Salty snacks - what to serve?
• What to replace seafood with?
• Bibliography

Tapas – what is it?

The Spanish tradition of eating tapas is deeply rooted in the culture of the country's inhabitants, as well as in the hearts of the tourists who visit it every year. Although the vegan diet is spreading rapidly across the Iberian Peninsula, it still hasn't found many representatives in traditional taverns and bars. Tapas, or small snacks usually served with drinks (alcoholic or not), are primarily an excuse to spend time with loved ones and, at the same time, try something new. Every region and even every bar offers something different, but seafood, fish, cold cuts, sausages, and cheese are the main ingredients in these small snacks. If you want to learn how to make vegan tapas yourself, the book by Marta Martínez Canal, from which this article is loosely inspired, will help you.

Montaditos – what to fill mini sandwiches with?

Montaditos are small sandwiches made from wheat bread (but if you need it, just use your favorite bread). You can find literally anything in them—tortilla de patatas, a Spanish omelet with potatoes, chorizo ​​sausage, or Manchego cheese. In the vegan version, you can add tofu marinated in smoked paprika, pimientos de padrón, or small green peppers fried in deep olive oil, or batter-fried cauliflower. Don't forget the vegetables and olives, which give the sandwich even more of a Spanish feel!

Salty snacks - what to serve?

Spaniards love fried eggs. They're added to burgers, served with fries for dinner, and you can even find flavored chips on supermarket shelves. Therefore, making popcorn with black kala namak salt, which gives it an eggy flavor, can be quite an interesting idea. You can also add a handful of inactive nutritional yeast and some smoked paprika.

What to replace seafood with?

Galicia is a region in the northwest of the country, surrounded by the cold waters of the Atlantic. Rumor has it that some of the best seafood comes from here, which is exported all over the country. Vegan snacks are definitely less popular there than, for example, a type of tapas called Pulpo a la Gallega, also known as Polbo á Feira. It is simply octopus served with potatoes, paprika and olive oil, nibbled with toothpicks. All vegans, vegetarians or those who recently saw the Oscar-winning documentary "What the Octopus Taught Me" will miss out on this pleasure, or... they will follow the advice of the book's author and use mushrooms instead of octopus so that this wonderful cephalopod can continue roaming the ocean. Boil potatoes with salt and cut into slightly thicker slices. Add seaweed (such as wakame) to the same water to give the mushrooms a marine flavor and cook for as long as needed. The length of this process will depend on the mushrooms you choose; it could be shiitake, oyster mushrooms, button mushrooms, etc. The choice is yours. Slice the octopus substitute, place each one on a potato, and season with olive oil, salt, and paprika. Veggie snacks from the land of fishermen? Why not! Calamari, mussels, scallops... You can swap all of these for locally available mushrooms.

Bibliography:

Canal Martínez, Marta, Cocina Vegana , Madrid, Oberon, 2021.