Los Gatos de Roberto do tapas

The Bobcats, or in keeping with our Spanish theme, Los Gatos de Roberto, gathered late-ish on Friday night for an evening of tapas, which may have been our most successful dinner yet, if only because we finally all seemed to get over our baser instincts to double or triple every recipe we prepared. Maybe it's just the long graze that tapas is all about, but we seem to have figured out how to supply a luxurious dinner without drowning in leftovers. It's just too bad we were all too focused on making fantastic food for anyone to have remembered to bring a camera, so no photos this time.

For the first wave, we settled into the living room with glasses of white wine sangria and a table covered with mostly cold dishes, though the hot artichokes wrapped in bacon were a clear hit, as were the cheese-filled empanadas. With those were wedges of manchego with slices of quince paste, green olives stuffed with white anchovies, and platters of jamon.

With the remnants of that on the table, we moved into the dining room for the more substantial dishes, these served with bottles of rioja and dry sherry. Two types of tortilla, one with chorizo and one without, were accompanied by garlic shrimp, sherry-garlic mushrooms, patatas bravas, white asparagus in vinaigrette, and meatballs in a caramelized apple-sherry vinegar sauce. We capped that off with three desserts -- milk custard (served plain, rather than fried, when the frying didn't go well), burnt orange caramel ice cream, and Mexican churros with chocolate dipping sauce.

It was delicious, but even as we enjoyed our desserts, we were planning the next gathering. On February 27, Les Chats de Robert will meet for country French.

Recent eats

1. I am currently stuffed full of good tapas and sangria from an Argentinian place in Huntington. Good food, good company. I love the Argentinians -- they truly appreciate the meats.

2. My latest One Cookbook A Week project led to the discovery of crack in the form of food -- spicy curry sweet potato chips. I made two sweet potatoes' worth (aided tremendously by the mandoline that Pam got me as a wedding shower gift!) and added spice in the form of hot paprika. They're a little labor-intensive, but worth every bit. Spicy, salty, sweet, crunchy, slightly caramelized. Mr. Gateau and I put them away in minutes, accompanied by drinks on the deck. Mine was, embarrassingly, an amaretto sour, which I really enjoy with spicy foods.

3. How much do I love that the latest Top Chef challenge was won by the maker of maple-miso-glazed bacon. Genius! Even if the winning chef is rather an uninflected c-word, frankly.

Eating Vancouver, Part 1

On our first weekend in Vancouver, we began eating and basically never stopped. We were aided in this by a lot of rainy weather, but really, it would have happened anyway.

We started on the first evening with Greek tapas at our favorite Greek Town restaurant, Ouzeri. Ouzeri is one of the first places Mr. Gateau took me to on my first visit to Vancouver, and we always head there whenever we're in town. They used to make absolutely the best lemon roasted potatoes either of us had ever eaten, but these have slipped to ordinary in the last few years. Everything else remains good, so we ordered up a good spread of dips (hummus, olive, and feta-spicy pepper) with fluffy hot pita, saganaki cheese, vegetarian stuffed grape leaves, fried calamari, spanakopita, and some chicken souvlaki skewers. Along with Mr. Gateau's dad, we polished off a pitcher of sangria with it.

The next day, in case our bodies were close to having digested the Greek food, we headed to possibly the best dim sum restaurant anywhere. I certainly haven't encountered better in dim sum eating that has taken place elsewhere in Vancouver, New York, San Francisco, and Hong Kong. The restaurant is Sun Sui Wah, and it is clear from the crowds and the commendations on the walls that this is the favorite for many people. They specialize in seafood, so we ate plenty of shrimp and squid, but they have an extensive list of vegetarian dim sum as well as meat-based dishes. Young Master Gateau held out for everyone favorite, the barbecue roast pork steamed buns, which he called "Fluffy Buns," and ate a whole order himself.

That afternoon, we attended the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, which has a terrific area for food vendors. My meal of fish tacos with local halibut, chipotle sauce, basil sauce, radish sprouts, and papaya salsa with hot sauce and lime, plus and ear of roasted corn with butter and lemon salt, and a fresh lemonade, eaten at the beachfront site just before sunset, hit the spot perfectly.