Well hello again everyone!

Welcome welcome. Come on in. If it’s not too much trouble can you take your shoes off? Hardwood floors and all.

Thanks.

Hope everybody is enjoying their long weekend,

I am super fucking excited for today. Later this afternoon both of my daughters and all 3 of my granddaughters – and son-in-law – are coming over for a get together! WOOO!! Our first one since March 14th of 2020. Just to be able to have all of my brood together at the same time! AND to be able to cook for and with them?

I’ve waited a long goddamn time for this. Too long.

I am so ready to see them that it’s probably going to get a little emotional.

Still batting around ideas for what to serve them but I’m more than likely going to make arepas like I did earlier this year.

Have a feeling the girls will love that dish. Probably make a pot of carnitas and some black beans, plus I’ve been saving a few “Global Snaxx” selections for everyone to try and overall it should be a great time.

All of the adults are fully vaccinated too.

Fuck yes!

Once again we are going to riff on the idea of “inspiration” for a meal. Believe me after doing Sunday Gravy weekly for 7 consecutive NFL offseasons coming up with a new menu idea can be, at times, a goddamn pain in the fucking ass.

I watch a lot of Food Network, when I’m not busy as shit – like I was these past few weeks at work – I read about all things food. Sometimes, a simple conversation will give me a menu idea and many times it comes from you glorious folks in the comment section. Speaking of which some of you will be in for a bit of a chuckle here in a couple of weeks.

Inspiration is always needed and always in season.

Want to see a strange source of inspiration?

That’s right! That’s the little guidebook that comes in the Universal Yums snack box that our own Litre Cola bases his Global Snaxx posts on.

I’m also a recipient of the snack of the month box. The Spain box had a couple of insanely tasty snacks in there. One was a “Bugle” type snack that was bacon and cheese flavored and people? That fucking shit was delicious.

They can’t even keep them in stock in the Yum Store.

Yes that is a real thing.

Another snack from Spain that was awesome were these.

“Pollitos” or roasted chicken puffs. Stupid good beer food right there.

Anyway.

The box arrives with all of your snack favorites, along with a scoring card for everyone to grade the snacks. The box also has this little booklet inside with trivia and facts about the country that the snacks originate from.

Look what I found inside!

 

If you can’t see it clearly, that is the recipe for today’s menu. It sounded simple – it was – and it sounded delicious – ditto. So why the fuck not?

The recipe is called “Tortilla Española” and is the national dish of Spain.

Inspiration!

And just a few ingredients too!

This is supposed to be cooked, sliced into wedges and served “tapas” style. A small plate that everyone can have a chance to sample.

Simple enough.

This recipe: taken word for word from the Spain guidebook up there, calls for…

1 1/2 pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes peeled and halved*

3/4 pound yellow onions – sliced

2 CUPS of olive oil. Yep.

8 large eggs

Salt.

That’s it.

* I’ll need to address this line item after we cook our meal today.

Simple shit, yes?

Well let’s do this motherfucker then!

“Tortilla Española!”

Start by peeling the spuds.

Again I used the little produce scale at the grocery store and ensured I had 1 1/2 pounds of potatoes.

Now slice ’em up as per the instructions.

I didn’t use a mandolin today and I’ll explain why in a bit. I wanted a little more thickness with the potato.

Now get after the onion too.

These are going to cook in a stupid amount of olive oil.

The recipe calls for 2 goddamn CUPS of oil. Your brain is going to want to short circuit until you realize we are going to be poaching the onion and potato in the oil. We’re not going to deep fry them. This is why I didn’t want the potato too thin. I ain’t here to make potato chips.

AH! Now it makes sense.

That’s right. These will be cooked on a light simmer and not on a full roiling boil.

These will cook for 25 minutes. It will impart a really silky texture to the potato and onion which will be integral to the finished product. Drain the oil.

Keep it though!

[Easter egg alert]

Some of the oil will be used to finish cooking this dish and the rest can be reserved and refrigerated for future use. It’s a really delicious oil that can be used in many applications. I would say that it’s “redolent” of onion and there’s a little potato taste to it too. 

Good stuff.

Drain the potato and onion.

Ready to crack some eggs?

There you go. You can practice your one hand egg cracking technique and not worry about breaking a yolk or two since they will be beaten anyway.

I have been able to crack an egg with one hand since I was about 12 years old. I taught myself, thinking it would be a badass trick that would serve me well as life went on.

It did!

I can also cut a deck of cards using just one hand and that gets attention when I’m playing poker.

Stupid life skills that I practiced over and over when I was young, stocking up my worthless tricks for the future me.

Get after them eggs.

I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that we are making something omelette or frittata-ish.

Dump those onions and potatoes into the eggs and thoroughly mix to combine.

Notice that I’m using a non-stick pan today rather than my cast iron skillet.

Anyone have a guess why? Well apart from the whole “non-stick” shit?

You will find out shortly!

Let’s take a spoonful or two of our leftover oil. Then into the heated pan it goes.

Make sure the heat on the pan is a steady “medium” and be sure the pan has been fully heated through before proceeding. Take a few minutes to be sure.

Into the pan the eggs, potato and onion go.

Give the pan a shake every moment or two to keep the eggs moving around.

Just like an omelette we will lift the edge to let the egg run underneath. This will cook for say 7-8 minutes.

Now for the fun part.

We’re going to need to flip the “tortilla” over so we can cook the other side.

Don’t be scared! This shit is easy – provided the bottom of the tortilla is cooked properly. If that fucker is runny?

I don’t even want to think about the mess and I sure as FUCK don’t want to think about the burn potential.

To do this properly you will need to employ a plate. Hopefully one large enough to cover the top of the pan.

I had photographic assistance while I did all of my own stunt work here.

And prepare to flip. The trick here is to act like you’ve done this motherfucker a hundred times. Be confident.

Don’t panic. You can do it!

And action!

Boom bitches!

That’s like some kind of magic trick and shit.

Remember me asking you why I didn’t use my cast iron skillet today?

You think I’m going to have the same result flipping over that heavy motherfucker? Shit, I wouldn’t even try. Scare my ass to death just thinking about it.

Now, our ass ain’t out of the woods yet. We’ve still got to slide it back into the pan.

Not too goddamn shabby! Just a spare potato slice or two didn’t make it (again – more on that in a moment.)

All we have to do now is cook until the 2nd side is done.

Maybe 4-5 more minutes or so. That should do it.

How about some bacon?

Yes, I could have simply served a slice of the “tortilla” with some toast and kept this vegetarian but doesn’t this motherfucker scream bacon? Or maybe some ham? Fuck yes, Iberian ham would be goddamn amazing here.

When the bacon is done, all we’ve got left to do is make some toast and plate this shit up!

And serve.

I see exactly what this recipe is trying to do and I love the idea but we’ve got to talk about that “*” from earlier.

This recipe from the little Spain guidebook calls for too many potatoes. 

There it is.

You can first guess by noticing the extra potato when we flipped the tortilla over. If you were to make this dish exactly as written but using only 3/4 pounds of potatoes instead? It would have been fucking perfect!

Let’s get a quick look at this photo.

Even though we used a metric “fuck-ton” of oil you can see that the onions and potatoes weren’t fully covered. The result was some of the potatoes being poached perfectly and some of them being a bit undercooked.

Now hear me out over here. This was still a good goddamn dish. But if we had equal parts onion and potato combined with the eggs? They would have made a singular, cohesive finished dish. The onions and eggs became one and I could see the possibilities. If we had the potato reach that same creamy texture?

Oh yeah. I see you Spain. I know what you were trying to do.

This was absolutely a rock solid dish and I can see myself making it again with the adjustment to the potatoes.

It’s simple, rich, satisfying yet at the same time it’s fairly light. I served this with a nice pinot grigio and the results were delightful.

I did end up adding a little freshly ground black pepper but that’s just me. Also, I tried it with a tiny pinch of Smoked Spanish paprika and you know what? I liked it better without the paprika.

As a computer science major we had a saying that said “Don’t trust version 1.0 of ANYTHING!”

Yes, this was my first attempt at it but I think I still did pretty goddamn well at the end of the day.

 

I appreciate you folks, I really do!

Thanks as always for being there.

Let’s do this again next week OK?

Be Safe.

Be Well.

PEACE!