Starter

Snacking on this tapa could keep you serene: The omega-3s in tuna may help quell anxiety. Seek out pole-and-line-caught bonito tuna; it's safe to eat and sustainable.

Party food can peel off pounds! These Spanish peppers could help you drop a size. We use goat cheese instead of traditional manchego to slash fat. Plus, two peppers deliver a third of your daily vitamin C needs, and C has been shown to increase fat burning during exercise.

These skewers of marinated barbecued shrimp are pure cocktail fun because you can eat the sugarcane skewers as well. The cane gives the shrimp a subtle sweetness and everyone loves to suck on the skewers after the shrimp are but a memory.

After these plump up from a quick brine, and cook in their shells, they'll eat more like peel-and-eat lobster tails than plain old shrimp. Serve this alongside grilled steak, and it'll be not only a great respite from the meat's richness, but it'll give you a surf-and-turf experience, which for me was one of the most exciting things to get at a restaurant when I was little.

When I developed this recipe, there were many arguments among the tasters, otherwise known as my friends, about whether or not it was too spicy. Some people liked the kick and others did not. I like it spicy, but if you want less heat, lay off the chiles: use one chile instead of two. Serve the ceviche with tortilla chips for a play on texture. I recommend using aquacultured bay scallops for this dish as they are grown and harvested sustainably. Bay scallops are in season from October to January. It's also perfectly acceptable to buy frozen scallops and defrost them; the dish will be just as successful.

This is a lovely dish to serve with grilled pita bread, either alongside a couple of other mezze, while you have a drink before supper, or as an appetizer in its own right, or as a light lunch with a good salad on the side. In the summer, please use fresh peas; at all other times of year the wondrous frozen pea will do. You can make this dish in advance, put it in the fridge, and bring it back to room temperature when you want it.

This salad is a mix of fresh and caramelized cherry tomatoes and cubes of smoky San Simón cheese.

Serve the peppers, salad, and empanada together, tapas style, then follow with the stew and the pancakes. Or, if you prefer, serve the peppers as an appetizer and the salad as a first course. Follow with the stew, the empanada, and the pancakes. Keep in mind that the heat of the peppers varies widely—some are mild, others are hot. The heat is tamed by Tetilla cheese, a creamy cow's-milk cheese from Galicia, and a garlicky mayonnaise that's inspired by Spanish allioli.

This soup is good and velvety on its own, but the chile butter adds a luxurious crowning touch.

This appetizer is traditionally made with friselle (ring-shaped rolls). Friselle are baked twice, giving the rolls a very crunchy texture. To soften the bread slightly, it's dipped in water and brushed with olive oil before serving. When Donatella was growing up, her family would put bowls of water and olive oil on the table with the friselle so that everyone could dip their own bread. If friselle aren't available, toasted ciabatta is an easier-to-find substitute.

This recipe for a typical Puglian snack comes from Donatella Arpaia's aunt. Keep in mind that the ricotta cheese needs to drain overnight.

Black pepper potato chips (use kettle-cooked, which are sturdier) are a surprising and delicious base for this starter.

I pair the pecorino with a homemade fig paste that takes a little while to make—only because you have to let the figs dry in a warm oven—but is an absolutely spectacular condiment. There's no point in making just a little, so the recipe makes about three times as much as you need here, but that's okay; if well wrapped, it keeps in the refrigerator for about 2 weeks and goes well with other cheeses, meats, and poultry.

These small flatbreads serve the same purpose as bread sticks. They are crisp and flaky, and because of the olive oil (use your finest) and salty edge can easily be addictive. Based on centuries-old tortas de aceite, they are the specialty of young chef Enrique Dacosta, whose restaurant Poblet in Denia, Alicante, is the best regarded in the region. They are great with tapas. Instead of making bread dough for this recipe, I simplify by buying pizza dough from my local pizzeria, and the results are excellent.

Serve with sweet potato or root vegetable chips. The sweet potatoes can be cooked in a microwave in just 10 to 12 minutes.

Anyone who's ever had a garden or raided a cornfield knows that when corn is young you can eat it cob and all, and that the cob has as much flavor as the kernels. That flavor remains even when the cob has become inedibly tough, and you can take advantage of it by using it as the base of a corn chowder—a corn stock, if you will. Into that stock can go some starch for bulk, a variety of seasonings from colonial to contemporary, and, finally, the corn kernels. The entire process takes about a half hour, and the result is a thick, satisfying chowder that is best made in late summer.

An extremely easy tapa to assemble that comes straight from El Corregidor, the most delightful bar and restaurant in the region of La Mancha, where Manchego cheese is made and windmills from the times of the Errant Knight Don Quixote still stand.

The technique used to make this soup can be repeated for other soups, the seasonings—be they sweet or spicy—varied to suit your tastes. Although the soup is good without it, the cheese adds a flavor note that punctuates the natural sweetness of the squash.