This is not what Mexicans consider a tortilla to be. This is one of the most popular tapas to be had in Spain, and in Spain the runnier the egg mixture the better, so I’m just warning you. My version is pretty eggy. You can decrease the eggs a little and increase the amount of potato, and your tortilla won’t be as runny in the center, but that is no fun.
I will confess that I’ve not made this for just the two of us, so this makes about 8 tapas-style wedges. I think it would make 4 breakfasts/dinners. You can really snack on this anytime and I assume it will keep in the fridge but I’ve never had leftovers.
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2 cups olive oil. Use Spanish if you have it.
2 lbs. waxy potatoes, like Yukon Gold. Get the biggest ones to spare yourself some peeling.
1 good-size white onion
8 eggs, room temp
Salt
Peel potatoes, cut them in half, and with a mandoline (or by hand) slice them into half-disks, maybe 1/4”. Drain well. You want them to be as dry as possible. You can either leave them in the colander or put in a bowl and add some salt, which will draw more water out, or wrap them in a clean cloth and give them a good squeeze or three. In a pasta pot or a very large non-stick skillet, you need a lid, pour in 2 cups olive oil and heat over medium high. Add the potato slices, submerge them, and cover, only to prevent hot oil spatter. Every so often give them a quick stir and keep pushing them down into the oil. If/when the oil is bubbling, reduce the heat to medium.
While this is going on, slice the ends off the onion, slice in quarters, then slice into 1/4” pieces. Add these to the potatoes after they’ve been going it alone for about ten minutes. They should also submerge. Replace the lid. Increase the heat back up to medium high.
In a very large bowl whisk 8 eggs. Go back to the potatoes and onions and see how they’re doing. The potatoes should be softened but not mushy. Spear them with a fork or a knife to test. You may have to wait a minute or even a few. When the potatoes and onions are done turn off the heat and gently, with a slotted spoon, remove them to a bowl or spread them out on a baking sheet. Salt them. Don’t empty the pot/skillet just yet. Let the potatoes and onions cool down for a few minutes. They’ll cool faster if you do the baking sheet method.
With a few minutes and with nothing else to do, pour yourself a restorative glass, because you are having people over and it is late afternoon.
Stir the whisked eggs a little and spoon in the potatoes and onions. Stir gently so they combine.
If you used a large non-stick skillet for the potatoes and onions, drain all but a little film’s worth of oil. If you did the pasta pot, pour a small amount of the oil into a large non-stick—cannot emphasize this enough—skillet and turn up to medium heat. Carefully add the eggs/potatoes/onions mix.
The toughest part is ahead of you. While the mixture is in its beginning stage tilt two or three times so it evens out. Watch the edges of your tortilla. As they start to firm up lift them and tilt so the liquid-y center moves to the bottom. When all the edges are firm the bottom should be too. This will take about 10 minutes, maybe less.
Slide the tortilla very carefully onto a large plate. Using another, equally large plate, cover the tortilla and flip. Slide the now upside-down tortilla back into the skillet and cook for another five minutes or so. Alternately, and this is even trickier, place a large plate over the skillet, invert the skillet so the tortilla goes onto the plate, replace the skillet on the stove, and slide the tortilla back in. That takes a not inconsiderable amount of hand strength and dexterity.
The good thing about the tortilla is it’s meant to be eaten room temp., which allows you to make it and then make other things for your guests. If someone is rude enough to mention that their slice of “frittata” (this is not a frittata) is “cold”, shame them by pointing out that you are surprised that they don’t know that they are eating tortilla española. Make sure you enunciate. Tor-TEEEE-yah ETH-pah-NYO-la. Surely they’ve had this before, have they never been to Spain? ¡Olé!
Thanks Cousin M!
De nada.
This has nothing to do with the tortilla española but it’s my post so:
I am sorry to say I have lost my War on Thanksgiving. I mentioned my plan: I’d print out online menus from maybe three or four of our favorite restaurants, cross-check to see if I had copycatted any of their stuff we liked before, and make my own non-traditional Thanksgiving spread.
Better Half is in a sentimental mood and is not enthusiastic, so this is our compromise menu:
A meat and cheese plate to snack from (accompanied by a good stiff gin)
Baked chicken breasts stuffed with an apple/wine/cheese mixture*
Some kind of green bean salad but not a casserole
Carrots glazed with orange and honey
I thought I would make scalloped potatoes but Better Half wants stuffed baked potatoes, because that’s what his family used to serve when he was growing up. FINE.
Instead of dinner rolls, crostini with a tapenade
Store-bought apple pie, warmed up, with a topping/side of rich French vanilla ice cream topped with a strawberry simple syrup
White wine with dinner; this lingering bottle of champagne to go with the dessert, the packing of leftovers, and the cleanup
* I offered to make turkey tetrazzini but BH claims he’s never had it before. I think he might be right. I think I’ve only made this once and he might have been out of town.
Oh well, there’s always next year.
That sounds pretty awesome. Straight gin with the meat and cheese, or a mixer too?
I would think…
https://www.tasteatlas.com/orujo
or
https://www.winemag.com/2020/03/04/rioja-spain-red-wine/
would be my choices.
Mine too, or at least the Rioja, but we’re out and gin is the drink of choice for Life’s Helpmeet, so be it. Plus, this won’t be a civilized tableside tapas experience, it’ll be somewhat chaotic. But luckily we can both laugh at ourselves and take things as they come, so it should be a bit of work but a lot of fun nonetheless.
Gin ‘n tonics, I’m afraid, but heavy on the gin. I’ll be working and so will the sous chef, whether he likes it or not, so it’ll be more like guzzle a little gin, work-work, throw a piece of ham to the Ravenous Hound, have a little myself, & etc.
Sounds like the right thing for good English cheese. I’m sure the landed gentry does that combo still.
I’m sure they do. The chicken stuffing calls for cheddar or you can use gorgonzola, but I thought gorgonzola would be too rich considering all the other stuff. I had the Forager-in-Chief pick up a brick of the sharpest cheddar to be had so that will go on the meat and cheese plate too. What will be noticeably absent will be crackers, who needs even more carbs, so I may spare a little of the baguette from which I’ll make the crostini, or just pick with my fingers, like the savage glutton that I am.
It’s always been a puzzle to me how the UK has been capable of making top quality cheese, beer and booze, but until recently been incapable of cooking peas. They obviously had refined taste buds for some things, but were just as bad as a lot of Americans in other ways (fortunately, both countries have picked up their standards).
Ooh, ooh, ooh, Mr. Kotter, I know the answer!
In the mid-1800s lived a woman named Mrs. Beeton. She was a real person and I have her biography. She (and her husband) were something of con artists and Mr. Beeton had a publishing business. They published all kinds of stuff, much of it plagiarized, some of it made up, and Mrs. Beeton became the Martha Stewart of her day. Her famous work, Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, is still in print but updated regularly and with different spin-offy titles, like Betty Crocker recipes are.
Anyway, her book was geared toward the aspirational middle-class Victorian housewife. The first half dealt with raising children, keeping a man happy, decorating a home, how to deal with servants (because you are now a middle-class housewife and this problem has never prevented itself before) all kinds of things. Sewing patterns. Spon con from companies who paid the Beetons fees. The second half was a cookery book. That’s a long story but when it came to serving vegetables she invariably advised that they should be boiled for a l-o-o-o-ng time, and so popular was her book that everyone started doing this. It became part of the British culinary patrimony. My biography of her disputes that she alone is why mushy vegetables are “a thing” in Britain but the biographer’s opinion is a minority one.
I read an article not too long ago about how the home ec movement in the US and its fetish for supposedly scientific dietary advances was responsible for a lot of the recipes based on canned and packaged food, which were believed to be a lot more predictable and fortified than fresh.
Also, companies like Kraft and General Mills saw what the home ec programs were doing and basically paid their way in. If they had a new canned fruit product they wanted in the market, they just got key people in the movement to endorse it, maybe shipped out a bunch of cases for free to the right schools, and before long watched sales take off.
That’s where a lot of the wackiest celebrity recipes come from. A general interest or “woman’s” magazine has a big food advertiser. Studio wants to promote and humanize a star. Synergy: Celebrity reveals their (they did this with women and men) special recipe using precisely a certain product and it’s published in the magazine. It’s a win-win-win, except for those who are presented the fruits of these recipes and meant to eat them.
Interesting!!! I always figured it was the combo of WW1 and WW2 in fairly close succession causing shortages and disruptions so “just boil everything” became the norm.
I told everyone I’m ordering a bunch of take n bake pizzas and cookie dough because I am not killing myself cooking this year. I am DONE. You’d think I suggested slaughtering baby animals or something… the outrage from my mom and sister was amusing (yet stressful). The kids all think it’s great lol. My oldest actually admitted that he doesn’t like most Thanksgiving foods, anyway, and he’s downright thrilled!
Seriously, though… I have been having such trouble with my back and hips, plus my fibro is kicking up a fuss, to the point where I literally need help showering… how TF do they expect me to do the usual, from-scratch, 4 course meal for 20?!?!? Not to mention all the cleaning and setting up and cleaning up after (and we don’t even have a damn dishwasher). They’ve all been spoiled by me doing every damn holiday for most of the last 20 years.
Your menu sounds fantastic, and if you keep slipping in non-traditional foods, they will eventually become traditional!
This year it’s only the two of us, plus the hound. Normally we split up over the holidays, he to visit members of his extended family and I mine. Every year I ask to make something, and since my relatives and their in-laws are by and large not very adventurous eaters by a long shot, my offering does not always receive the acclaim that it deserves. Plus I’m depending on the host’s oven, not my own, and working around their cooking schedule. The only potato possible for them is mashed, salted, and buttered. The only green beans should come in a casserole. The only cranberry sauce should come in a can. The only stuffing should consist of torn pieces of white bread, butter, and Bell’s seasoning. I’ve served variations of all of these, far superior, and the response is, “Well, that’s a…different way to make [whatever].” Yes, you might have heard of someone named Julia Child. No? How about Martha Stewart? Not ringing any bells? Couldn’t pick Ina Garten out of a lineup, huh?
But I give thanks to that extended family, some of whom are no longer with us, who love me and indulge me and haven’t disowned me despite my many eccentricities.
@honeysmacks you’re spot on here. Traditional for one family might just be what they typically make. It doesn’t have to be the Norman Rockwell painting spread.
When I was a kid and we actually had family Thanksgivings, we just did a sandwich spread with a sliced ham and sometimes sliced turkey, sides, and a fuckton of desserts. And the gist of it was “come over any time after noon, turkey is being sliced around 2 but there’s stuff to graze all day.” This was because we had so many people in the extended family who were going to other Thanksgiving dinners or lunches that it was easiest to just have stuff out all day instead of trying to coordinate times and knowing people wouldn’t be able to commit to a meal time.
@brightersideoflife that sandwich and dessert spread is a good idea, too! Maybe next year I’ll do something like that. Or for Christmas. I know I’m going to end up hosting everyone here because I’m the only one with enough house for this crowd… but I’ll be damned if I’m going to overstress myself cooking everything from scratch anymore.
I’m a huge fan of a sandwich spread! It’s like charcuterie plus extra stuff.
And you can still do something extra like make pulled pork or something that is served hot. We did stuff like that in ye olde crockpot to make it stay warm.