Last week we were in London and I’ll have more details about our trip over the next few days. But today, I want to tell you about — and ask your help on — a dish we had at Barrafina, a tapas restaurant that would have been very at home in San Sebastian, Spain. The dish was a prawn and pepper tortilla, a Spanish omelet (think frittata).
The tortilla was cooked in a very small skillet (it might only have been about 5 inches in diameter) and was done completely on top of the stove. But this is the part that was surprising: The top and bottom were beautifully browned and fully baked (see the picture above), but when you cut into it, the insides oooooozed (see the picture below). It was as though the omelet had created a little shell for the filling.
I tried recreating this at home … and failed. I made a tasty tortilla, but there wasn’t any ooze. I cooked a little of the egg mixture in the bottom of a small nonstick skillet, then I spooned over the filling and poured the rest of the egg over it. I slid the tortilla onto a plate and then turned it over into the skillet to finish cooking. It seemed to make sense to me, but it didn’t make the tortilla I wanted.
Anyone got another idea?
Of course, now that I’ve asked for help, I did what I should have done in the beginning … Googled the recipe! I found it and I’ll try it, but I don’t see how 15 to 20 minutes of cooking can give me the wonderful runny innards of the original.
To be continued …