Potato Chip Spanish Tortilla

Your traditional Spanish tortilla is made by taking sliced potatoes that were cooked in oil and basically making a frittata that you have to flip over half way through out of some perverse Spanish desire to see you get eggs and potatoes all over your kitchen. I've tried to make one in the past without any success (hence the slight tinge of bitterness you are detecting). The difference here is not any kind of innovation in the dastardly tortilla flipping, but using potato chips instead of cooking your own potatoes... which sounds pretty crazy, but also pretty genius. The technique was first put out there by Ferran Adria (hence the genius part) but I only heard about it when Kenji posted his Salt and Vinegar Potato Chip Spanish Tortilla recipe, which takes the crazy!? crazy like a fox! vibe to a whole 'nother level.

I basically did Kenji's recipe except instead of using "kettle style" potato chips I used thin ones (Lay's) like Ferran Adria's recipe calls for. With the thin chips you end up not being able to tell potato chips were ever involved... they taste like very thin cooked potatoes, which I found fairly amazing. Whether the kettle chips hold up well enough to be a distinctively different experience... I can't say... but the recipe is so easy I'm certainly not opposed to further testing. I will note that with Lay's Salt and Vinegar chips I didn't really detect much vinegar flavor... so I'm not so sure that aspect has much merit, but presumably that varies by chip.

Given the picture above, I obviously also had significantly more success flipping the tortilla this time... just by using a lid that was several inches larger in diameter than the pan I was using... though I still did make a mess (thanks to oil and uncooked eggs) and I continue to fail to understand why we can't just use the broiler to cook the top. Isn't that what it's for? Sigh.

But anyway... the potato chip thing is pretty cool and worth trying. Definitely makes the Spanish tortilla into an even quicker last minute cooking option.

As a meta-note: I apologize for the lack of posting lately. My cooking has been pretty uninspired and my photography poor over the last couple of weeks, but I feel like I am turning a corner and have some good stuff planned.