Turf War

Rafa met me for lunch yesterday, and we discussed our dinner plans. I let him know that I was thinking of making a Spanish omelette for dinner, and prefaced it with 'well, the recipe actually comes from THE book so it is not entirely authentic.' I always have to preface 'authentic' recipes in this way because as a proud Spaniard, Rafa is quite keen to eat food of his childhood the way he knows it should be made. But last night was going to be different, and this recipe needed to be done, so he would have to put his pride on the side for a while.

17. Spanish Omelette - *Toast*

18. Tomato and Red Onion Salad - *Pasta*

The Tortilla Española has always been a matter of household debate. Traditionally the potatoes for this very rich omelette need to be deep-fried. However, and this is where I take objection to the whole tradition malarkey of it, we don't have a deep-fryer. Whenever Rafa decides he wants to make it I envision an entire huge stock pot full of oil that eventually we need to throw away -- what a waste! Tom feels the same way, and this is why he wanted to take another approach. My previous attempts at the tortilla have been to pan-fry the potatoes with only a couple of tablespoons of oil and fairly small cubes of potatoes. It seemed to always work out well... So the previous time we had tortilla, Rafa did it his way. The time previous to that, I did it my way. Last night, we did it Tom's way!

I wanted to pair the omelette with a nice salad to cut through the carbs a bit, so I decided on the Tomato and Red Onion Salad from the Pasta chapter. I started on the salad first; basically it involves slicing up three ripe tomatoes and one red onion, putting them into a bowl with some olive oil, red wine vinegar, a pinch of salt and sugar, and leaving it to develop its flavors for a little while.

While the salad ingredients were getting to know each other a bit better, I got on with the omelette. First, two onions are thinly sliced and fried over a low flame with a cup of olive oil. (I was quite surprised at the amount of oil too, but some of it was used later on, and it was a lot less than the amount would be if we were deep-frying!) So, the onions slowly simmered for about a half an hour till they got meltingly sweet and soft.

While that was going on, I started on the potatoes. Tom asked to use 4 large potatoes. In my potato bag, I saw three large-ish potatoes and the rest were on the small side. So I took 3 large potatoes and 2 small potatoes, peeled them, then sliced them in half, and then cut 5mm slices. They were put to boil until just tender. Once they were done, they were strained into a colander. The onions were strained into a separate colander, reserving the onion juices and oil. Then, the onions and potatoes were combined in a big bowl with about 4 tablespoons of the oil mixture mixed in and a pinch of salt.

Then it was just a matter of beating six eggs, mixing it in with the potatoes and onions, and adding more seasoning.

At this point, things got a wee bit more complicated! Tom suggests to use a 20cm non-stick pan. I thought that this size pan seemed a bit too small for the entire mixture, (this may have to do with I didn't use the correct amount of potatoes, but what does 'large' mean anyway??)but I decided to go with the instructions. The pan needed to be heated on a fairly high heat till it was smokin' and then two tablespoons of the oil mixture were added to the pan. And then the entire mixture of potatoes and eggs and onions was to go in! As I was pouring it in I could see it was about to overflow so I decided to quickly transfer everything to my 24cm pan. After a few seconds, I thought, "SHIT", the new pan wasn't coated in oil. It was at that point that I kept an eye on the omelette and hoped very very much that my non-stick would do its job.

When it seemed the bottom of the omelette was setting, I relegated the flipping-of-omelette duty to Rafa.. He is much more dexterous than I am, plus I was feeling quite buggered at this point and did not want to be responsible for any more disasters! The flipping went OK, but the bottom seemed to be blackened. I was getting worried that the other side would get black too, so I only waited a couple of minutes before I asked Rafa to do a second flip for me into the plate. And here is the finished product:

Not too bad, right?! Well upon eating it, we both discovered it was quite good!! (And Rafa was sure to say how nice it looked; he could tell I was feeling a bit deflated over the entire pan debacle!) However, some parts of the omelette did not set fully, but still enough to not cause us to be sent to the emergency room!

My slice with some salad and gaucha sauce on top.

Rafa and I may not agree the proper way to cook a Spanish omelette, but one thing that is mandatory is to drown the tortilla in gaucha sauce. Mmmmmm. The best condiment this world has ever seen. We can only find it in Spain, so we stock up whenever we go there!! Pure heaven!

The salad, as I had predicted, complemented the starchy-eggyness quite well.. And I even used the tomatoes again for a sandwich I made this morning to take to work.. So watch this space, as it is another CL recipe!