Tortilla de Patata

Walk into any tapas bar in Spain and what do you find? Little marbly wedges bedecked perhaps with a twist of roasted red pepper, maybe a dab of salsa rosa, or maybe the wedge by itself, in all its glory. Meet the tortilla de patata.

When you talk about tortillas in the United States, people think that you’re talking about Mexican tortillas – wheat or corn. But I’m talking about the Spanish variety – an omelet. The tortilla de patata, or potato omelet, is the humblest, homeliest dish in the Spanish repertoire, a repertoire that is already quite homely: peasant food, solid, sturdy, nourishing, even fattening for hard days in the field. When there’s nothing else in the larder, you’ve always got olive oil, eggs, potatoes and onions, and the hard-won wisdom of poverty in the Mediterranean sparked the alchemy that created this most earthy yet satisfying of dishes.

I learned how to make a tortilla de patata from many masters: my ex-husband, his mother, the grandma of one of my daughter’s friends. From each I observed and learned. And the thing is, you can only learn to make a tortilla de patata by observing. A friend who had visited Spain once years ago once asked me to send her a recipe for it. I can’t. Like most traditional dishes, there is no recipe. And if I did concoct or find one, that’s no guarantee that it would actually turn out well.  OK, there is a list of ingredients: olive oil, onions, potatoes and eggs. In what proportion? Well, do you like it more potatoe-y or more oniony (I love the latter – the sweet of the onions contrasting with the savory of the omelet – yum!!) How many eggs? Well, how many do you have? And how far does the tortilla de patata have to go? Seasonings? Well, how do you like it? Or how does your family like it, the real question for the good Spanish wife. One friend of mine said that her husband couldn’t stand onions in his tortilla de patata, a travesty in my opinion, but she dutifully always made two – one without for him, and one proper tortilla loaded with onion.

What counts in a tortilla de patata is the technique. How big do you cut the onions and potatoes? Which sautés first? Or do they go in at the same time? Do you sauté them quickly and brown them (like that masterful grandma – who made the best tortilla I’ve ever had, by the way) or slowly? Do you use just eggs or add a bit of milk? Do you just pour the eggs into the frying pan, or remove the sautéed potatoes and onions, mix them in a bowl and pour them back in the pan? How brown should it be? How tall or thick?

None of it matters. What matters is having eaten enough of them to know what you like. I personally cut the onion small and potatoes larger. I throw the onions in just before the potatoes to make sure they are nice and caramelized before the potatoes are done. I like to turn up the heat at the end and slightly brown the potatoes, hash-brown-style. I beat the eggs apart, add a splash of milk, plenty of salt and not a small amount of pepper. When the onions and potatoes are done, I pour them into the eggs and mix them all together, add fresh olive oil to my pan, turn up the heat and pour it back in.

As the tortilla de patata cooks, how do you know that underside is ready? Each cook has their way... My clue is that the olive oil burbling up on the sides of the pan goes from large bubbles to teeny-tiny fiercely fizzling bubbles, as if the oil is saturated with the tortilla ingredients. I plop a plate over the pan, do a flip, and slide the tortilla back into the pan, uncooked side down. A bit more cooking to finish up that side, and we’re done. Flip it back onto a clean plate, let cool, and eat room temperature.

Ok, I’ll come clean. A tapa is really a frittata. But perish the thought of using one of those newfangled two-sided frittata pans that avoids the issue of the flip. Williams Sonoma for wimps and wanna-be’s. Really, now, do you think yayas had frittata pans?! And acquiring knowledge of when to flip, along with a sound flipping technique, is a kind of folk wisdom that any cook is proud to have earned after many failed attempts.

In this entire process, I’ve probably used half a cup of olive oil. So is the tortilla de patata healthy? Well, dietetic, no. Wholesome, absolutely. It’s all fresh, nothing processed, and – most importantly of all – always made with care. There is no need to spend an hour in the kitchen making something so simple. If you do so, it is an act of love. I former student of mine from Afghanistan, after trying a piece of tortilla de patata, sighed. “It’s just like our food at home,” he waxed nostalgically. I don’t know if there is an actual dish like that in Afghanistan, but I have no doubt that he was reacting to good, simple home cooking using the humblest of ingredients, no tricks, no add-ons, nothing fancy, just made with heart.

My father always laughs at me when I say “tortilla de patata” – the rat-a-tat of the “patata” probably sounding like baby talk more than his notion of Spanish. And yet in any cuisine, there are a few dishes that, in my opinion, mark the skill of a cook, dishes that, though humble, test their mettle and their ability to mold dishes to their own tastes and those of their families. Dishes that have no recipes but instead certain general features that can and should be made personal over the years. As humble as it may be, and as funny as it sounds in English, I would suggest that the tortilla de patata is the crowning test-dish of Spanish cuisine.