Frying, the Spanish way
Or, reduce, reuse, recycle.
The secret is not a secret at all: use reusable vegetable oils. That’s olive, corn or sunflower; those three are the oils that are highest in oleic acid (therefore lower in “any other fatty acids”), it’s about 99.99% of the fatty acids in olive oil and upwards of 90% in the other two (if memory serves, I’m writing offline and don’t have my “natural chemistry” classnotes here). Oleic acid can be heated a lot more than other oils, it doesn’t “coagulate” with itself and can be reused; it’s also good for your cholesterol - well, that’s how the olive industry says it, in reality it’s at least less bad than fatty acids with several double bonds (found in “lesser oils” and animal fat) or, worse, with trans- bonds (found in hydrogenated fats). The only times myself, my grandmothers or Mom have ever thrown used oil away it was because we were moving house: that’s a combined 250 years of cooking. And it’s one of the reasons why a single liter of olive oil can last yours truly half a year or more, in spite of not using any other oils.
When you’re done using these oils for frying, you do not throw them away, but store them. If you have a small pan (a handspan in diameter from edge to edge) that you use exclusively to fry eggs and single-person omelettes, as most Spanish households do (I’ve never been to one which didn’t, “frying an egg” being defined as the lowest common denominator of cooking), then you just leave your eggs oil in the eggs pan.
You need to keep between one and three enameled jars or cups for your used oil. Pour your oil there through a thin-metal-mesh colander when you’re done frying. Most veggies won’t leave any taste to the oil. Meat will and its own fats transfer to the oil, so oil from meat must be reused either for the same kind of meat or for things like soup, mashed potatoes (instead of gravy, add a tiny tiny bit of used oil) or tomato sauce. Fish transfers a lot of taste, specially blue fish: you can separate it (and use it for your fish stock, rice, pasta) or you can fry some leaves of lettuce before transferring it to the common jar, you may need to change the leaves a couple times until the oil passes the “ok, this doesn’t smell like fish at all any more” test.
Tortilla individual
Meaning omelette, not the ones for tacos. Sized for one. For two you can use the same pan, but two eggs.
“Tortilla francesa”: in a single-egg-sized pan, pour a bit of oil. While it heats on the fire, scramble an egg with a dash of salt. When the oil is hot, pour off to your general oil jar as much of it as you can. Put it back on the fire, pour the scrambled egg in. Use a fork to fold it over itself as it gets done. If you like your omelette “soft,” just fold it a couple times and turn it over once so it’s solid enough to fork it over to the plate without pouring egg all over the countertop; if you like it “brick hard,” give it a couple turns patting it with the fork.
“Tortilla de…”: as above, only you add a chopped-up extra ingredient to the scrambled egg, either before pouring it to the pan or sprinkling it after pouring. Most newbies tend to put too much of the extra when they mix it beforehand. Common extras are canned tuna, chorizo, meltable cheese, mushrooms… If your extra is tiny bits of several veggies (no potato) it’s called “tortilla Juliana;” there’s also a “sopa Juliana” which is your basic veggies (no potato) soup with the veggies chopped up in tiny bits.
If you have bread of kinds similar to baguette or ciabatta, a sandwich made with one of these tortillas (whole, they are the right shape for a Spanish barra) makes a great lunch for someone on the go.
Tortilla de patatas
Ingredients: good oil, potatoes, eggs, salt. Onion (optional). The onion acts as a natural preservative, it keeps the omelette juicy and “unrusted” longer.
You will need a large pan; how large depends on how big you want your omelette to be (am I helpful or what). A fried-eggs pan is large enough for a 2-3 portions tortilla, the 3-people one will just be deeper and juicier (well, either juicy or burnt).
You will also need two dishes larger than the pan, one of which has enough of an edge to hold a mountain of potatoes over a lake of scrambled egg without pouring egg all over your kitchen, but at the same time this edge is low enough to slide the whole thing sideways into your frying pan without making the oil jump.
I have no idea how much the potatoes for a 4-egg tortilla weigh, as we always measure them by eye. It would be one medium-sized potato and one egg per person. If you like it “wet,” add one more egg than mouths expected around the table. Since it’s quite common to have miscalculated the amounts and need an extra egg anyway, I recomend starting with that extra the first times; once you get an eye for your potatage and your taste in omelettes, adjust your recipe.
Tapas style: this is actually considered somewhat heretic to be done anywhere except in a bar. Chop up the potatoes and onions in tiny bits. Fry them (although, as Ogette is my witness, most bars don’t so much fry as boil them). The frying part is the same.
Home style: slice the potatoes. Deep-fry them; this means so much oil that for any other dish it would be called “drowning.” You can scramble the eggs (no salt) in a deep plate either before you start frying the potatoes or, if you have enough practice to do two things at the same time, while the oil heats up. I’m assuming you use a pan, if you use a deep fryer do it normally but take the potatoes out sooner than you normally would. The oil must be hot enough that it’s frying, not boiling. To see that the oil is hot enough, drop a small piece inside when you think it’s already hot; when the piece of potato isn’t just swimming about but trying to jump in place, add the rest. The potato slices change color twice as they fry: they become translucid first, later they brown. If you’re using onion: add the finely chopped bits to the pan when the potatoes are about half-fried and don’t worry about whether it gets done or not. Take them out of the pan and onto the scrambled egg when they’re translucid but not brown. Salt them when everything is on the deep dish.
Pour off the oil into a large enameled jar. Put the pan back on the fire, on low. Add the egg and potatoes to the pan, sliding them in sideways from the plate, setting the potatoes more-or-less equally all over the egg. When the egg on the bottom is done (i.e., at the point where you’d fold it over if it was a normal omelette), transfer it back to the plate. This is done by covering the pan with your plate, taking it up from the fire, turning it over (one hand on the plate’s bottom, one on the pan’s handle), lifting the pan-now-lid and placing it back on the fire. Careful: it’s heavy and hot!
Don’t even think of flipping it up, I’m not responsible for you having to call both the paramedics and a painter for your kitchen: it’s a potato omelette, not a pancake. Cover the plate with another plate; turn this “plates and omelette sandwich” over: now you have a plate with the potatoes on top of it and the done half of the omelette on top of the potatoes, push it sideways back into the pan.
When the bottom half is, again, done, take it out into the plate you’ll serve from, using the same pan-becomes-lid method as before.
It can be served by itself as a main dish (I know some people who like using tomato sauce as a dip, but they’re the kind of folk who’ll put tomato sauce in their pasta Alfredo); by itself in smaller portions as a pincho (the portion should be small enough to be held aloft when you grab it by the toothpick from which “pinchos” get their name); by itself in small portions on a slice of bread (as a “tapa” or lid on the bread); it can go into a baguette as a sandwich, sliced into pieces so it fits the bar of bread (in this case, it’s better to use pamtomaca, as a sandwich with only the omelette will easily be too dry).
Not sure if this was already in the blog:
pamtomaca, pà amb tomaquet
A Catalan invention; “pà amb tomaquet” means “bread with tomato.” The other spelling is how it sounds to someone who can’t spell Catalan, the stress is on the ma. In Spanish bars you can see either spelling. In Catalonia and the Balearic Isles, baguette sandwhiches from bars are with tomato by default; in other parts of the country you need to ask for the tomato.
You need: overripe tomatoes, (salt) , oil, (garlic), (toasted) bread, (ham, salami…).
The toasting isn’t optional with sliced bread, as that one simply isn’t solid enough to withstand the process otherwise. If you like it with garlic, cut a garlic clove in half and squash it over the bread before you do it with the tomato; it should be sort of trail-like, rather than trying to cover all the bread in garlic taste. Recomendation: don’t mix garlic and other extras, everybody I know who’s tried it says it doesn’t work well.
The tomatoes should be too ripe to be used in a salad. Cut them through the equator. Flip them on the bread, so the triangular spaces where the tomato keeps its seeds are directly in contact with the bread. Push it around, so all the bread gets tomatoed. Toss away the remaining of the tomato (unless you’re my Grandpa, who just salts it and munches it away because “i’z a zin da zrow au’ 'ood” “don’t lie, Grandpa, you just like it” “true that, are you done with the other half?”).
Pour a biiiiiit of oil on the bread. Don’t drench it, please, or at least do it where my arteries and tastebuds won’t be offended by the sight. If you’re having the pamtomaca by itself, you can introduce it to the salt shaker (who is in a hurry to go away).
Great by itself, or with sliced ham (York, prosciutto, serrano), salami…; either as a tapa (one slice of bread, the meat on top) or as a sandwhich.
(“it’s a sin to throw out food,” in Mouthfullish)
Never seen that variation, tell me more.