Patatas Tortilla — Wikipedia

Omelette (potato omelet), or Spanish tortilla (Spanish omelette), of which we cut a portion. We can distinguish the pieces of potatoes.

In bars, where omelets can be eaten several hours after being cooked, they are often well cooked (to avoid salmonellosis) and thick (to have many portions), while at home they are eaten rather sluggish.

The omelette is a variant of, thick omelette, cooked on both sides and garnished with typically Spanish potatoes. In some bars, it can be served in shares on a piece of bread (or like Pintxo, in the Basque Country, although there are hundreds of different pintxos), in a Bocadillo (sandwich) or in the form of a tapa; But most often it is eaten as a flat, accompanied by a salad.

We must not confuse it with the omelet with potatoes or parmentier omelette.

Although the contact of the Spaniards with America begins at XVI ^{It is} century, the introduction of products today essential such as potatoes and tomatoes is not significant until XVII ^{It is} century. Use in an omelet (which has been done in the same way, for centuries, in Spain, but with eggplant, zucchini and all kinds of vegetables) is perhaps one of the first recipes with this product in Spain. We have written testimonies of XIX ^{It is} A century of similar recipes, which use eggs and potatoes. At that time, the potato omelet was a very poor dish, and its origin was due to the fact that the eggs were too expensive for the poor, so we added potatoes (the vegetables being also too expensive in town ) to make a larger dish with fewer eggs.

This effect is growing during the Spanish civil war of XX ^{It is} century and the following years. We have a recipe for this dish, published in a women’s review in 1935, quite similar to that which we know and which still exists. There are, however, some differences, because, at that time, we did not yet fry the potatoes before cooking them with the eggs in the pan. This last way to do was born after the war, under the dictatorship of Franco in Spain. At the time, there was also an even poorer version of this dish, consisting in replacing the eggs with a mixture of flour and milk, or even flour and water. Josep Pla explains that the potato omelet, even with eggs, was considered a “dish of poor” and that we preferred natural omelettes ^{[ first ]} .

Today it remains a popular dish, easy to do and that does not need too many ingredients, which is most often eaten at dinner, as a main dish, and which has a lot of variants: you can eat it in Sauce, or you can enrich it, for example, with a few dice of Iberian ham or a brand of ham like Jamón Serrano for example, or you can cut it in half and stuff the center with cheese, peppers, etc.

Some even make Patatas tortilla recipes with chorizo.

In Spain, we also cook natural omelettes, but we make them individuals for each person, with one or two eggs only, and we fold them in the pan in two or three, in a way that can make you think, For some, to a pancake. These omelettes are also called tortillas in Spanish ( tortillas is the plural, tortilla the singular), or we can call them egg tortilla or omelette (literally “French omelet”, it corresponds to a natural omelet), to differentiate them from potato omelettes or with other ingredients, finally, all those that are not natural. They are often more flat and drooling than typical French natural omelettes and cook in the pan, but in olive oil and never in butter. In Spain, they are sometimes garnished with cheese, with parsley, a few mushroom strips, etc. They are very common.

On the other hand, in Spain, as in fact in Portugal, Italy, etc. , the thick lined omelettes are also very usual and popular. They can be stuffed with various vegetables (peasant omelet), rascasse, tomato sauce and other ingredients, meat, etc.

Cut the potatoes into dice or thin strips and cook them over low heat, in the pan, with lots of olive oil. Potatoes should not brown. Meanwhile, in a salad bowl, beat hard eggs sprinkled with salt and black pepper. We use, for four people, four large potatoes and six eggs. Split the potatoes and put them in the bowl with the beaten eggs. Mix and pour everything into a hot pan. Cook the omelet without stirring it and turn it over to cook it, always without stirring, on the other side. The center should not be overcooked. Cut the omelet into four triangular parts and serve it immediately, accompanied by a tomato or tomato bread salad.

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