Tortilla stuffed with cheese and salami (or ham)

First of all don’t confuse Spanish tortilla with thin Mexican tortilla flatbread. We’ll be cooking the first one, made of potatoes and eggs. This is not a classical recipe – tortilla is a cheap dish (made of potatoes that remain diced, eggs, onions and salt) that became very popular in Spain. In order to achieve more rich taste, I offer you the recipe of stuffed tortilla.

Recipe of stuffed tortilla is easy, but slow cooking takes time. Anyway you can cook 2 dishes at ones, f.e. a soup. This recipe makes 6 portions of tortilla (I don’t like wasting time, when a dish can be stored in a fridge), I’m using a frying pan of 28 cm diameter.

Ingredients:

• 900 g of potatoes
• 100 g of onions
• 1-2 cloves of garlic
• 8 medium-sized eggs
• 1 tsp of salt
• 0,25 tsp of frechly grounded black pepper (or 4 peppers mix)
• 200 g of cheese (I’m using gouda or edam type cheese, but if you want it to be more liquid when melted – choose mozzarella)
• 100 g of mini-salami (can be replaced with 150 g of smoked bacon or ham)
• Oil for frying

Optional:

• Any herbs up to your taste for filling (chives, dill, parsley etc)

Instructions

1. If you use salami or smoked bacon, you need to fry it. When you’re done with it, remove them – we’ll use their fat for frying potatoes.

2. Peel and dice potatoes, mince onion and garlic. Fry them covered at medium heat (induction – 800-1000 W), stirring occasionally. Add some oil, if needed. I had to cook them ~25 min.

3. Put fried vegetables to a bowl and mash them with crusher (note: clumps are ok, remember that genuine dish consists of potato cubes). Let mashed potato cool down, otherwise eggs will begin to become cooked too early.

4. As soon as puree temperature became +35 – +40°C, add salt, pepper and eggs and stir.

5. Add some oil to a frying pan, preheat and reduce the heat to medium-low (induction – 500 W). Pour 1/2 of potato batter, place 1/2 of cheese slices, then salami/ham, cover it with the rest of cheese slices and pour the rest of potato batter over it. Cover. Wait until the top of tortilla will become cooked. My tortilla needed ~20 min.

6. Flip over: take a plate of the same (or bigger) diameter as the pan and cover the pan. Flip over – tortilla is now on the plate with pale side downwards. Now let tortilla slip back to the pan to cook the pale side. Fry uncovered ~10 min.

As for me – I like tortilla slightly warm. When tortilla is hot, one can’t feel all the taste of it (which is quite mild comparing to any Eastern dishes). But if it is not hot, cheese won’t be leaking out that beautiful.

Tortilla can be easily stored in a fridge – it is tasty even, when it’s cold. In Spain it is traditionally served as tapas (cold entrée). Also you can warm it up in microwave oven and it will stay delicious (to make it warm evenly, choose medium heat, 360 W).