Where does Tortilla de patatas come from?

This week special recipe is dedicated to ‘Tortilla de Patatas’. This food doesn’t have an specific origin, it is actually elaborated in every Spanish house, making this recipe one of the most famous and classic dishes of Spanish gastronomy. It is widely known and appreciated both inside and outside the country.

The success of this recipe comes either from the awesome taste and texture, also from the simplicity of the elaboration. All this characteristics, make ‘Tortilla de Patatas’ a plate you can find in every bar or home of the Spanish geography.

You can find many ways of prepare ‘Tortilla de patatas’, and you can find real fights between the followers of ‘Tortilla de patatas’ with onion and the followers of ‘Tortilla de patatas’ without onion. However, I’m going to prepare a polemic version that I specially like: ‘Tortilla de patatas’ with onion and pepper.

Of course onion and pepper are optional ingredients so, if there is anyone that doesn’t like any of them you can just remove either of them from the recipe. The only irreplaceable ingredients are: eggs and potatoes.

What is the origin of Tortilla de patata?

It was only recently, when an old document with benchmarking of ‘Tortilla de patatas’ was discovered, this document goes back to 1604 and was written by Lancelot de Casteau, who was the chef of 3 bishops from Lieja.

Before this document was discovered everyone thought that the inventor of this traditional dish was the general Tomás de Zumalacárregui, who wrote a document in 1817 to Navarra’s courts, telling that Pamplona’s population used to eat a dish that consisted in 2 or 3 eggs in an omelette mixed with potatoes, bread, etc. that could feed 5 or 6 people. His interest in this dish was that he needed a cheap and nutritious dish with which he could feed the Carlist army.

However, there is another book called ‘The potato in Spain. History and Agroecology of the Andean tubers’, that was written by the scientific Javier López Linaje, who locate the origin of ‘Tortilla de patatas’ in the city of Villanueva de la Serena, that belongs to the county of Extremadura and attribute the discover of this food to Joseph de Tena Godoy and Marqués de Robledo.

As you can see, there is no certainty over the origin of this dish, but what we know for sure is that it has been made in Spain for at least 400 years, that is delicious and that is time to start making it!!

Ingredients:

• 1 kg of potatoes to fry.
• 2 green peppers.
• 2 onions.
• 7 to 8 eggs of good size.
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
• Salt

Time of preparation: 1 hour.

Please, take into account that the recipe is of ‘Tortilla de patatas’ for 6 people, and is thought to use a pan uf 24 cm of diameter approximately. If you want to make it for less people, vary the ingredients and the size of the pan accordingly if, in contrast, you want to make it for more people, my advise is to make 2 instead of a bigger one, because the size could be difficult to manage.

How to cook Tortilla de patatas:

First step: Ingredients preparation.

The first thing we are going to prepare are the potatoes, we have to wash and peel them, to continue dicing into medium sized and homogeneous dices.

Now is time to prepare the green peppers. First of all wash and clean them very well, and continue cutting them into strips or slices.

The last step is to prepare the onions. For it, we have to peel them and wash them, then we continue cutting in julienne strips.

Top Tip: It is really important to cut dices of the same size, in order to have them fried uniformly and in a shorter time.

Second Step: Fry the ingredients.

Now that we have all the ingredients prepared, is time to put a big sized pan with olive oil on the fire with high heat.

When the oil is hot enough, we start frying the potatoes, the onion and the green pepper. To obtain a homogeneous fry, we should stir the ingredients from time to time.

When the ingredients are properly fried, we take them out and put the on a paper in order to dry the extra oil.

Top Tip: Is advisable to fry them separately and in small quantities to obtain the best fried and taste for the ‘Tortilla de patatas’.

Third Step: Preparation of the omelette.

We start whisking the eggs inside a big bowl, put a handful of salt inside too and mix everything.

When everything is properly whisked, is time to put the ingredients that we had fried before, and stir everything very well. Be careful to not brake the potatoes during the process.

Top Tip: We should wait until the fried ingredients loose some of the heat until we put it inside the egg.

Final step.

We put the pan on the fire again; add some new oil if the amount of oil it has after frying is not enough.

When the oil is hot enough, add all the ingredients we have mixed before. Try to distribute the mixture homogeneously inside the pan, and use medium heat.

Whilst the omelette is being cooked, is time to give the characteristic shape to it. For that, keep taping the borders of the omelette with the spatula until it has the consistence enough to maintain the shape itself.

Keep cooking until the base in touch with the bottom of the pan is completely cooked.

Be careful now, is time to turn the omelette over, the most delicate step. The omelette has a considerable size and weight, so this step becomes crucial and after all this work a lot of people has to through it away because the omelette fall to the floor when you are trying to turn it over.

Finally, you just need to wait for the other side to get cooked and serve it in a flat plate.

Top Tip: Don’t try to cook the egg of the middle completely, if it remains with a certain liquid consistence in the middle, your ‘Tortilla de patatas’ will have a far better taste.

You can also watch our exclusive video here