You Say PotAYto and I Say Tortilla de Patatas...
In which I present a
Spanish Omelette recipe from Oleg, which arrives via my friend Flora.
Who slightly resented all the washing up involved.
Plus a
delicious sauce you can use to flavour any beef leftovers, since I've also been playing with my sous vide gear,
some of which I got for Christmas
🙄,
and honing in on the perfect
steak dinner.
And some pretty decent
lamb.
By Oleg
Tortilla de Patatas
Spanish Omelette
breakfast snack veg
There seem to be two fierce debates which rage in Spain over how to make their omelette:
- should it contain onions
- should the potatoes be diced or sliced
The answer to
1. is
Yes, the answer to
2. is for you to decide.
Since there are only
three four ingredients, you wouldn't think there was much more to say. Right?
Wrong!
Spaniards also will bicker about what varieties of potato to use ,
how browned the onions should be ,
how crisped the potatoes should be ,
how liquid the finished omelette should be ,
and whether Catalan is a real country .
Wow, that escalated quickly!
Serves 4
- olive oil, lots of olive oil - about 400ml
- 8 smallish palm-sized potatoes
- 8 regular eggs or 10 smallish
- 1 medium onion
- salt
- herbs - parsley/basil/dill/chives/tarragon/mint(?) etc
- sweet red peppers
- salt cod
- sausage
Peel the onion and slice or dice it. Sweat gently in a generous pool of oil in a large frying pan until they soften without browning.
Peel the potatoes, and slice or dice them, the size is up to you but it's best if they're even.
Add them with more oil to the frying onions and continue cooking gently until the potatoes soften.
Meanwhile break up the eggs in a large bowl using a fork and add salt.
When the potatoes feel soft to the fork, sieve the mixture briefly over a non-sticky tortilla pan
then add the hot strained onion and potatoes to the eggs. Mix together well.
Get the oil you previously strained into the tortilla pan really hot, then pour in the omelette mix, lower the heat and leave until nicely browned on the bottom .
Have a peek with a spatula.
Using a plate, or two plates, or all the plates, turn the omelette over and slide it back into the pan with more oil
to brown the other side.
Serve with ketchup.
Entrecôte Sauce
Café de Paris Sauce
sauce
Entrecote sauce started life as
Café de Paris Sauce at the eponymous Genevese restaurant in the 1930s.
In the early 1960s vintner and restaurateur Paul Gineste de Saurs adapted this sauce to serve with entrecôte steaks at his Paris restaurant
Le Relais de Venise — L'entrecôte,
and is now the standard sauce perenially served at its
sister establishments around the world now run by his various daughters.
This version is based on
one of the many attempts to duplicate it I found on the interwebs.
I can't speak to its authenticity, not having eaten in any of these places,
and I couldn't get any fresh tarragon, so threw in some wild garlic that I'd picked for something else, and I
would have added chervil, if I'd ever seen any in my greengrocery.
But it was still delicious.
Serves 2-4
- 1 shallot, finely diced
- generous lump of butter - 50g or more
- handful parsley
- handful tarragon
- handful basil
- handful chervil
- some sage leaves
- 1 tsp (about 10) capers
- 5 walnuts
- 1 tin anchovies
- ½ nutmeg grated
- ½ lemon - flesh only
- a dash of pepper
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 1 scant tsp Worcestershire Sauce
- 1 tsp white wine vinegar
Sweat the diced shallot in a generous amount of butter until softened without colouring.
Blend all the sauce ingredients together with the hot shallots and butter until fairly smooth.
You can do this in two stages if you like.
Mix 1 egg yolk, Dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce, dash of white wine vinegar.
Whisk the egg with the mustard, vinegar and Worcestershire sauce.
Slowly add the blended sauce while whisking steadily to make the mayonnaise.
Take about a third of the sauce and cook while stirring until it splits!!
Add this split component back to the rest of the unsplit sauce when slightly cooled.
Adjust the seasoning and add a squeeze of lemon if required.
Keep the sauce warm to serve with steak frites.
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