Tortilla Española

Hello everyone!

For fun, I present to you a cooking photo-adventure of a favorite of mine from study abroad.

The Tortilla Española!
But instead of your typical flour-based flatbread from Latin America, it's a unique way of preparing an omelette that turns out to be absolutely delicious. You can find them at all the restaurants you come across in Spain.

We will need:



1 Large Potato (Yukon Gold is best)
3-4 Eggs
Olive Oil (copious amounts of)
Salt

Optional:
Onion
Green Bell Pepper

You'll need a peeler, a good knife for dicing, and a small frying pan (~6 inches).

The standard tortilla is simply eggs and potato, but you can add any number of other ingredients (ham, squash, etc.). The optional ingredients I chose serve to add delicious flavor to the dish. The onion is vital, but the green bell pepper is a personal favorite.



You also don't need that much of the other ingredients, but you should take apart the whole potato.

That's what I used of the onion and bell pepper.

Proceed to mince the onion and dice the other ingredients, like so:


Our goal is to soften all these bits to set the texture!
So dump them all into the pan, and add a copious amount of oil to the pan until until the base is submerged by maybe a quarter inch, and then set your flame to LOW


And let things sizzle and simmer. Salt can be added now or to the eggs later, but I find it's best to just be very liberal with the salt use here and then proceed.

I poured too much oil here BUT YOU CAN SEE THE SIZZLE

over time it'll shrivel and shrink down a bit and look sorta like this:


At which point, go ahead and try one of the potatoes to see if any more salt is necessary. If it's nice and mushy, scoop them into a bowl with the cracked and briefly beaten eggs:


At this point though, check the oil content in the pan. If it's just a shallow layer, it's fine, but if it's too much then you'll have to pour some out


I poured out a bunch because, hey, ONION/PEPPER/POTATO INFUSED OLIVE OIL 8) and left about this much in the pan, which I admit is low but it was sufficient:



The next steps were hard to photograph due to the necessity to use many hands, so there's a small gap.

Keeping the flame fairly low, pour the mix into the pan and let that simmer. Push around the vegetables to ensure an even mixture along the whole thing.

After a couple minutes, or if you can manage to poke a spatula underneath and see that the underside is not too browned, place a plate on top of the pan, covering it. Careful not to burn yourself!

Then, proceed to flip the pan so that the incomplete tortilla goes on the other side.

Quickly place the pan back on the flame. You should have a half-cooked omelette thing sitting upon its oozing egg juices


Using a spatula, push it back into the pan (make sure there's some oil still in the pan) and cook for another bunch of minutes.



You can use the toothpick technique to ensure that it is finished. When it is done, a large spatula should be able to easily lift it from the pan onto a plate



And there you have it, the Spanish Tortilla!


It's actually best if you leave the center just BARELY done, because it'll be incredibly moist and have this amazing texture to it.




I hope you enjoyed this cooking adventure! I feel that for a first post it felt a bit boring.
I'll try to make the next one fun.

ALSO I will take requests for recipes! Cataloging how I trip over cooking steps may make for some entertainment :D