Cocktails & Canapes for Women's World Cup 2015: Spain

So tonight's featured game in the 2015 women's world cup is Brazil vs Spain and I have picked a Spanish theme for my cocktail and canape. We will be drinking Sangria and tucking into cubes of smoky paprika marinated pork.

I had my first glass of Sangria last month while on a short break in Madrid and how I got to my age without ordering one before I have no idea. I think this drink has been rather mistreated in the UK where in the past you might have expected nothing more than very cheap wine watered down with a lot of very sweet lemonade pimped up with a few slices of apple.
The weather outside today is more suggestive of mulled wine but never mind, I will just have to imagine those blue Madrid skies as I huddle under a blanket to watch the football on tv. At least my spiced pork dish is more in keeping with the need to warm up rather than cool down.

I have recently woken up to the fact that my county library has a lot of very good cookbooks and that the catalogue can be searched, and reservations made online; all from the comfort of home.  As someone that needs to stop buying so many books because their house is too small, the library is now my 'smokers e cigarette'. It really has kerbed my cook book purchasing addiction. Scanning recipes into a computer file is quite easy, so I still get to keep copies of the recipes I would really like to cook.
So, to get to the point, my Sangria recipe comes from my latest library loan book ' Tapas Revolution' by Omar Allibhoy, online recipe here. This is a bit involved, in that you have to make a fruit syrup first and allow that to chill down before you can mix up your drink. I think it does add depth to the flavours, so if you have the time, it would be worth trying. This drink really does slip down rather too easily.

The pork canape was very flavoursome but not so good as a canape in the way I cooked it, so I'm not going to try and give a recipe here. The seasoning was cumin, fennel, coriander, smoky paprika, oregano and lemon. I cooked the shoulder of pork very slowly and it was delicious but awkward as a canape. Next time I will use the same seasonings but with a tender cut of pork that can just be grilled quickly.