Tortilla

As the morning draws closer to the necessary swap to the afternoon, something keeps us going. Not in a big way, but neither is it a small occasion; smells of lunch permeate the end of the morning. The smell I associate most clearly with this shift is onions frying with potatoes, the sweetness of the smell coming to the point of burning, before adding the egg. This is the moment we arrive at the table, the signal at which I lay out plates and cutlery. I tear a piece of kitchen roll in four and lay it under each knife. I prepare a salad. We all wait for the tortilla, torr-tee-ya.

   Yet the ceremony of this preparation doesn't concern me, or concerns me only in as much as a congregation hears mass; it's the speaking that matters. 

   The tortilla is a bedrock of Spanish cooking because of the simplicity of the ingredients, but it is the test of a Spanish cook in its execution. Not anyone can follow a recipe for the tortilla and pull it off. It's a trick that leaves the dish vulnerable to accident right up to the point of plating. 

   I'm talking, somewhat hyperbolically, about the flipping. 

   This is because anyone who has taken on the responsibility of cooking the tortilla is solely responsible, and knows, that if it goes Pete-Tong, that they not only leave everyone hungry, but that they will leave everyone with mess in the kitchen, and a hollow salad to make up for it. 

   Everything is moving: the pan, the tortilla —half cooked—, the plate. Even without the heat of the pan, it's dangerous, and the key is speed, the unified motion of the plate on top, hand on, flip (!), pan off, and lay the tortilla back in its place. 

   Before this domestic drama, it's also a real fuss. You peel potatoes, then cut them, then chop onions, and fry it all for a long time. We think of it, at home, as a quick lunch, but whoever cooks finds themselves there half an hour for this one dish alone. Tortilla is not a dish you make for just anyone. 

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When I lived in Madrid, I learned a lot about where I was from. Discussions there are never limp, even about the most trivial things: tortilla is not trivial. I saw rooms separated by the debate on tortilla, friends at each other's throats, and stunned incredulity of both sides at the aberration advocated by their opponents. The debate on whether the humble onion has a place in the tortilla has gone on for years, and like the most profound rifts, will never find reconciliation. 

    I grew up with the taste and the smell of the sweet onion forming part of the experience, and the same went for roughly half the combatants. The other half saw no place for sweetness in the tortilla of today; the pure flavours of potato and egg were structure enough, not just foundation. Though it's easy to sit on the fence with these things, and more often than not, when there is a debate, I try to take a side, but with the tortilla, I truly can't. I have enjoyed the sweetness, and the simplicity, I have eaten them well cooked, and less well cooked —but that is a matter of taste, not an issue of sect. 

    

   The simplicity of the flavours, whether the two or three components, and the versatility of its uses has seen it travel with my family, to picnics, and on ferries, to work, and on holiday. Most of all, whether hot or cold, you find treasure if you come across a piece of tortilla; late at night, the quarter in the corner of the fridge is heaven itself. 

    But travelling isn't that simple. In Madrid, as in all big cities, the regulations require pasteurisation, but the provinces are free to make tortilla as they wish, more by laxity than by law. It is entirely fitting with my own semi-native notion of Spain; there is a fractured, individual anarchy right down to the level of food, and yet, that label travels quite freely over the corners of the peninsula. 

   Be warned: the tortilla takes practice, and you must find what you like; however, before chucking chorizo and paprika in, try this simple dish in its pure form. Even in anarchy, there exists a code of conduct.