Tortilla de Patata from Spain

Interview and recipe provided by Ricardo Jimenez Serrano

Ricardo was born and raised in Spain. This is his story about a favorite dish close to his heart.

​My dad's family is from Madrid, and my mom's family is from a small village in Northern Spain, not far away from where the Spanish language was born. I came to the US in 2007 for what was supposed to be a two-year work assignment- and here I am, almost 15 years later.
​As a kid I spent a long time with my grandparents and my uncle/aunt at the small village, and "tortilla de patata" was a very frequent dinner. With time I started liking it much better as a leftover meal for the next day, rather than just freshly cooked, so I remember asking my grandmom to save my piece for the next day and have something else for dinner instead. That's why you can almost always see "tortilla de patata" as tapas in bars and restaurants because it tastes awesome as a cold appetizer a day or two after it has been cooked.
When I left Spain after college and moved to Germany, pursuing an international professional career outside Spain, I had to learn how to cook simple things that would last for a long time in the fridge. I have never been very good at cooking, but this dish is so easy that any person can do it. And it is difficult to get it wrong. I think the first "tortilla de patata" I cooked was with my mom on the phone giving me the instructions on how to fry the potatoes and how to flip the tortilla without letting it drop.

Recipe

• 5 medium (or 4 large) potatoes
  
• 4 eggs
  
• half an onion (optional)
  
• olive oil
  
• salt and pepper​

1. Peel, wash, and cut the potatoes in long fines slices. The finer, the better.

2. Fry the potatoes with abundant olive oil, smashing them as they get softer until you get a mesh of fried potatoes.

3. If using the onion, cut it into small pieces and add it to the pan when the potatoes are half fried.

4. Add salt and pepper to taste.

5. While the potatoes and the onion are frying, beat the eggs in a large bowl. 

6. When the potatoes and the onion are all fried, scoop them out of the pan letting as much oil as possible to drip off and mix them in the bowl with the eggs.

7. Let the mix sit for a few minutes to allow the potatoes to absorb some of the egg and the final result will be denser and drier. Otherwise, it might end up runnier than you would like.

8. To cook the tortilla you will need a different non-stick pan with no oil on it. Put the mix in the pan on a medium fire, and after a couple of minutes, you will need to flip the tortilla. THIS IS THE MOST DIFFICULT STEP. You need to put a plate on the pan, covering the whole tortilla, and flip it while doing upwards pressure on the plate against the pan. After that, just slip the flipped tortilla back into the pan so that it cooks on both sides. Two minutes per side should be plenty.

9. To eat the tortilla, you can cut it in pieces like you would do with a cake, or you can cut it in small squares and stick toothpicks in them so that many people can share the same tortilla tapas-like.