Eat Drink Man Weblog

Apologies to EDMW readers for my absence – a combination of travel and illness has kept me out of the loop. I’m beginning to feel like my old self again, so I’ll return to my goal of writing about food a few times a week. Please stop by.

Last week my mother conscripted me to whip up some tapas for her colleagues. Coming from her, dinner for six is getting off light, so I gladly obliged.

While Mom hit Wegman’s for some exotic ingredients, I got down to business with what we had on hand: Eggs, potatoes, garlic, onion, olive oil, salt and pepper. A Tortilla Española requires only seven ingredients.

It doesn't take much to make delicious tapas.

One of the most fascinating things about food is that it is perhaps the world’s greatest catalyst for innovation. Everyone on earth must eat, and all too often, there is not much food to go around. That fundamental truth has inspired inventions that have shifted the very foundations of society. Ariculture began as a cobbled-together collection of tricks to coax more calories from land, and went on to facilitate the world’s first cities. The development of beer allowed even the impoverished access to a safe liquid to drink, making it one of the world’s first disease fighting technologies.

But even on a much smaller scale, individual recipes can speak to man’s innovative spirit. Coc Au Vin is, at heart, a trick to make stringy, old rooster palatable. French onion soup delivers hearty warmth with only a handful of ingredients. But I cannot think of single recipe in the world that delivers more for less than a Tortilla Española. It is hearty, flavorful, and beautiful.

I started with this recipe, cut in half. I began by gathering all my ingredients. I weighed out a little over one pound of fingerling potatoes, on hand from One Straw Farm. Fingerling potatoes have more surface area per ounce than their bulkier brothers. Because the potatoes were destined to get peeled, they would be loosing more weight to the peeling than the full grown russets ever would, so I made sure to set aside a few extra ounces. Then I grabbed an onion, two cloves of garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper, and I was good to go.

The trickiest part of the preparation was peeling the potatoes, but only because I own a mandolin. My mandoline turned a pound of potatoes into uniform 1/8^th inch slices in under two minutes. But she is a big, black monster that lives above my refrigerator because I only use her a handful of times per year.

A mean slicing machine

Cooks Illustrated recently gave the thumbs up to the Kyocera Adjustable Mandoline Slicer. It’s a mandoline that can fit in a utility drawer, affordably priced at $25. If you frequently find yourself in the need for thin, uniform slices of vegetables, you should buy one. Because it lacks a stand, a large batch of potatoes will begin to strain your grip, but the ease of storage more than makes up for it.

If you lack a mandoline, then just make sure to take your time when cutting the potatoes. Uniform slices cook evenly, preventing patches of raw potato in your final dish, and there’s no reason to rush.

No matter how you get there, even slices are the key

My potatoes were cut, so I quickly diced the onion and garlic. I beat three eggs and set them aside. I put a paper towel over a plate so that I could drain my potatoes. It was time to fry.

It's time to fry

Remembering my negative frittata experience, I selected a nonstick pan because I’d be dealing with eggs. I used my kitchen scale to measure out a half cup (four fluid ounces) of olive oil directly into my pan. Oil is a pain to wash out of measuring cups, so I use this maneuver whenever possible.

Following the recipe’s instructions, I alternated layers of potato, onion, garlic and salt into my pan. Then I reduced the heat to very low. Making this recipe is a lot more like poaching potatoes in oil than frying them. Every four minutes I flipped the potatoes around to make sure they were cooking evenly. There’s no hope of maintaining the potato strata after a flip, so I didn’t stress about it.

Layers of flavors

I fished out the potatoes and let them cool slightly before adding them to the eggs, for fear they’d otherwise scramble. I let the potatoes seep up the egg for a full 15 minutes. I used the downtime to gather my reserve oil, clean my pan, and re-oiled it.

Potatoes soaking in egg

When my potatoes had finished the egg bath, I cranked up the heat. I dumped the eggs in as quickly as possible and smoothed out the top with my spatula. After ten minutes, my tortilla was ready to flip. The layer of egg at the top of the pan was just begging to set up, and the toasty scent of frying potatoes filled the kitchen.

If I had been making a frittata, I would’ve had to do a lot of fancy spatula work to guarantee even cooking. But a Tortilla Española is super densely packed with potatoes, which, owing to their soak, are each coated in a thin layer of egg. The construction of the dish itself ensures even cooking without the cook’s poking or prodding.

I covered the pan with a plate, held it firmly in place with mitted-hands, and flipped the pan upside down. A beautiful, browned dome was revealed. Then I slid the un-fried side of the tortilla into the bottom of the pan to brown. Five minutes later, my tortilla was done.

A beautifully browned tortilla

When Mom returned from the market, she told me that everyone had called and canceled. I had accidentally made myself a wonderful dinner. I ate it with cilantro, Parmesan, and sour cream. Seven ingredients never tasted so good.

Dinner . . . for me?