Recipe: Spanish Tortilla

Tortilla Española

Ingredients:
- About 4 medium-large potatoes
- 4-6 cloves of minced garlic
- 6-8 eggs

Steps:
1. Peel and dice the potatoes. They don’t need to be the exact same size, but something close would allow them to cook at about the same pace.
2. Fry the potatoes in a generous amount of olive oil in a pan (enough go cover most of the potatoes).
3. Fry them until they are soft on the inside and lightly brown out the outside.
4. Saving the oil for later use, strain out the potatoes in a bowl and mix in the garlic letting the hot oil cook the garlic a bit (a minute or so is fine). I am not sure if this is really necessary, but I like to do it hoping the garlic flavor gets softened a bit more.
5. Season with salt and pepper. I season liberally with salt at this phase because there is a lot of food mass to season.
6. Stir in the beaten eggs. There should be enough that the liquid covers up most of the potatoes.
7. Put the mixture in an 8″ or 10″ sloped-sided saute pan and heat while covered on medium to medium-low heat. Jiggle the pan around to make sure there are no cracks in the bottom.
8. It should be about an inch thick of mass so you need to let it cook through for 5-10 minutes. Before it is ready to flip you must be able to move around the tortilla when you jiggle the pan. It should not feel like it is stuck to the pan at all.
9. The tricky part is to flip it and get it back into the pan without making a mess. The best way that I know to do this is to find a plate that fits inside of your saute pan but still covers all of the tortilla. Then flip the entire thing over so the plate is on the bottom and the pan is on the top. Put the pan back on the stove and carefully slide the tortilla off the plate and back in the pan.
10. Jiggle the pan around to make sure there are no cracks on the bottom and then let it sit there and firm up for another 5 minutes or until you think the eggs are cooked to your liking.
11. Let it cool for about 30 minutes to an hour before slicing into wedges and serving. You can make it hours in advance and serve it at room temperature but I like to have mine a little bit on the warm side.