Tortilla Española

Last Friday we got together with some people from our Bible study. They taught us how to make Spanish tortilla and we taught them how to make cream cheese brownies (thought of Melanie the whole time). Plus, one of the guys made crepes because he's half French and crepes are yummy. It made for a VERY nutritious dinner.

 First we made tortilla. Yum. Now some of you may be thinking I am speaking of the tortillas you buy at the grocery store. Mexican tortillas. NOPE! But don't worry, that's what I thought it was at first too.

Host Mom: "Oh, we are going to have tortilla for dinner tonight."

Kim: "We are ONLY eating tortillas!? Que pena!"

Rest assured. The tortilla they speak of is a simple dish containing egg, potatoes, onions, and a little bit of salt. Might sound gross to you, but you're wrong. It's kind of like an omelet. It's one of the most popular dishes in these parts. There are other types of tortillas, obviously you could put in it whatever you like, but potato is the most popular. Technically it's called tortilla de patata, but if you just say tortilla española people know what you are talking about. If you want tortilla with anything else in it, though, you have to specify.

Anyway, it's quite a simple dish to make. You just peel the potatoes and onions, cut them into pieces, and fry them in a bit of olive oil. Take them out, mix them with the whipped eggs in a frying pan, and cook her up! Oh, and add some salt too. The most difficult part is flipping it. Most people use a plate and then slide the tortilla back onto the pan. 

 Our Spanish friends really like brownies, so they wanted to learn how to make them with us. As we made them, we explained to them what we were doing and they wrote it down so they had the recipe for future reference.
Now, I always seem to have troubles with these Spanish ovens... I'm sure we did the conversion of Fahrenheit to Celsius right (I used the converter on my phone), but for some reason the top was completely burnt and underneath wasn't even fully cooked. Aye! This time we even had it on "whole oven" setting.
The kitchen got a little smokey, but it was alright. We just opened up a window. At first they were pretty disappointed because the brownies didn't work out, but we decided to change the setting to "only bottom" and see what happened. It worked! AND you could barely even tell they were burnt. Go us! So, they turned out pretty well.

Daniel (he's the guy in the background there) is half French and lived in France for three years, so we asked him to make crepes for us. The recipe was his mother's own, and even in French... talk about authentic! Even though I haven't spoken or seen French since senior year of high school, I could even read the recipe :) I was pretty proud of myself. It helps that I know what goes in crepes, generally.
I did a pretty good job making my batch, as you can see. That little doo-hickey appliance was pretty handy! Otherwise I don't think our crepes would have been nearly as circular. It may have been fun to make fun shapes with them though...

So, here you can see our extremely healthy dinner for a fabulous Friday night in Spain. We ended up trying all kinds of combinations of food... brownie wrapped in crepe, tortilla wrapped in crepe, tortilla con brownie...? It got a little crazy.
We had a bunch of fun, though. It almost even turned into a slumber party! The girl's house we cooked at was in a pueblo right outside of Valladolid and the last bus came to take us back at 10:30pm. We ALMOST missed it, but made it just in time.

Next on the list, you ask? MEXICAN!!!!