On rare occasions, sometimes you remember where you had food for the first time since it leaves such a strong impression on you. The Tortilla de Patatas is one of them for me. Many moons ago when I was studying in Japan we had the whole make food from your country thing. I met people from different countries for the first time and was absolutely amazed by all the people there. A true international crew. Some people I got to meet for the first time were Spanish people. And when it came to Spanish food I knew nothing. Zip. Nada. Zilch. I was a clueless little boy and thought Mexico speaks Spanish, so therefore Spanish food = close to Mexican Food.
Yup, I just admitted that. Please don’t judge me.
A Spanish girl made one of these curious omelette potato things and she explained it was called a Tortilla and I found myself thinking “Aren’t Tortilla’s like a wrapper?? Or chips???” That’s how little I knew about Spanish food at that time. But in my defense, where I grew up there was zero Spanish cuisine so I wasn’t exposed to it at all.
Anyway, I tried one of these and the first thing I thought was… wow this tastes like breakfast. I remember saying that verbatim. I still think it tastes like breakfast, but better. I love the lovely harmony of how the savoury onions, thinly sliced potatoes in an eggy kind of goodness that come together all in one dense package. That was the only time I had it up to then.
A few years later I ventured out to Spain for the first time for a few days to go Tapa bar hopping with some friends and was surprised to find this stuff everywhere. Order a drink, free tapas which were often Tortilla’s came along which is absolutely incredible. I found it even more neat that the Spaniards would make these Tortilla Bocadillos. A tortilla sandwich! The only other carb bomb sandwich I can think of is Japan’s Yakisoba-pan, which has stir fried noodles as the filling.
Bocadillo de Tortilla
Yakisoba-pan
Today was a heavy lifting day for me, and as part of my strength program diet I carb cycle on liftings. Fancy terms for saying I go out of my way to eat carbs on workout days and I’m choosing to believe that this is good for my diet aside from the copious amounts of oil I used frying the potatoes and onions. I used eight eggs, so that’s protein. Pure gainz right there.
I’ve made these a couple times and they’re pretty simple to make. Potatoes, Onions, Eggs, Salt, and Oil.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/spanish-tortilla-recipe.html
This time around I used the recipe above. Some thoughts on it:
- Not sure if the soaking is necessary.
- I sliced my potatoes really really thin. Like potato chips thin. I think it would be better double or triple the thickness.
- Same with the onions. And I think I definitely overcooked mine. I don’t think they should be sliced thinly either, a coarse dicing should be good. When cooking, I should’ve taken it away as soon as it started getting some colour.
- Because my potatoes were really thin, some of them started becoming chips. They should just be soft
- The recipes overall used too much salt. WAY TOO MUCH SALT. I used half the amount and it was still too much. I question whether if the author is trolling or doesn’t have tastebuds anymore. .5 teaspoon to 1 teaspoon for the sofrito is more than adequate. Same goes with the tortilla itself.
- The sofrito is a very nice touch with the caramelized onions paired with the Tortillas.
- I also burnt it a little too. Gotta get the timing down.
- To flip it: Cook the tortilla for a few minutes, cover it with a lid for a few minutes so the egg more or less sets. Slide the tortilla onto a plate. Cover it with another plate. Flip. Transfer the tortilla back to the pan to finish off.
Slicing the potatoes
Grating some tomatoes
Frying the onions
Sofrito in process
Poor attempt at plating
So. Good.
