Tortilla Aenonola

Originaly posted by Galant for entry into the cookbook


Tortilla Aenonola

15-20 mins prep, 15 mins cooking.

You need (1 omelette):

4 decent sized eggs
An average 12-15" frying pan (tbh, didn't measure the last one)
A plate of just about the same size as the pan, preferably just a little smaller.
2-3 good size potatoes, peeled (thought I suppose it doesn't matter)
Chopping board, knife, blah blah blah
2/3 cloves garlic
Olive oil
Other ingredients eg. 1/4 - 1/2 onion, several broccoli spears, 1/2 green and 1/2 red bell pepper, chicken, or beef, ham or turkey meat (the sandwich stuff works).
Whatever herbs you find you like.
Salt
Pepper

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Okay, so here's the basic steps:

Take the potatoes, peel them (I've never left the skins on, but I suppose you could), and then chop them lengthways. You should end up with long slices of potato about 5mm thick. You're going to fry/sautee them so don't want them too thick to cook through quickly. Don't make them paper thin though!

Heat some oil in a pan with garlic. Maybe 1/2 a clove. And every time you add more oil to fry something, add more garlic. Note - I love garlic, in my opinion there's no such thing as too much garlic. I even eat the stuff raw at times. So I often chuck loads in to my recipes. Go according to taste. The amount I list here shouldn't be too much, I've never had complaints.

Once you've got the potatoes chopped, cook em (fry/sautee). They'll be going in the omelette and if they're raw when they go in they wont be cooked by the time everything else is.

While those are cooking, have a plate or dish ready to put them in, and line it with something to absorb the oil, you don't want them dripping when you add them to the mix. Also, beat the four eggs in a dish until thoroughly mugged and a pinch of salt and pepper, and mix again.

Also add whatever herbs you enjoy. I often use a mixture called 'Italian Herbs', I add 3-5 pinches to the egg and mix. Bear in mind that the herbs will alter the overall flavour of the omelette and are a good way to get various tastes out of the same basic dish!

Now, at this point you could make the omelette using only potato - which is a perfectly valid form of Spanish omelette. I find though that I like to add other ingredients, left-overs or otherwise, to make the omelette a meal in itself. So this is where you get creative.

Take whatever ingredients you are using and make sure they're chopped and cooked before you add them to the final mix.

We'll talk here about the bell peppers, onion, brocolli and the turkey sandwich meat. After chopping them all (you can experiment with how small you chop them) cook them lightly (obviously these are all 'ready to eat' ingredients so don't really require much cooking). Drain them off as per the potato.

Now add the potato to the egg mixture and then all the other ingredients, mix it up a bit. Now you're ready to cook the thing.

Into a hot frying pan (with garlic and oil - not too much oil now!), but on a low heat, pour the whole mixture, you may need to even out some of the ingredients to ensure they're spread through the whole frying pan.

Let it all cook until most of it is solid leaving only a little 'liquid egg' on the surface. Maybe 4-5mins.

Now comes the tricky part. You have to turn the omelette upside down. There's probably an easier way to do this, but I'm a guy who needs excitement, so if my cooking doesn't involve danger and adventure, I'm not interested Take the plate mentioned in the list and then do one of two thing. Either put the plate upside down in the pan then invert the pan and slide the omelette off the plate back into the pan upside down! OR, Slide the omelette onto the plate from the pan, and then flip, slide, or otherwise get the omelette back into the pan upside down. Ah the excitment!

The first time is the trickiest since the top of the omelette is still liquid. After that it's all a piece of omelette! Continue cooking the omelette over a low heat, turning periodically until the outside starts to brown. Also, you can stick a fork in it to check that the omelette is cooked through inside.

Once done, slide it onto a plate, and that's about it. It can be served hot or cold, and that means you can just refrigerate it and eat later!

In Spain you'll find Tortilla Espanola served as tapas in bars and restaurants, and there are about as many variations as there are cooks in Spain.

One major variation I do is using Tuna and Mushrooms as the main ingredients. I love that combination. The trick is to make sure the tuna is of a solid consistency, otherwise you get a watery, runny mixture that's a pain to cook.

Use whatever left-overs you have, or whatever variation you can imagine.