An evening in Spain
Last week, I had some friends over for a Spanish dinner. To start, we had canteloupe with prosciutto (which hubs and I were served numerous times in bars all over Madrid and Segovia), smoked salted almonds (which I could literally eat ALL. THE. TIME.), toasted baguette slices with Manchego cheese, and feta-stuffed olives (OMG).
We moved on to a main course of paella (I made one with chicken, chorizo sausage, shrimp, and mussels) and sangria. We finished up with cheesecake, which wasn't really Spanish, but WAS reallyreally good.
Far and away, though, I thought the biggest success of the evening was the sangria. I got the recipe from my boss, and I'm posting it here for the betterment of the world at large. (Because who isn't nicer once they've had a big glass of sangria? I might start mixing this stuff up regularly and leaving it in the break room fridge at work.)
El Vice Presidente Especial Sangria
Ingredients:
1.5 litre bottle of red wine
2 oranges, sliced
1 lemon, sliced
1 lime, sliced
other assorted fruit (whatever kind you like; I used frozen strawberries)
fruit flavored sparkling water (I used peach, but pick what you like.)
1-2 tablespoons of splenda
Instructions:
At least one full day before, pour wine in large pitcher. Add all of the fruit. Add sweetener. (It doesn’t take much, just enough to sweeten it a bit.) Put in refrigerator to sit. Just before serving, pour the fruit-flavored sparkling water into the pitcher and stir.
Drink, drink, drink.
Now, you can also just pour a little of the sparkling water into each glass (about ¼ to 1/3 full of sparkling water), fill the remainder with sangria mixture and stir. That way, any leftover sangria can still be drunk fizzy. We didn't have that problem, as there wasn't much sangria left over. HA!
We moved on to a main course of paella (I made one with chicken, chorizo sausage, shrimp, and mussels) and sangria. We finished up with cheesecake, which wasn't really Spanish, but WAS reallyreally good.
Far and away, though, I thought the biggest success of the evening was the sangria. I got the recipe from my boss, and I'm posting it here for the betterment of the world at large. (Because who isn't nicer once they've had a big glass of sangria? I might start mixing this stuff up regularly and leaving it in the break room fridge at work.)
El Vice Presidente Especial Sangria
Ingredients:
1.5 litre bottle of red wine
2 oranges, sliced
1 lemon, sliced
1 lime, sliced
other assorted fruit (whatever kind you like; I used frozen strawberries)
fruit flavored sparkling water (I used peach, but pick what you like.)
1-2 tablespoons of splenda
Instructions:
At least one full day before, pour wine in large pitcher. Add all of the fruit. Add sweetener. (It doesn’t take much, just enough to sweeten it a bit.) Put in refrigerator to sit. Just before serving, pour the fruit-flavored sparkling water into the pitcher and stir.
Drink, drink, drink.
Now, you can also just pour a little of the sparkling water into each glass (about ¼ to 1/3 full of sparkling water), fill the remainder with sangria mixture and stir. That way, any leftover sangria can still be drunk fizzy. We didn't have that problem, as there wasn't much sangria left over. HA!
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