Pintxos - home cooked

Since my trip to the Basque Region in Spain and France I was Looking forward to prepare some of the tasty Pintxos at home. My friends were here today and we had a feast.

We prepared 5 pintxos and made a dip to eat with it. It is a lot of Mis en Place to do. One of us had to peel, chop and prepare all the ingredients. A lot of work, but the final preparation did not take that long.
Preparing each pintxo for the photo shoot took a bit more time.

We started with a simple one. Just a little tomato salad with olive oil and balsamic vinegar on a toasted slice of pepper baguette topped with Serano ham and a fried quail egg.

With all pintxos we served a Gazpacho Dip.
recipe:
1 red bell pepper
1/2 yellow bell pepper
1/2 red Chili
1/3 cucumber
1/3 cantaloupe melon
3 tbsp white balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper
3 slices Italian wheat bread without crust

Chuck it all into a blender and that´s it.

Next pintxo was with pan roasted fresh Chorizo on a bed of tomato salad and toasted bread.

300 g of white and brown button mushrooms were the topping for our next pieces of bread. Cutting them into tiny cubes was taking some time and a huge pile went into the pan to roast. After 10 min in a little olive oil there was just enough left for 4 pieces of baguette.
To make the bread more fancy, a slice of Serano ham was skewered and half a boiled quail egg was added.

Fish was a main ingredient in Basque cuisine. Pintxos with some kind seafood .
I bought a piece of cod
Rubbed with smoked paprika and some of my own pepper mix, the 3 pieces went in some olive oil.  It did not take long to finish them.
Roasted bread with a little goat cream cheese and some leafs of Japanese spinach.

The last pintxo was with warm goat cheese roll on caramelized onions and topped with sauteed yellow bell peppers.