Spanish Delight - 2 Jan 2012

This holiday my brother and I did a country project on Spain at home. We wanted to try cooking a Spanish dish. We chose to cook a Spanish omelette or tortilla española, a typically Spanish dish consisting of a thick egg omelette made with potatoes and fried in olive oil.

According to legend, during the siege of Bilbao (Northern Spain), a Carlist general  created the tortilla as an easy and fast dish to satisfy the Carlist army. Although it remains unknown whether this is true, it appears the tortilla started to spread during the early Carlist wars.

Another tale is that during the war, the Carlist general was in the field and happened upon a farmhouse and demanded a meal from the farmwife. All she had were a few eggs, a potato and an onion, so she combined all three, making an omelette. Surprisingly, the general was pleased and took the idea with him.

This dish could be served hot or cold, and as an appetizer or main course. We think this is the easiest Spanish dish we could cook.

The ingredients were 4 potatoes (peeled and cut into slices), 2 medium onions (peeled and thinly sliced), 4 eggs, olive oil and salt.

Learning how to peel and slice the onions without crying .......

Peeling the potatoes was not so hard......  

First, we heated up the non-stick skillet with some olive oil and cooked the onions and potatoes until tender but not brown.

Next, we beat the eggs lightly. Then, we added the potato-onion mixture with the eggs. Don't forget to add the salt!!!

Finally, we could start cooking the omelette!!!

We poured the potato-egg mixture into the skillet, spreading it evenly with a spatula. We cooked the omelette until its bottom is light brown. We should have followed the recipe and placed a large dinner plate on top of the skillet, and turned it upside down, then cooked it until the two sides of the omelette were brown. But we would show you what happened if we didn't!!!

 Taking out the omelette was no easy job!!

Yum, yum, yum delicious!!!!!!!! Looks could be deceiving.

It was a new experience cooking a Spanish dish. It was fun too!!!!!

Did you know.......

•  in Spain, lunch is eaten at about 2pm and dinner is eaten at about 9pm.
• people in Inner Spain enjoy eating hot, thick soup and bread. Coastal Spanish cities use a lot of seafood in their cooking and have cold soup.