tortilla española, sorta

It was a dark and stormy morning. September the dog’s eagerness to go outside subsided like a pot of boiling water into which a frozen chicken is dropped when she stuck her nose out the door into the nearly horizontal southbound rain. Even my Helly Hansen mommy-get-that-creepy-man-away-from-me full-body rubber raincoat was no match for the blast. Missy was down with a migraine. She lay in the bed, a pillow clutched tight over her head to muffle the truck noise from the street. I asked her what she needed. She delivered her one-word reply in a muffled whisper: “Eggs.” For a moment, I had the impression that a contest of will between pain and appetite raged in her temples. Appetite won: “Potatoes. Cheese.”

This is the record of what followed.

When we lived uptown, Pedro Rodriguez, my one friend in the neighborhood, taught me to make tortilla. That’s tortilla española, the Spanish frittata that, served hot or cold, alone or in sandwiches, is a staple of Iberian breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Pedro’s Cuban, so, apparently, it made it there, too. He would carefully and separately fry potatoes, onions, and garlic; combine them with fat and beaten eggs; cook them on one side and, with the aid of a plate, invert the mass to finish frying on the other. I never mastered the plate-flipping trick, but, being an adaptive sort, I brought to his recipe a few tricks of my own.

new potatoes, onion, garlic

I started by cutting half a dozen new potatoes (bought en masse a couple of weeks ago at $0.79/lb., and depleted piecemeal) into half-inch cubes, while I warmed my iron skillet over a low flame. I coated the skillet with a quarter-inch of olive oil, brought up the heat to medium, and halved and slivered a large onion in which the fruit flies had taken an interest. I scraped the potatoes into the pan, added salt, and fried them, turning occasionally, until golden brown, about fifteen minutes.

While the potatoes cooked, I checked on September, who looked back at me damply, and thumped her tail, indicating her desire for a second bowl of breakfast. Request denied. I checked on Missy, who was deep in an eerie migraine silence. Then I scraped in the onions, raised the heat a bit, and let them cook down, from level with the top of the skillet, to about halfway up its waist. Midway through, I coated the lot with pimentón, whose smokiness suffused the apartment. A classic tortilla is exceptionally bland; but bland is not my thing. From the bed, I heard an interested sniffing. September chased her tail.

It might have been more correct to remove the potatoes to drain and remain crisp while the onions let out their moisture, but I gambled that, by cranking the heat as the onions finished, I could restore to the potatoes some of their crunch. If my gamble didn’t land me in the money, it at least let me break even.

When the onions were themselves brown and a couple of minutes from starting to burn, I mixed in three roughly-minced cloves of garlic, and four torn-up sage leaves from the planter in the back yard. In a small bowl, I broke and beat half a dozen eggs with a fork till smooth. There are those who insist on a large bowl and a whisk for beating their eggs. There are those who swear by the blender. Not me: I’m fork man. I sprinkled in a little cayenne, and beat them some more.

asparagus, etc.

Into the pan went the last of Sunday night’s leftover grilled asparagus, cut into two-inch lengths.

When the eggs were smooth, I added a tablespoon more fat to the pan. Unless you’re a fan of leftover bacon fat, you don’t want to know what I used. In went the eggs. I stirred briefly, and tilted the pan as the eggs set, to distribute them evenly. Using a wooden spatula, I peeled them away from the sides of the pan. I also cranked up the broiler.

It’s my opinion that potatoes roast best in the oven, but that’s no method for summer, even on a dark and stormy morning. Copping out of Pedro’s plate trick, or the suspenseful, potentially tortilla-destroying shaken-skillet wrist-flip, opened a golden opportunity. When bubbles formed near the surface, I covered the top of the eggs with a thin layer of Beemster cheese — a Dutch cow’s milk cheese, with the color and nuttiness of Gouda, the consistency of Swiss, and the sale price of $6/lb. — that I’d flayed from the wedge with a vegetable peeler. Grasping the skillet by its dishtowel-wrapped handle, I shoved it under the broiler for about five minutes. When I brought the tortilla out, it was golden-brown, a little puffy on top, and redolent with the irresistible aroma of toasted cheese. I cut it into wedges, one for Missy, one for me, and two for later. Missy crept from the bed and ate hers in silence, while I leaned against the counter and ate mine with harissa. Eggs, potatoes, onions, garlic, asparagus, and toasted cheese: if there was a way for this to go wrong, I didn’t find it.

Missy blinked appreciatively, and crept back under the covers.

pan of tortilla