A couple of others in my circle have posted recipes lately for Spanish Tortilla – Cityhippyfarmgirls’s Frugal Friday Tortilla de Patatas, and Celia at Fig Jam and Lime Cordial’s Dinners at Home tortilla with beetroot, kale and potato. It must be the moment in the year when eggs and potatoes both peak together to create the perfect seasonal food moment, which is exactly what you want for a recipe that meets the Tuesday Night Vego Challenge rules of fast, healthy, in season, from scratch.
I get eggs all year round, even from my small clutch of chooks of motley ages and breeds. They have a relatively high protein diet compared to chooks fed mostly pellets. They are moved regularly to a new garden bed where they have access to greens and grubs and snails and grasshoppers and any worms that are too slow. They get the household scraps including meat and fish bones. I try to give them a some mulch with grass and weed seeds, or waterweeds with snails and insects and crustaceans, or cow pats with the odd dung beetle, to scratch through every week. And they get a handful of mixed grain every day, scattered over the top to encourage them to scratch. They also get a scattering of shell grit from the beach occasionally. With a nice balanced diet and enough exercise to stay healthy, they tend to keep laying for years if a predator doesn’t get them. I’ve had a chook once, of motley mixed breed, that lived to over 10 years old. But the peak of egg season is in spring when even the geriatrics lay most days.
Up here in northern NSW, I have two spud seasons a year. The spring ones are planted in early August, as soon as we are over the crest of winter, and are harvested October November. The autumn ones are planted in February, as soon as we are over the crest of summer, and harvested May. But it’s only the spring one where potatoes meet eggs, and Spanish tortilla is the obvious conclusion. This is my version;
The Recipe:
For 4 serves.
You need a heavy plan that can go under the grill.
Chop an onion in half, peel, and slice finely into half moons.
Finely slice some potato into thin half moons too. You need about twice as much potato as onion.
Put a good slug of olive oil in a heavy frypan and gently sauté the potato and onion together till they are soft and just starting to colour.
While they are cooking, use a fork to mix four eggs, a good dessertspoon of cottage cheese, and a good pinch of salt and pepper. You want to just break the egg yolks and mix – don’t overbeat.
Finely chop a good handful of parsley and stir in.
Stir the potatoes and onions, pour the egg mix over them, and turn the heat down. Cook without stirring for a few minutes then put the whole pan under the grill to brown off the top. (If you don’t have a grill, you can put a lid on and cook very slowly till the eggs set, but I like the browned top).
Cut into quarters and serve. It’s perfect with the acid sweetness of cherry tomatoes, just dressed with a little parsley, olive oil, and salt, on the side.
That sounds delicious. I’ve not thought of adding cottage cheese to a tortilla before, must give it a go.
Two of my chooks have gone broody the last few weeks and I’m not getting as many eggs as I’d hoped this spring. They are silkies though so I’ve come to expect the broodiness.
It’s interesting that most cuisines have at least one dish that deals with a glut of eggs and vegies. Quiche, frittata, tortilla, omelettes – all the same great idea! I saw that Barbara at the New Good Life had a recipe for a baked potato with a baked egg inside that looked very tasty.
You’ve already seen my contribution for this week, but I’ll post it again anyway 🙂
http://sarah.hudweb.net/2012/11/egg-and-spinach-curry-andaa-saag.html
Yum! Our spuds are yet to reach harvestable stage (oh the envy of your 2 spud harvests a year) and our pekin Bantams are either on the blink again or hiding their eggs (cheeky things) so I’m short on both. I reckon I might save up the few eggs I DO get (I’d need at least 7 of their piddly little eggs too) and see if I can buy some chats. Nom nom
That looks SO delicious! I wonder if I can do it with sweet potatoes? Have you tried? I’m allergic to potatoes .. Have a great day!
We have potatoes out the wazoo here in Tasmania and for $6.95 for a 10kg sack you can bet your derierre that there are always potatoes on our menu 🙂 Cheers for this delicious looking concoction. I have just thrown some overgrown King Edwards into my long suffering old compost heap in a vain attempt to grow spuds here on Serendipity Farm where the clay is deep and the rocks are many. I had to cover them up because the wallabies and possums eat the leaves…I thought that they were poisonous…turns out they were just tasty 😉
Thanks for the shout-out, Linda! Your tortilla sounds fabulous – isn’t having fresh eggs just the best thing in the world? Our chookies aren’t faring nearly as well – we only get a couple of eggs a day at the moment (which is ample for our needs), but some of them are starting to age very quickly at the ripe old age of three. We’d been warned ISA browns didn’t live a long time though, and they have laid over 600 eggs each!
I always thought potato leaves were poisonous too.
I’m sure it will work with sweet potatoes.
I bet they’re hiding eggs. Bantams are so maternal.