It began with the best of intentions. A seemingly simple task. Make a perfect Spanish tortilla. No big deal. Just don’t fail. Millions of people get this right around the world, so if your egg is sticking to the pan, you’re doing something wrong! Well turns out I was using the wrong pan (stainless steel – although research has since informed me it’s possible, but much better to use a cast iron or non-stick to be safe).
But the method was not flawed. I gently poached not fried the potato slices (that I had cut with a mandolin, salted, drained to remove excess water and patted dry) and I set them to one side to cool while I did the same with the white onion slices – a beautiful white onion I’d bought from Natoora for this very recipe. Perhaps my mistake was not waiting for everything to cool before putting the onions and potatoes into the egg mixture. Did the residual heat almost scramble it? Did I not use enough oil? Did I turn the heat up too high? Was the pan not hot enough? Was the pan too hot?
After I quiet-screamed and cursed myself for making the ugliest Spanish tortilla known to man, I tasted it and saw that it was good. I dumped everything into a tupperware and returned to it over the course of two days, eating it cold with my elbows on the counter.
I had a similar experience with a wild garlic aioli that I had been wanting to make with my new immersion blender. I’d watched videos on how to emulsify the egg yolk with oil, careful not to use nice extra virgin so I wouldn’t make its astringent taste more bitter. I placed the blender over the egg yolk and the oil was over the top of the blender head like Kenji Lopez told me to. But it split immediately. I tried again, wasting another 200ml of good olive oil. The outcome was similarly as terrible. After reading 100 threads on a Reddit post, I figured either my beaker was too wide at the bottom or I hadn’t used enough water (or had I used any at all?), as the science behind emulsifying egg yolks means using a combination of both water and oil to thicken. I was never good at chemistry.
These questions that I plague my brain with – the Spanish tortilla inquisition of what had gone wrong (more specifically, what I had done wrong) – runs on a loop constantly, whether I’m cooking or not. What if I had done this, instead of that? What was the thing that made me a bad person in this situation? How can I rectify that mistake, or is it simply too late?
My therapist is going to have a field day with me on Thursday.
When I’m on the phone to Kyla, I tell her all the awful things I think about myself and she listens and tells me they’re not true, and logically, rationally, I know this, but my body only feels the failure.
This is not a recipe.
Yesterday afternoon I poured an unmeasured 1/2 cup of yellow-eyed beans into a small pot. In went three sprigs of thyme, three smashed garlic cloves, three pieces of thick lemon peel and a big pinch of salt. I covered it with water and poured a little extra virgin olive oil. As always I watch the oil separate and spool at the top, so perfectly round and glossy. It went on the hob for a couple of hours and I balanced out the salt with a little apple cider vinegar.
I usually return to something simple when I’m reckoning with my own flaws. Eggs scrambled in salted butter, the heat on high until the bottom begins to set, then immediately turned off and stirred. Rice wrapped in seaweed. A coffee made in the percolator. A cold glass of red wine.
We marinate and stew, then we start again tomorrow. It’s just a flash in the pan, right?