The other tortilla...and a quick digression to Puerto Rico

Because "tortillas" are so prevalent in our society, as well as in a bunch of other societies (with Mexico leading the pack), the "tortilla Española" is a little confusing to Americans. This dish has nothing to do with flour, corn, or tacos. It is actually more like a potato and egg omelet.

I still don't know very much about tortilla Española, though my awareness of it has slowly increased in recent years...it seems to keep coming up here and there. I first heard of it in about 2003, when Intermezzo (my main employer) almost ran a recipe for it but ended up cutting the article. Epicurious.com has only two recipes for TE*, the earliest dating back to 2000. (Epicurious is the website of Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazines, and has thousands of recipes in its database.) I think the TE is an ordinary, everyday food eaten throughout Spain in many variations; I don't remember eating it when I was there, though I think many bars offered little portions of it as tapas.

But finally, I did eat it...in Puerto Rico. Scott and I went to San Juan and the British Virgin Islands last fall. In San Juan we stayed at this tiny, fabulous, really inexpensive guesthouse called Andalucia. It was in a great location with many amazing restaurants nearby. The neighborhood (Ocean Park) was not built up and touristy and just sketchy enough to be charming but not dangerous.

Across the street from Andalucia is a hugely popular bakery/restaurant/deli called Kasalta. We ate there every day for breakfast, most days for lunch, and after dinner each night we'd stop by on the way back to the guesthouse for baked goods to eat in bed while watching bad TV. The best thing we had there was a sandwich called the "Elena Ruth." This was a baguette with roasted turkey (like from a real roast turkey, not cold cuts), cranberry sauce, Swiss cheese and mayo, served toasted and warm. To many people who know me as a vegetarian and mayonnaise hater, it is no doubt very strange to hear me praising this sandwich. I could do a whole separate blog on the vegetarian thing, but the super-short version is, I sometimes eat meat when I'm traveling. And the Elena Ruth is amazing! We would take them to the beach with cans of Coke and a cookie for dessert. Sandy perfection.

But breakfast at Kasalta was also pretty awesome. This is where we first had the tortilla. I knew what it was by sight and by name: a thick, golden, firm cake cut into wedges (links to pics below). Served cold right out of the display case, the tortilla was a dense layer of egg and potato...mild yet nourishing, rich with olive oil, and just excellent with a cup of coffee.

Back to the present. I'd been thinking that potatoes were an ideal choice for a package-free carb, and a lot easier than rolling out pasta. The only problem is, I don't LOVE potatoes. I mean, they are fine, but...never my first choice.

But when I got my eggs from Mr. Milagro, it suddenly struck me that tortilla Española was kind of a perfect food. And with the inevitable addition of roasted hatch chiles--they are in everything I eat this month--it was sounding better and better.

I used a combination of a recipe in my big yellow Gourmet cookbook (probably the same one they have online) and the step-by-step instructions I found in this About.com article. The first thing to do, in either case, was "poach" the potatoes (Yukon golds) in a huge amount of olive oil. How "poaching" in oil is different from deep frying, I'm not quite sure. But I did it. I sliced the potatoes (About.com method, and what I remembered from Kasalta) rather than dicing (Gourmet), heated up a huge amount of olive oil (which I'd recently bought in bulk from Wheatsville Coop) and added minced onion and the potato slices. Immediately I knew what I had done wrong--added too much stuff at once and lowered the temperature of the oil. So I removed half, and kept on poaching.



Apologies for this stupid picture. I was trying to reduce the resolution, and cropped out one corner instead.

When they were tender enough to eat, I transferred them with a slotted spoon to a strainer set over a bowl, added salt, and let them drain. Then I did the other half, strained them, etc. Then, though this put me at risk for third-degree burns, I strained the oil through a strainer and into a jar to reuse. The potatoes didn't seem to have absorbed that much.

Then I tossed up the potatoes with like, 4 or 5 eggs, a good amount of previously roasted and chopped hatch chiles, salt, and pepper. The mixture went back into the pot to cook.

Once again, I immediately sensed a mistake. I just KNEW that they were going to stick and that I would not be able to do the "flip" so beautifully illustrated in About.com. I needed seasoned cast iron without the high walls, and I didn't have it. Can you believe I don't have a cast iron pan? Ridiculous.

So I tried to flip it, spilled egg everywhere, swore creatively, and shoveled it as best I could back into the pan to finish cooking. Then, I "transferred" (scooped) the whole thing onto a plate for serving. It doesn't look like the About pictures, does it?

However! it was awesome anyway. We ate it for dinner, and I had it cold the next day for breakfast. Just goes to show you can totally screw up and still have a great meal. But I would like to try it again with the right kind of cookware and see if I can get the perfect little cake. Maybe I'll try to make minis in my nonstick omelet pan.

In the meantime, I urge everyone to go to Puerto Rico. It is a pretty cheap destination, the food is amazing, and you don't even need a passport.

*Just realized Epicurious has a few more recipes if you search "Spanish omelet."

Eggxactly the cliche title I was hoping for

Well. The two weeks are up. And I still have a lot to post. I think for now I will talk about eggs.

Last Wednesday I went to the farmer's market here in Austin at the Triangle, a little development on North Lamar and Guadalupe, in the same plaza as beloved Mandolas. I was looking for Milagro eggs specifically, but was tempted by a lot of other produce too, mostly okra and zucchini. In the end I didn't get any, fearing I wouldn't use it fast enough. It wouldn't be the first time I had a fridgeful of rotting okra.

But I did get my eggs, from this guy:

I had brought my own container to put them in, just a cardboard egg container from last time I bought some. But the guy, whom I shall call Mr. Milagro, has his own system. You pay twenty-five cents deposit to get one of his plastic egg things, and then trade it in for reuse every time you come back for new eggs. Total cost, $4.25 for a dozen eggs.

(PS, it is a nice departure from magazine-land writing for me to post this without Mr. Milagro's real name. I could probably look it up, but I think I just won't bother. So deliciously lazy!) (PPS, I just tried to find a website for Milagro and can't, anyone know?)

I have to say, I would have paid more! Totally unprompted, Mr. Milagro told me all about how he has several kinds of hens (I forget how many...) and they all lay eggs in slightly different colors and shapes. Casual inspection revealed most to be different shades of brown, with one that was kind of light-blueish. The hens eat an assortment of ten different whole grains, plus veggie scraps (but no onion or garlic).

(photo no longer sideways thanks to Rohan!)

At home, I saw the eggs were all slightly different sizes, and some had much harder shells than others. Honestly I can't comment whether or not they tasted different than my usual almost-as-expensive organic eggs, because I used them in this really condiment- and flavor-heavy preparation (shocking for me, I know!).


(this image no longer sideways thanks to ME!)

This was the "final dinner" of my no-packaging project. It was kind of a melange of leftovers. Tortillas made with dough left over from last time I made them (for fish tacos), homemade salsa (from same tacos) mixed with some leftover roasted hatch chiles (from tomatillo sauce and tortilla Espanola), strained yogurt (not homemade...), homemade refried beans, and a kind of home-fry hash brown thing. I realize none of these above-referenced meals and ingredients have been blogged yet. All will be, in bite-sized portions so as not to bore and overwhelm.

But what else can I say about about the eggs for now? Oh, well I did use three for banana bread, and have a few more left. I'll fry one up for a real taste-test and let you know how it is. But I am really happy that I have found a source for them that is truly local, from someone who cares about his chickens and feeds them well, and that generates no waste from packaging.

A word about bread (but it's never just one word with me)

When you think of cooking at home, from scratch, one of the first things that comes to mind is baking your own bread. However, keen readers of this blog (all two of you) will observe that I bought bread, rather than made it, and already mentioned this as an example of something that it was better for me to buy than make. Let's look at that in more detail.

Some people don't even eat bread anymore, though this trend has mostly passed--right about when Robert Atkins did. I'm not laughing or even smirking. But it should be noted that if everyone on this planet ate the amount of protein that the Atkins diet advocated, we would run out of land, water, fish and animals in about five minutes. No, that isn't very well researched, but I know that this planet can not support six billion people eating meat three times a day. It's already struggling mightily. (And that's not even considering the monetary side of things--people expect meat to be cheap--it shouldn't be! The affordability of meat--high quality, muscle meat--hides a lot of unpleasant truths.) We gotta try to eat from lower on the food chain.

Anyway, I love carbs and think they are part of a healthy diet, particularly in the form of whole grains. And while I can roll out my own pasta and make tortillas and other basic stuff, I don't think I can bake good bread. I don't have the skills, ingredients or equipment to do it right. Plus, is heating my oven up to high when my AC is already working full-time just to keep this place at 81 degrees a very pleasant or environmentally sound idea?

Central Market sells a million different kinds of breads that are not wrapped, so the only packaging used is a paper bag. I thought about just chucking it in my shopping bag, but then I was like, have some damn dignity. I think that unless I get a designated bread bag, I don't need my unwashable food mingling with everything else. I think one paper bag is ok.

The bread I bought is called ten-grain, and it is so good. I highly recommend it--it is chewy and not coarse, and has a really nice and mild flavor, despite the hippy-high grain count. I would have to buy TEN different grains to get the nutritional benefits of this one loaf. No fun.

Just to share, here is one way that I have enjoyed this bread this week. I made a fried egg, put it on a piece of bread and topped the whole thing with leftover tomato sauce that I made last week. Sounds kind of weird, but it was delicious. I will give my recipe for easy tomato sauce at another time, but it's basically just olive oil, tomatoes, onions, garlic and in this case, rosemary, because I have been on a big kick with it lately and there is a shrub of it growing in front of my neighbor's apartment. It makes everything taste like it comes from a fancy restaurant.

Here is my bread working hard for me. Tasty!