SKIPTON Spanish tapas restaurant, La Casita, used lockdown earlier this year to create a cookbook of tapas favourites. It has since gone on to sell 300 copies raising £3,000 for charitable food re-distributor FareShare.

The Little Book of Tapas features a selection of 40 recipes, combining restaurant classics and new creations, plus wine, beer, and cocktail recommendations.

Head chef and co-founder Simon Miller came up with the idea when lockdown was announced at the beginning of March. “When we closed our restaurants, I found myself with a lot of free time. I did some YouTube tutorials featuring our most popular dishes and they went down so well that I realised there was a demand for our recipes. It got me thinking that there must be something we could do to help a charity in need and FareShare is one close to my heart.”

The Little Book of Tapas can be purchased from La Casita restaurants or by visiting the website www.littlehouseoftapas.co.uk

FareShare is the UK’s national network of charitable food re-distributors, made up of 18 independent organisations. Every week, they take good quality, surplus food from across the food industry and get it to almost 11,000 frontline charities and community groups. This redistribution provides enough food to create almost a million meals for vulnerable people across the UK.

Since lockdown began FareShare has tripled the amount of food they are getting out to frontline charities.

The cost of producing the cookbook was jointly funded by La Casita and digital printing company gecko. The help from gecko ensured all the proceeds could go to FareShare.

“We’re frequently asked for our chorizo popcorn, belly pork and ox cheek recipes, it’s exciting to be able to share these with everyone. We’re so thankful to gecko for helping us with this project and making a lockdown dream become a reality. It’s amazing to think that the sale of one cookbook provided 40 meals for those in need,” said Alyson Walsh, commercial director at FareShare.

She added: “The money raised by La Casita will allow us to redistribute 12,000 meals this winter –getting vital food supplies onto the plates of those who are most in need during this crisis.”

After what has been a challenging time, La Casita opened its doors again at the beginning of July and have expanded their offering to include takeaway tapas alongside their eat-in menu. Simon for one was glad to be back in the La Casita kitchen. “We’re happy to be open again and our main priority is to keep our customers and staff safe while serving delicious food.

“We’ve reduced capacity in every restaurant and have strict safety rules in place. Offering takeaways is helping us subsidise the lack of restaurant eating we can offer and we’re staying positive about the future,” he said.