Why hello there, and welcome to Kitchen Catastrophe, where, after a week of being boisterously British, we’re sliding Southwest to be Spanish. Today’s recipe is a Spanish Tortilla, a very simple dish, but one that’s ideal for tapas, as a vegetarian snack or entrée, and one that’s fairly palatable to make in this BEASTLY weather. (I don’t know about you, but it is piping warm here in Port Orchard) If you want to skip the fluff and get straight to the nitty gritty, click this link for the recipe. For everyone else: let’s talk about…Something.  

Stumbling Along

Sorry for the delay on this one, I put myself in that ever-foolish position of “I’m not QUITE overbooked, as long as everything goes well”, only for things not to go well, and my schedule to explode. In this case, I had my afternoon booked on Monday from 3:30 to basically 10, with “as long as I get the post written up on Sunday, I’m fine!” To which a brutally hot day and a crippling headache Sunday night smacked me out of commission.

So I’m scraping this together before the Monday slam, I’ll finish it after, and probably get it up on the site on Tuesday. Sorry for not warning you on Monday, but there was no time to lose! (By which I mean “I held out the foolish hope I could recover in time far too long”, to the point where the announcement the post would be late would have come out…when the post was already late.

Which, history tells me, is an ineffective time to convey that message.

Anywho, Spanish tortillas. I’ve actually technically covered them once before, in THE SECRET FILES (by which I mean “the Facebook notes where KC started”) That discussion of the dish focused on my love of the musical The Man of La Mancha, and how during my twenties I based a great deal of my personal motivations on the fictional Spaniards Don Juan and Don Quixote, and the story that one time, I tossed a baking sheet into a nearby BUSH, where it stayed for a WEEK before I remembered I left it there, and brought it back into the house.

If you think the Jon YOU know is wild, I assure you, Early-to-Mid-Twenties Jon was wilder in so many ways.

I also kind of fucked up the dish. And…

Sorry, I understand that was literally the next second for you, but in that time, I jumped back into a rabbit hole of memory: part of the initial post was that, as a kid, I watched SOME show that taught me how to make stamps by cutting potatoes into the shapes I wanted, and every time I think about it, I can’t find anything about it via Google. I am pretty sure there was a lion, and like, a house that was also a mushroom…anyway, trying to look it up, I discovered a 90’s kids show that I’m pretty sure I DID watch, that wasn’t the same one.

The emotional reaction I had to reading the words “Rizzeldy Rozzeldy” on a wikipedia page was…something.

Anywho, the point is that I WAY over-browned my Tortilla back then, because I didn’t have any visual guides to go off of.  Luckily, this time, I do. …Shit, sorry, wandered off into obscure 80’s children’s media. Apparently my brothers and I were actually watching anime back as kids, thanks to Serendipity the Pink Dinosaur.

Let’s try and get some kind of structure to what we’re making, before I decide to just watch all of Oliver and Company rather than write this, like some kind of nostalgia addict.

On the other hand…why should I worry about that? Why should I care? I may not have a post, but I’d have street savoire-faire.

A Bit of Tort Proceedings

So, the Spanish tortilla. It’s basically a type of omelette. Why? Well, words are dumb sometimes. When Spain came up with the word, they used it to refer to omelettes. That’s…weird, in a sense, but also understandable. So, torta in Spanish used to mean “pie”, and “cake” and “flatbread”. Basically, “round baked food, probably with some flour”. Tortilla means “a little (round baked thing)”, and was apparently first used to refer to THIS dish, a round omelet of potatoes, maybe onions, olive oil, and eggs. That’s it. That’s all that goes in this sucker.

Not this many, thank goodness. That would be a HUGE tortilla.

The story goes that a man with the INCREDIBLY Spanish name of “Tomás de Zumalacárregui e Imaz” (which I think is cool, because until this moment, I didn’t realize that old school Spaniards got TWO last names: That name means “Thomas of the Zumalacarregui and Imaz families”, referring to his father’s family, and his Mother’s. (And, as I know you inquisitive minded folks are wondering, because I’m definitely not going insane from the heat and exhaustion, “what the fuck does Zumalacarregui mean?” Well, It’s definitely too late for me to say this with any kind of predictable accuracy, but I WILL ANYWAY: Carregui is a Catalan word for “one who loads”, and Zumala doesn’t mean anything, but Zumalla could be an alternate spelling for Zumaya/Zumaia. Navarre (where Tomas became famous) is actually fairly close to Zumaya, and on the edges of where Catalan would have been spoken at the time, so it’s likely his father’s family were, at some point, some kind of porters, stevedores, longshoremen, or other jobs that people who aren’t in unions or dockyards don’t need to know anymore.

And apparently Denmark builds statues to.

Supposedly, Tomas, during a siege was running out of food for his army, (the primary purpose of a siege) and found a housewife using her last three ingredients to whip up something (Some say she was doing it FOR him, because he happened to visit her on other business, some say he saw her making the dish for some other reason, whatever, and he came up with the idea to whip the three together for his troops.

Great story, riveting stuff, little undercut by the fact that Tomas was the one BESIEGING the city in question and was there for…less than 2 months, so either his army didn’t have ANY food with them, or the story was made up, which is a little more likely since we have letters from 18 years before that battle talking about how the tortillas of the poor in Navarre can only use 2-3 eggs for a tortilla meant for 5, having to thicken them with breadcrumbs, potatoes, and so on, unlike the fatcats in the Capital.

What IS likely is that the dish spread from the region due to the armies needing cheap and easy food. And except for maybe one ingredient, this dish is that. Though it sometimes comes at a cost. Okay, that was…an hour of researching the First Carlist War, Catalan conjugation, and so on. I will now reward myself by passing out, to put an even GREATER burden on Tuesday morning Jon.

A Brand New Day, and Night

You lazy son of a… Alright, Tuesday Jon here, to bring this sucker home. Some quick details ABOUT the Spanish tortilla that Late Night “History of the Basque region” Jon didn’t cover: Spanish tortillas are both an entrée AND a tapa, the Spanish style of cooking we’ve talked about before, but we’ll quickly cover again: Tapas, which literally mean “lids” in Spanish, are supposedly named after a Spanish king whose staff gave him toast with mustard and ham to cover his wineglass while he was dining on the beach, either to prevent flies or sand from getting into the drink. He drank the wine, ate the toast, and ordered a new wine with another “lid”, hence the name. We’ll do a deeper dive on their cultural significance on Thursday, but the basic idea is that Tapas are kind of equivalent to the American idea of Appetizers: they’re small plates you eat BEFORE dinner, as a way to whet your appetite/buy some time as the meal finishes actually cooking. The difference in serving the tortilla is in how you cut it: if serving as a tapa, you typically cut the tortilla into smaller cubes, while if serving as an entrée, you cut it into slices like a quiche or pie.

Seen here with a delightful romesco, and, as you can see, slices not quartered OR halved. Shit, I haven’t explained that bit yet.

So, the first recipe I used for the dish had me roast thin slices of potatoes in the oven, while softening onions in olive oil, before frying for five minutes, flipping, and frying for five more. And the basic ideas aren’t BAD, they’re not executed perfectly. My first mistake was the pan: See, Spanish tortillas are supposed to be TALL, like, an inch thick. And the only way to achieve that is with a smaller pan. For a tortilla for 3-4 people, you’ll want like, an 8” cast iron pan, or another pan with relatively high walls. Pour in about ¼ cup of olive oil, and heat it while you cut up some potatoes.

The recipe uses 2 russet potatoes. Well, mine did.  I’m working off a recipe I got from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, whose cookbook I actually picked up last week. He had two potatoes as well, but A: they were Yukon Golds, not Russets, and B. He ended up not using all of the potato slices, so I guess he just had bigger potatoes than I did.

It’s not the size of the spud, I’ve been told.

Cut them relatively thin (say 1/8th of an inch), and I personally quartered them, but you could halve them. I also, and this is something I recommend you don’t do, accidentally peeled the end of my finger while working on the potatoes.

Behold my grievous battle scars.

As a quick interjection: you can use almost any potato for this. The value of using Yukon golds over russets is that the waxy nature of the Yukons is going to let them hold together better in the pan: a notable portion of my russets got worked into paste over the course of cooking, because starchy potatoes don’t hold together as well. So if you want a pretty final product with more distinct slices, go with Golds, but if all you have are russets, they’ll do perfectly fine.

I also skipped the next step of Kenji’s recipe, as a bold creative decision, and not at all because I forgot about it because I was cooking at 11 PM and had just almost cut myself. (That’s one advantage of this recipe: Spanish tortillas are often served at room temp, so you can cook it the night before, cover it over night, and wake up to a pre-made breakfast the next day.) Kenji poured the hot oil from his pan INTO a bowl with his potato slices, where he tossed them before pouring into the skillet: this allowed the hot oil to coat the slices and start cooking them a little before going into the pan, and helped ensure that EVERY slice is coated with oil so they’ll fry in the pan, rather than sticking together. My method…is easier?

Look, that’s not nothing!

You may want to add a little more olive oil to the pan once the potatoes go in. All told, you’re going to use a LOT of olive oil. Something like 1/3 of a cup. That’s because the flavor of the olive oil Is one of the only flavor components in the dish, and it’s supposed to infuse the potatoes, onion, and eggs, to give flavor and richness.

Once the potatoes have cooked for about 7-8 minutes, they should be starting to form a crust on the edges of the slices. That’s when you’ll want to add about ½ of an onion, sliced, into the oil. (you can also season with some salt and pepper if you want. You just didn’t want to do it at the very start because the seasonings might have burned.)  

As you can see, my potatoes did NOT hold up very well.

Cook THAT for about 4 minutes, to let the onion soften a little, and check your potatoes for doneness: they’re done when you can stab through them with no resistance. THEN do a fun trick that’s not at all dangerous! Take 3 eggs, crack them into a heat-safe bowl, and add a little salt and pepper (even if you seasoned the onions, seasoning the eggs as well ensures everything gets seasoning. THEN, pour the hot skillet of oil, potatoes, and onions INTO the bowl with the eggs. This gets the eggs cooking as a whole before they go into the pan, so you don’t have to do the drag and flip method you do with a normal omelette.

Add a little more oil to the pan, and make sure it’s hot before adding the mixture back in: you want it to sizzle the instant it hits, and it should bubble up around the edges, looking already cooked.

You can see it more on the top left side .

Give the tortilla a few minutes for the middle to set up, covering with a plate or lid to help cook the top.

Now, technically, if you wanted, you could skip all of this, and just BAKE the tortilla, but Kenji suggested not to, so I didn’t either. (also because avoiding using the oven keeps my kitchen from becoming a sweat lodge) But what we’re going to do is flip this sucker, a couple times. Kenji used a rim-less pan lid, but literally every lid in my house as a rim, so I used a plate. Make sure the edges are clear of the pan and not sticky, and just put the plate or lid on top of the skillet, and flip the whole system upside down, before sliding the flipped tortilla back into the pan (you’ll lose SOME egg on the plate/lid, but that’s fine)

The edges of the pan should have bubbling oil under your flipped tortilla. If the omelette is swimming in a pool of oil, that’s too much, and if the pan looks dry, it’s too little. Fry on that side for a minute or two, and then get to the weird, cool part: You’re going to flip this thing like, 5 more times. This will help round the edges of the tortilla, and will let you make sure both sides are browned to about the same color.

It will look weirdly like a planet.

Now, this timing will give you what’s called a baveuse center, that kind of goopy French-omelette texture. If you want something more fully set, just cook it a little longer. (since I intend to let mine cool slowly, my center is going to set on its own over time)  When it’s done to your liking, get it out of the pan, and onto a cutting board or serving platter. Then, it’s time to let it cool. Or not! You can eat it right now, and it’s perfectly good. But I went with Room-temp, because I ate the one I made years ago hot, and Kenji recommends it room-temp.

The traditional sauce for this is aioli, a garlic mayo we covered in the burger sauce post, which I made a “cheater’s version” of by mixing some Garlic sauce I had (sold to me by a Grecian gyro maker) with some storebought mayonnaise, served with some cubed tortilla.

Seen here in CLOSE-UP.

How is it? I thought it was pretty good! That’s the only opinion you’ll get, because both my mother and brother refused to eat any. They claimed it was because they weren’t hungry, which is an impressive state to remain in for 9 straight hours, since I ate it for breakfast, lunch, AND dinner that day, so I believe they were lying, and just refused to believe me when I told them it was perfectly safe sitting out at room temp. My only complaint was that, foolishly, I forgot to season my eggs, because I was still flustered from the earlier flubs, so I had to season each portion I took throughout the day.

You can also add other things to this dish, if you like. While the classic is eggs, potatoes, and (maybe) onions, you can find versions with peas, or chorizo, ham, cheese, etc. I definitely considered making one of those variants, but didn’t, because this recipe actually used up the last of our olive oil, and I’ve been too busy of late to run to the store and get more, and no one else in the house cooks anymore, so no one else has noticed. Still, I think it’s easy, tasty, and fairly fun, with a lot of space for customization, and cooking it all on one burner over the course of 30 minutes keeps the kitchen fairly cool, or you can do it at night and eat it the next day, allowing you to avoid the currently crushing heat. That’s a lot of pros, in my book.  

THURSDAY: I GUESS WE’RE TALKING TAPAS, SINCE I SAID THAT EARLIER.

MONDAY: SHIT. THE RECIPE I HAVE PREPARED, I WANT TO SAVE FOR ANOTHER WEEK. LET ME WORK SOMETHING OUT, AND I’LL GET BACK TO YOU.

Recipe

Spanish Tortilla

Serves 3-4 as an entrée, 6-8 as an appetizer or tapas

Ingredients

¼ cup olive oil, plus more if needed.

2 potatoes, peeled, thinly sliced, and halved or quartered

½ an onion, thinly sliced

3 eggs

Salt and Pepper

Aioli (for serving)

Preparation

1. Heat the oil in an 8” skillet or pan over medium-high heat. Toss with the sliced potatoes to coat, before adding back to the skillet and frying for roughly 6-7 minutes, until starting to crisp around the edges, stirring occasionally.

2. Add the onions, tossing again, adding salt and pepper if desired. Cook for another 4 minutes, until potatoes are browning around the edges, and can be pierced without resistance.

3. Beat the eggs with salt and pepper in a heat-safe bowl, before adding the oil, onions, and potatoes from the skillet to the eggs, and tossing to combine. Pour the mixture back into the skillet, and fry for 2-3 minutes, until the middle is set.

4. Flip the tortilla, and fry another minute or so. Flip the tortilla several times to round the edges, and move to a cutting board, either to cut and serve immediately, or to let cool before serving.