Having really enjoyed the Pinxtos I made last week, I thought I’d attempt the more difficult dish of Spanish Tortilla, accompanied by some more Pinxtos.

There seem to be several methods of doing the tortilla, mainly involving whether to boil the potatoes first before adding the egg mixture or cooking them with the onion in oil, first. I decided to go for the less healthy option, feeling I’d already burned the calories on a mammoth 27 mile walk on Sunday.

Using new potatoes, I sliced about 250g of them uncooked, into slices about half a cm thick. I thinly sliced an onion and put them all in a frying pan with quite a bit of olive oil (about 100ml).  Cook covered for about 20 mins, turning a couple of times on the way. Drain once done but keep some of the oil.

Whisk half a dozen eggs, season and put in some chopped flat leaf parsley. Add to the drained potatoes and onion  to the eggs and mix in, before transferring back to the frying pan with oil which had been set aside. Cook for about 10 mins and then comes the tricky part, turning it. Using a plate and some help (a bit difficult to attempt on my own with an arm in plaster), turn the pan upside down with the plate, so that the cooked side comes out topside on the plate. Slide the tortilla back into the pan and cook the other side for about 5 mins until done.

Adding to my expanding repertoire of Spanish dishes, I made some Pinxtos with fresh anchovies, topped with bashed capers, garlic and lemon juice, plus a little olive oil. Along with the serrano ham and chorizo slices wrapped around gherkin and roasted pepper respectively, I also had  a go at chorizo cooked in sherry. Well, I was going to attempt that until I found that the local Sainsbury’s didn’t stock any sherry apart from the kind your Grandma drinks at Christmas (I wanted to get a decent Oloruso).

Not to be deterred, I actually cooked the cooking chorizo (as opposed to the cooked, sliced variety) in rice wine instead. I have noticed that rice wine and sherry smell remarkably similar and although knowing nothing about how either is made, went for broke with the rice wine. Fortunately, cooking the thick slices of chorizo in a healthy glug of rice wine seemed to work really well, and gave the chorizo a lovely sticky glaze.

A bean salad with onion, garlic, parsley and a lemon juice dressing plus a tomato and onion salad, bruschetta style pinxtos and the prawn & marie rose sauce pinxtos completed the feast.

I won’t profess to have come anywhere near the delights of Barrafina’s Spanish Tortilla, but it did taste authentic, despite looking a little browner than perhaps it should! I should also add that this was far too much for even three people, with there being enough for a doggy bag plus another serving for the next day.