NOT YOUR COMPADRE'S TORTILLA

LA TORTILLA

This past Monday night, my very Spanish and very fabulous friend Marta came by to show me some love.  After working all day , she took the PATH train, chez moi. She hunted & gathered ingredients on Grove Street: potatoes, onions, lettuce, bread and chocolate @the Korean grocer & a nice bottle of Chilean Carmenere @the booze shop. Did I mention that she also picked up some beautiful coral tulips and artfully arranged them on my dining table?

For those of you not schooled in authentic Spanish cooking, la tortilla española, a very simple, humble dish is the piéce de resistance of most informal or formal Spanish gatherings and, of course, the tapas table.

Although la tortilla has endless variations, (where you're from in Spain or your Abuela's recipe), typically, it is comprised of potatoes & onions. This classic is what Marta cobbled together.

First, you peel the potatoes.  Then, you are extremely liberal in pouring a good quality olive oil into the pan.  When this is nice & warm (but not sizzling) you cook & barely brown the potatoes.

This is an important detail. Marta obsessed about the potatoes sticking to the pan. This will not do because the eggs will stick later & the structure of the tortilla will be compromised. Then you add the onions. As the onions start to cook, you will probably have had some wine while you munch on almonds.  The smell of the onions wafting is lovely, earthy, yummy...& the spiciness of the Carmenere grape heightens the experience.  The potatoes & onions need to structurally bind & then we're ready for the eggs. In this case, we needed to clean up the pan to get rid of any sticky pieces of potatoes.  (This was my contribution, on one leg) 

 Olé!!! Now the artistry of La mano de Marta comes into play. The eggs have to cook nicely (without burning of course) on one side & then it needs to flip onto a dish in one piece to cook the other side. This is easily done with tiny, skinny omelets, but, this is no ordinary tortilla. Marta deftly does the flip. She loses a corner of the tortilla, but, she is able to later recover it. Bravo!!!

We sit down to eat the omelet & drink the wine. We finish with a crisp salad of Bibb lettuce & vine tomatoes...refreshing.  There is dark chocolate with ginger for dessert. Qué bien!!!!

Well, "we sit down" is a figure of speech. I had been on my wheelchair watching Marta assemble & cook most of the night. Here is a cheesy, iphoto vignetty vantage from my sock clad perspective. On one leg, but, still hanging.