Ketchup Parte Tres

Every once in a while I get a hankering for Spanish food.  I'm a teensy bit obsessed with Spain and Spanish culture after having studied abroad there in the spring of my junior year, and there are times when I just wish I could be back in my host mom Mayte's kitchen. I was actually sort of appalled with Spanish food when I first got there, and it took me a while to get into it.  There's a ton of oil, enough bread to knock out an army of Atkins dieters, and NO BIG SALADS!  I got past this pretty quickly because, well, it's all incredibly delicious, and guess what?  I didn't gain a pound while I was there.  So, viva la comida espanola!


Here is Mayte, her husband Fernando, my roommate Kate, and me, before we left.

We bought them chef hats :)

Anyway, one of my favorites was tortilla sandwich, also known as carbfest.  Tortilla espanola is basically a potato omelet, and usually they leave the eggs a little runny inside.  Obviously it's totally unnecessary to put something like potato and egg on bread, but it's kind of like heaven, and it was my favorite bagged lunch.


I was actually looking up soup recipes on Smitten Kitchen when I stumbled upon Deb's Spanish food section.  And immediately soup was out of the picture.  I was reading through her recipe for tortilla, when I realized that it was from a cookbook that I own!  And, as a matter of fact, WORKED ON!  I had a publishing internship one summer, and this was a book that I read and copy-edited a little.  It is the one and only, the beautiful and stunning... The New Spanish Table, by Anya von Bremzen.  I worked on the book while applying to my study abroad program, and I was totally jazzed about the whole thing.  And then kind of forgot about it?!  But it's great, and now that I'm a little chef, I will be pulling it off the shelf more often.

My tortilla skills are still a work in progress, but overall it went well.


Potatoes and onions and just a touch (HA!) of olive oil.  More like 1/4 of a cup.

Adding the eggs...

MIRACULOUSLY post-flip...

And plated!

Does that look like a little potato heart in the middle to anyone else?  It was a little overcooked, and I think my pan was too big because it didn't come out as thick as it should be, but this was a very successful first attempt.  It will be done again and mastered!  Maybe a little less photography and a little more focus on cooking would help...

Deb's recipe is here (and I wish I had read her comments before trying it on my own), and she did a good job typing it up, so why re-invent the wheel?  I made half of the recipe (so 3 eggs and most of a potato), and I ate it as 2 meals with veggie sides.  If you actually want to make a tortilla, I will gladly offer assistance.  And a hungry tummy.

Next up: CRUISING!


OH!  And Allison's cake recipe.