A perfect tortilla

Before coming to live here, I'd never made a tortilla in my life but we had  neighbours then -  Carmen and Manolo.  Carmen made the most fantastic tortillas - she'd had plenty of practice as she and Manolo owned a restaurant in Granada and she'd made 15 different tapas every day for 30 years.  That's a lot of tortillas - she should be good at them.

She showed me how to make one, I tried but could never get it to slice like hers, we always needed a knife and fork to eat it whereas hers could be eaten sliced or cubed.  Solid but not dry, whereas mine always collapsed - sometimes closer to scrambled eggs and potato than tortilla.  It's not just me that has a problem, neither of Carmen's daughters can do one like their mother.

We've both watched her make them over the years we've been here and although we don't see so much of her nowadays,  when she comes she always makes at least one  and then gives us a shout to say when it's ready. 

However practice makes perfect and with a little help from a newly discovered blog,  we had the first perfect tortilla for tapas tonight.  I'd been looking for ideas about how to make fried broad beans  (actually roasted not fried)  preferably spicy ones and came across a blog/recipe site called 'the daily spud'.  We tried the Posh Spicy Beans and they were good so  I looked at other recipes on the site and just out of interest read her way to make a tortilla.  Seems this lady has some Spanish relations - but the only difference in her way of making it and mine/Carmens was to put the potato onion mixture back into the beaten eggs before returning that to the pan.  How that can make my scrambled egg and potato mix into a wonderful, sliceable tortilla I don't know, but it did.

Lots of other ideas to try from 'the spud'  such as beer battered sage leaves as part of a tapas.  We have more sage bushes in the garden than I can count and there's only so much sage and onion stuffing we can eat so this sounds an interesting tapas.  Plus I make beer batter when we have fish and chips and there's always batter left over.  If you're looking there, check out
oven dried potato crisps in the  nibbles and small bites section, we've not tried them yet but they sound good and so easy. 

Happy reading!