INGREDIENTS (serves 3-4 tortillas)
10 mid-size potatoes
3 eggs per tortilla (a dozen to be safe)
1 big yellow onion
Spanish chorizo. You need about 300 grams. At Metro, you can find a sliced chorizo package. The brand is Campesino (125 grams).
1 bunch of parsley (flatleaf) – Note: only a small portion of the bunch will be used
1 teaspoon of Paprika
½ teaspoon of black pepper
Regular cooking oil
Olive oil
Salt
PREPARATION
Pre-planning – things to do before you actually cook anything
1. Peel the potatoes and chop them in small pieces ensuring you get some porosity; this will help to create a potato “paste”. You can achieve this by ripping off the potatoes. Do not peel the potatoes too much in advance before cooking since they might turn brown due to oxidation. This is the most time-consuming task. Do it as a team while telling jokes or something like that
2. Peel the onion and chop it in slices
3. Chop the chorizo in small pieces
4. Chop a handful of parsley into very tiny pieces
The potato “paste” – this is the “grandma” secret to get a nice & smooth texture for your tortilla filling
1. In a large, heavy, non-stick frying pan, add 2 spoons of olive oil and the chorizo and fry until brown on medium-high heat (don’t let the chorizo burn!)
2. Then add the onion slices to the frying pan until they become transparent
3. On medium heat, add the cooking oil until the onions are fully covered
4. Add the potatoes, 2 teaspoons of salt, ½ teaspoon of black pepper and 1 teaspoon of paprika. Mix all ingredients and keep cooking until you start seeing some of the potato pieces (say 10-20% of them) collapse forming a paste.
5. At this point, turn off the heat and put the frying pan aside.
Finally! – the tortillas
1. In the frying pan, press/push the potato paste to one side, leaving a pile on one side and the oil on the other side. The idea is to squeeze the paste as much as possible to drain the oil.
2. On a separate large bowl, add ¼ of the potato paste (about 2 cups or 3-4 big cooking spoons), and a couple pinches of the chopped parsley.
3. In a small recipient, crack 3 eggs, stir them and add salt to taste. Add the eggs to the large bowl with the paste and the parsley and mix all the ingredients. This is the mix for one tortilla.
4. In a small frying pan (I use a 7.5”DIA x 1.5”H frying pan), add 2 teaspoons of the oil from the large frying pan (the one with the potato paste). On medium heat, add the mix from the bowl and cook until the borders are brown (but not black ). Turn over the tortilla and cook for 3-4 more minutes. Note: use a plate to turn over the tortilla. This task is dangerous as you can get burned with the hot oil. Please take precautions. Safety first! The tortilla burns very easily so in this phase I recommend your undivided attention. No joke-telling. I’m not joking
5. Voila! You have made your first Spanish tortilla. Put it aside and let it cool down. It is better to serve it when it is warm-cold. If you eat it the next day the tortilla won’t collapse when cut and it will be much tastier. This is my “official” posture. The reality is that I jump over the tortilla when it is still at hell temperature
6. Repeat numbers 2 to 4 to make 2 or 3 more tortillas.
Notes:
– the goal of this recipe is to obtain a smooth & homogeneous potato filling. That is why this is a time-consuming recipe. Some people just chop the potato in regular round slices, bypassing the rip-off step. The texture obtained in this case is not that good although the flavor is the same.
– this dish is ideal for the outdoors (picnics). There is no need to reheat it and it really fills you up.
– once you get familiar with this recipe you can play with the proportions/ingredients. For example, you can try one more egg per tortilla (4 instead of 3). Some people use bacon or prosciutto instead of chorizo. You can obviously reduce/increase the salt; the same applies to the parsley which could be eliminated if you don’t like it.
– the main concern when I make this dish is security. Do not allow small children to get too close to you while you are cooking this dish. Sometimes the worst accidents happen at home. Also, make sure you don’t get burned when turning over the tortillas. I learned that by experience; a bad one
COLABORADOR-FUENTE: Martin Perez – based on my mom’s recipe from her days in Madrid