Brunch Dish: Spanish Tortilla

It's big, filling, cheap, and you can cook the whole damn thing at once: Spanish Tortilla is the best thing to make if you have some friends coming over for brunch.

The Spanish Tortilla recipe in How to Cook Everything is basically a big pile of potatoes, eggs and onions cooked together in one pan. You sauté some onions and thinly sliced potatoes until soft in a large skillet (it helps a lot if it's nonstick). The potatoes and onions cook together in a whole bunch of olive oil--one cup. It's a lot, but you drain it out before adding the eggs. After draining the oil, 6-8 eggs go in a bowl with the potato-onion mixture, and that goes back into the pan (add some of the oil that was drained before you add the potato-egg mixture to the pan. You just cook this over medium heat until the edges firm up. Then, using a spatula to loosen the tortilla from the pan, transfer it to a large plate, turn it upside down using another plate, and finally return it to the pan, thereby flipping the tortilla. Cook it for another five minutes or so, and it's done. This thing is damn tasty, and it can be served warm or room temperature. I want some right now.

Tweaks Needed: Warm Spicy Greens with Bacon and Eggs

Billed by Bittman as "the salad for meat-eaters," this was not one of my favorite dishes so far. Part of that could have been the greens I selected (mustard) or the fact that they were kind of on the wet side when I put the salad together (I don't have a salad spinner). It was a good start, I guess, something I'd like to try again in the future.

So, to make this recipe, you fry up a few strips of bacon, cut into small pieces (I'm sure pancetta and the like work well here, too). Then you add some onions or shallots, and let those soften, then deglaze the pan with a bit of red wine vinegar and mustard. This sauce makes the dressing for the salad. Place the greens in a warm bowl, toss with the bacon dressing, and then top each portion with a poached egg.

I thought this salad would make a great main course, and that's how I served it. Unfortunately, a series of circumstances made it a really just-okay salad. First of all, I'd never eaten raw mustard greens before; their name is no joke. It was like eating greens laced with wasabi. Some bites were mild enough, while others brought on hot tears. I could barely taste the bacon! Eating it, I thought that perhaps quickly blanching the greens might make them a bit milder, one possible tweak to make this recipe a bit more bearable.

Sidebar: Jacques Pepin makes a similar salad, with frisee instead of greens and the bacon on top instead of incorporated into the dressing. Looks really good. You can watch the episode of Pepin's show where he makes the salad here.

It's How Lincoln Would Have Wanted It: Tomato and Cheese Frittata, Roasted Bacon, Carmelized French Toast, and Strawberry Sauce

When I was a kid, my favorite holiday was always Presidents' Day. We'd try to get some sleep, the anticipation too much to overcome. Finally, at the crack of dawn, we'd run downstairs to open our presents under the Lincoln Tree, meticulously decorated with ornaments of each of the presidents (save for the William Henry Harrison ornament, which broke like a month after we got the set, drag). After we opened our presents, we'd let Dad put them together while Mom made frittatas, bacon, and french toast. Sorry, I mean freedom toast. Then we'd watch the parade.


It was with these fond memories in mind that I invited over some friends for what I hope will be a continuation of the tradition. I decided to stick with the same dishes mom used to make. First up, the frittata, which Bittman claims is as good hot, warm, or room temp. Mom always made it by finishing it in the oven, but Bittman just does it all on the stove. It's pretty damn easy; saute onions (I used scallions) in olive oil, add tomatoes, throw the eggs on top of that, and sprinkle Parmesan over the top.


Let that go over low heat til the eggs are just set, and you're good to go. This was pretty tasty, but not altogether stunning. I served it pretty much room temperature, and I think I would have preferred it to be warmer. The other thing I can't put on the recipe or Bittman or even my friendly neighborhood produce guy: fresh tomatoes really suck this time of year. Tomato season just isn't long enough. These tomatoes just made the omelet a little wetter, a little plainer, whereas if we had some nice in season ones, it would probably make the dish something truly special. As it stood, it was more like the omelets at the dining hall freshman year, before you learn to never, ever ask for the tomatoes.

Next up was the bacon. Bittman says that roasting the stuff is a good way to go for large batches. I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but actually it was the best bacon I've ever made. I hate pan frying the stuff, it's messy and it takes forever and I'm just not down with that. From now on, I shall roast. There were a few benefits. For starters, all the bacon is done at once. Much less time consuming. It also takes a lot less effort, and on top of all that, I've never been able to get that kind of crunch by frying it. Big success.


Anna the bacoterian was here, and she also seemed pretty psyched on the stuff. Oh, and I think the bacon itself was very good quality, I got it at Fairway, and it tasted a cut above for sure.

Caramelized French Toast was the real highlight of this Presidents Day feast. Great thing to make at brunch because no one orders it when they go out for brunch. It's likely to be a crowd pleaser. I used challah, the ultimate bread for French toast, dredged it in the milk-egg-vanilla mixture, and cooked it on a grill pan. In this Caramelized variation you sprinkle a bit of sugar over the piece (you can also dredge it in sugar but that sounded too sweet) before you put it in the pan. Gives it a nice brown color, and doesn't hurt in the flavor department. Easier than you think. Served it with maple syrup, robviously, and the Strawberry Sauce that I made from the Fruit Sauce, Two Ways recipe (cooked fruit method). Basically you just boil some butter and sugar in water, let it thicken, then add the fruit. The recipe says to puree it, but I decided to leave the strawberries in slices. It's in the dessert section, but it goes pretty well with French toast.


So I've cracked the brunch section of How to Cook Everything, and I'm feeling good about what's to come.

So Rich: Pasta Carbonara

Remember the rule about starting with bacon always ends in delicious? Well this further supports the argument.


You're supposed to begin with pancetta, actually, but I had slab bacon left over from the Beef Daube recipe and so I used that. Also, Anna was eating with me, and she doesn't eat red meat aside from hot dogs and bacon (I'm no vegetarian, but if I were, I might have to make the same allowance; I back it fully). I assumed this meant that she ate pancetta as well, what with it basically being bacon without the extra step of smoking (I think), but apparently not. "What about bacon and hot dogs don't you understand?" I'd like to point out that while we were by the butcher counter of Whole Foods having this discussion, Anna downed a free sample of skirt steak. Just saying.

Anyway, back to the carbonara. This dish is something I've loved since I visited Italy in 2007 where I had it for the first time. Pictured below, this was an eggy, oniony, herb filled, bacon flaunting pasta dish that I could not believe actually existed. Bacon. Eggs. Pasta? Yes. Please. Eating it while watching the sun set over the Italian Riviera did not hurt things, but I digress.


I've made my own carbonara before, using this recipe from the Paupered Chef. It's a delicious one, and it's not very hard. Great because it uses only four ingredients and pays off in the flavor department. A little bit goes a long way, too, as it's one of the richest pasta dishes I've ever had. Seriously, this is a dish that adding cream to would probably lighten things.

Bittman's recipe is much much more simple, and I have to say, I thought it tasted better. You can make it in the time it takes for the pasta to cook--not for the water to boil, mind you, but the actual ten minutes or so it takes for the linguini to finish. Take a warmed bowl. Beat three eggs. Throw in half a cup of pecorino romano (preferably) or parmesan, some salt, pepper, mix that up. Throw in the browned pancetta (or bacon) and its juices, throw the pasta on top, and mix together. You can add a little cooking water to thin it out if you need to. Otherwise, that's it. Serve. The hot pasta cooks the egg just enough to thicken it a bit, and the egg and bacon juices just coat the pasta and it becomes something much greater than the sum of its parts. No, it wasn't the same as the batch that I had in Italy, but it was pretty damn good nonetheless. And it's not so bad for you, as long as you only make it once a decade or so.

I will say this, though: only make what you're going to eat on the spot. The recipe is easily halfed, quartered, what have you, but it reheats into a dried out shell of its former self. Of course there is still bacon, so yes, I will eat microwaved carbonara. But it's not the same.

Not As Weird As You'd Think: Baked (Shirred) Eggs

Well, it was Sunday, my usual brunch date wasn't available, but I wanted some eggs. Seemed like as good a time as any to delve into the breakfast chapter. I was going to make The Best Scrambled Eggs recipe, but my roommate and brother (same person) started complaining that he didn't like scrambled eggs. Which I had never heard of before (from anyone, let alone my own brother), but whatever, I'm flexible.

So, Bittman says that baked eggs are special, that there's something about the texture that's not quite like any other kind of egg. They're "endlessly adaptable," too, which is always great. Basically, you butter a ramekin or some such small oven safe dish. Crack an egg into it. Salt, pepper, throw in a 375 degree oven for 10-15 minutes.


Bittman says it's twelve if your oven is right on the money (which I think mine is not--I need an oven thermometer). Anyway, when it comes out, it's kind of like a fried egg on top and a soft boiled egg on the bottom, with a poached egg-like consistency in the middle. Timing is definitely the hardest part here, but I could see this being really really handy if you were cooking for a lot of people; they'd all be done at the same time and to the same doneness. I guess I'll have to start having brunch parties?