Cheap & Tasty: Tortilla Espanola

If you’ve been to any of the trendy tapas places around DC – or any other urban area – you’ve probably seen Tortilla Espanola on the menu. It’s very simple dish, basically a Spanish omelet/quiche hybrid. Cooking it is a breeze and leaves your house smelling of hash browns for a day afterward, which is a major bonus. Plus, it’s SUPER cheap and is a classy way to make the those last few days before the paycheck go faster.

And though cheap and tasty, still swanky: Mario Batali made a Tortilla Espanola as part of his tapas plate in Iron Chef America’s “Battle Garlic.” So garnish with pride and pretend you’re at Babbo.

I referenced recipes from the Washington Post and Epicurious in making this, but here’s my version:

Tortilla Espanola

Approx. 8 eggs, beaten
6 cups peeled and diced (1/2 in.) potatoes
2 medium diced yellow onions
salt & pepper to taste

lots of olive oil

Heat about 1/2 cup of the olive in a 10 inch nonstick skillet (if your pan is slightly larger or smaller, it’s fine) over medium high heat. Once oil is hot, add half of the chopped onion & potato mixture. Cover and cook over medium heat until mixture is browned but not mushy; stir periodically to keep it from burning. Dump the cooked potato & onion mixture into a large bowl to cool; add more olive oil to the skillet and cook the rest of the batch in the same manner. (Note – you can cook them all at once, it’s just a LOT easier and less messy this way. Unless you have a gargantuan skillet pan, in which case, go for it!)

Add the second batch of cooked roots to the first and let cool. Add the beaten eggs, salt, and pepper and thoroughly coat the potatoes. If you feel the need, add more beaten eggs. I wouldn’t go above the Epicurious’ suggestion of 10, but you’re definitely going to need at least 6.

Back to your skillet – add 1/4 cup of olive oil and heat it up to medium. Pour all of the eggy mixture into the pan and smooth out the top with a spatula. Keep heat low-ish to prevent burning – from experience, it will still taste good, but the tortilla is much less pretty when it’s black. Cook for about 10 minutes, occasionally running a spatula along the rim of the skillet to loosen the tortilla.

Now comes the fun part – when you can feel the tortilla slide around a bit on the skillet, ensuring its doneness, get out a big plate. Invert the plate on top of the skillet and flip the tortilla onto the plate. Slide the not-as-cooked side of the tortilla back into the skillet and cook for about another 5 minutes, until the tortilla is solid. You’re done!

For serving, there really is no “right” side up. The skillet side is usually rounder and prettier, but the non-skillet side give a better view of the potatoes and other tortilla innards.

Some other notes:

You must use a nonstick pan. I tried cooking some of the potato/onion mixture in an iron skillet and it was much messier. Had I attempted to add the eggs, the tortilla would not have stayed intact.

Do not be afraid of the salt! I grew up in a salt-fearing household, so I am conditioned to undersalt, but go ahead and pour it on (the pepper too, and any other spices you deem worthy) to make sure you’re getting the most flavor out of your potatoes.

Oh, and if you’re feeling decadent, add some bacon to the mix and make your kitchen smell even better. Just cut back on the olive oil a bit.

Technorati Tags: Food, Recipes, Eggs, Cooking

 

Je t’aime, Coq au Vin

Go and buy the Nov/Dec issue of Cook’s Illustrated. Go now. It food gold. Food gold.

Aand dear readers, the following post breaks practically all of our standards; if you’re looking a fast, inexpensive meal, you should look here or here (or here), because this certainly isn’t one of them.

When I saw the coq au vin recipe I knew I had to do it. “Fast” the editors suggested, “easy”. It was neither, but oh my God it was amazing; perhaps the best dish I’ve ever made. One of the top five for sure.

After a rough start foraging at the Pathmark (no frozen pearl onions, only ones frozen with a sherry cream sauce, hardly any skinless/boneless chicken thighs, and, not surprisingly no cremini mushrooms [actually, I ended up with baby ‘bella mushrooms, which are another name for creminis. The things you learn on wikipedia- skp]), I got some editing done and started cooking at about 5:30.

At about 8:45 I started to get nervous. They said this was going to be easy. And fast (90 minutes). Boiling down the wine, cutting up the chicken, and mushrooms, browning both, making lardons, browning them, peeling and cutting up the vegetables for my root vegetable puree, boiling them, boiling down the wine more should not have taken so much time. It did.

And after it was all over I did get to spend about minutes enjoying it. The sauce was incredible; a whole bottle of pinot noir, some butter, garlic and mushrooms. Damn. The chicken thighs were juicy and tender.

Oh, and the aforementioned mashed root vegetables:

6 medium yukon gold potatoes cut into 2-in cubes
1 lb carrots, cut into 2-in cubes
1 lb parsnips, cut into 2-in cubes
1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 cup chicken stock
4 tablespoons (or 1/2 stick) butter
Kosher salt and black pepper to taste

Boil potatoes, carrots, and parsnips until tender in salted water. Drain. Mash viciously (in boiling pot). Add milk, stock, and butter. Mash on. Feel free to add more milk or stock to your taste.

And while you’re at it, grab the October and November Gourmet issues. Lots of great recipes in Quick Kitchen and the other sections near it. I served the coq au vin and roots with some roasted acorn squash with chile vinaigrette from the Oct. issue.

Technorati Tags: Food, Coq au Vin, Parsnip, Cooking
Special thanks to ginandtonic1978 over at flickr for the coq au vin picture and epicurious for the squash.

 

From the Office for Unmitigated Failure: Strawberry Frittata

I will adapt from Alice B. Toklas, cookbook author.

“The [frittata] was dead, killed, assassinated, murdered in the first, second, and third degree. Limp, I fell into a chair with my hands still unwashed , reached for a cigarette, lighted it and waited for the police to come.”

In the last few weeks, I have committed over 4 quarts of otherwise wonderful strawberries to an awful death. When this project started, I was reasonably confident that I could adapt some existing recipes to recreate some subway musician’s hallucination of a frittata containing strawberries and ricotta cheese.

The first iteration gave me hope. It wasn’t too bad, I reckoned; less cheese, more strawberries, and maybe some melted cheese could make it work. What I didn’t realize was that it was the strawberries themselves that were the problem. This new frittata with shredded Gruyere cheese, ricotta, and all the normal frittata ingredients would have been egg-a-licious if it weren’t for the disgustingly stewed strawberries.

There are only a few times in my gustatory history where I can remember feeling physically revolted upon tasting anything. No, just one time. Stewed carrots. I was five.

I can understand why it failed, but I don’t know how to fix it. The recipe has too much liquid in it. Too much liquid that gives it that nauseating, soggy, soupy quality. No food porn either. It looked horrifying. That and my inability to read, measure, and execute simple tasks. In a ray of potentially good news, I decided to top it with a strawberry salsa. Unlike the frittata, the salsa didn’t suck (however, in all truthfulness, I botched that recipe, too. Instead of leafy coriander, I used coriander seeds. In my defense, the recipe wasn’t specific about what kind of coriander was to be used.)

If I were to make it again, I would vigorously reduce the liquid contents; draining the ricotta liquid, no water, and maybe draining any strawberry juice. Also, I might put the strawberries in much later in the cooking process, instead of in the beginning (to stop them from stewing).

In conclusion, I cannot, in good conscience, continue development of this recipe and for the same reasons cannot publish my working recipe. I cannot subject anyone, no matter how brave, to it. Save yourselves, and please, think of the strawberries.

Technorati Tags: Food, Recipe, Failure, Cooking

 

From Recipe Development: Strawberry Frittata

This has a weird story behind it, so I may as well get it out of the way.

There’s a subway performer that I talk to in the 14th Street traverse – that hot, awful, uphill, block-long tunnel from 6th to 7th Avenues. Richard plays the flugelhorn, which is basically a mellower-sounding trumpet, and he started talking to me one time when I stopped to listen to him (while that traverse might not be good for much, the echoes make a trumpet sound awesome).

Anyway, since then I’ve had a couple of interesting conversations with him. During one of them, I mentioned that I loved trying (and writing about) new and interesting foodstuffs, so he told me a story about how he and his bandmates were instantly and ravenously hungry this one time and they made a strawberry frittata with ricotta cheese in it.

That was a few months ago, right after I made the bacon and mustard greens frittata, actually, and the idea of developing a strawberry frittata has been kicking around in my mind since then.

After taking a trip out to see my dad in the Hamptons, I got some strawberries from the local farm stand that made me want to try the recipe out. I’m not going to give specifics until it’s good enough to share with our general readership, but the first attempt came out reasonably well. I purposely made it quite bland so I could see what I had to work with, only adding eggs, whole-milk ricotta, and chopped and macerated strawberries.

I might take it in a South American/ Spanish direction by making some kind of fruit salsa.

Technorati Tags: Food, Strawberry, Long Island, Cooking