Linux Tortilla From Scratch --- 19.10.2007
The story begins some days ago when I was having lunch at the office. We were speaking about differences between a gas-kitchen and an electricity-kitchen, the "pros and contras". I said that it is not so simple to make a "tortilla" with an electricity-kitchen and suddenly one colleague, let's call her... Virginia, asked "can you cook tortilla?... I mean from scratch?" The answer was, of course, a big "yes". As she comes from Texas, her idea of "tortilla" can be very different of my idea of "tortilla". Therefore will I show you what I do understand under the word "tortilla" and I will also try to explain for my readers, but specially for you Virginia, how to do one.


This is a ready-to-eat-tortilla ==>

The Tortilla de Patatas is an egg omelette with fried potatoes and is a very typical spanish dish. Although there is a link to a video in the wikipedia web page I decided to took my own pictures to explain the process.


First of all let's speak about the ingredients you need (for 2 persons).

• 3 or 4 middle-sized potatoes
• 2 or 3 eggs
• Olive oil
• 1 onion or 2 if they are small
• salt

1) Peel the potatoes and cut them in "circles". I use to clean the potatoes with water, you never know where they might have been before...






 
2) Meanwhile can you heat oil in a pan. There has to be enough for covering the hole pan, but not more. Otherwise you will make" pommes frites 



3) When the oil is hot, throw the potatoes. You will have to "move" the gas (or electricity ;-)) to the lowest possible (level 1 or 2). You will have to wait until the potatoes are soft which means they are soft. Please do not forget to add some salt... as I do :-(


4) Peel the onion or onions and throw them into the pan. You can cook the onions "in parallel" if you want and mixed them with the potatoes in the same pan later and cook them together.
Do it as you want, but at the end the potatoes and the onions have to be together.







5) Now the time for the eggs has come. Break the egg and put them in a dish and beat them. Put some salt here, too.









6) Throw the cooked potatoes with the cooked onions into the dish and mix it very good with the beated egg.
(They do it differently in the video)







7) Put some oil into the pan, as before and heat it. When it is hot put it into the pan.
After 2 minutes take a dish over the pan and turn it over. This is difficult at the beginning, but after a "two or three tortillas" experience you will do it as an expert. It is very difficult to take pictures of it when you're alone at home, so watch it in the video.







8) Now that the tortilla has been turned over, wait other 2 minutes. We want both parts to be cooked. I use to repeat step 7 and 8 two times: 7-8-7-8-9





9) After both sides are cooked the tortilla is ready to be eaten... and you should be ready to wash all the stuff you used in the process.

As always, don't try without adult supervision :-)
You can find another explanation in a better english here.

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