Thursday, February 16, 2006

Veggie filled Thursday...

Blogger seems to be having many issues lately - the site may load quite slowly today or not at all. I hope they can get these problems fixed soon!

Tonight's dinner puts a healthy spin on a different type of omelet. Tortilla EspaƱola, also known as Tortilla de Patatas (potato and onion omelet), focuses more on the potato element in the dish, rather than eggs, like in an American omelet. The ingredients could not be more simple - potato, onions, eggs, a bit of oil and salt.

In the traditional version, the potatoes are fried first before assembling. Here we roasted them for about an hour with the onion and a very reduced amount of oil. This adds so much more flavor than if you were to just boil them. They are then added to the eggs and allowed to sit for a few minutes to absorb some of the liquid from the eggs. The trickiest part was flipping the potatoes back into the pan, but it held its shape much more than I thought it would! The tortilla is only cooked until the egg has a chance to set on both sides and to bring a dark golden crust to the outside. By making this in a smaller skillet, the appearance is quite striking when cut into - as you can see all of the layers. While it did hold together okay, I think it could benefit from adding one or two more eggs. This is best at room temperature rather than serving right out of the pan, so it would be a good dish to make ahead to serve to guests. This is our entry to the VRC that Biscuit Girl is guest hosting for Alysha at The Savory Notebook.

Since the asparagus was on sale this week and looked extremely good, so I went looking for a recipe to use them rather than just steaming. Balsamic Roasted Asparagus is now by far my favorite way to prepare this veggie. Very simply done by roasting them with some balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper at a high temperature. I don't think I could go on enough about how much we liked this, they were so good! The asparagus we used was pretty thin, so if yours are much larger you might want to increase the cooking time by a couple minutes. This one will be repeated often!


8 comments:

  1. You wouldn't, by chance, be planning to send me that potato recipe for this weeks Virtual Recipe Club, would ya? It looks pretty tasty.

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  2. Potatoes! I must have been Irish in my previous life because I love the spuds. That's an awesome recipe. I'm saving it in my Must Try list!

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  3. The Balsamic Roasted Asparagus is one of our favorite recipes. I think CL has 2 versions of it.
    That potato recipe looks great!

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  4. a little drizzle of lemon juice after the asparagus is done is very nice too =) just made this last night!

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  5. This looks so delicious & satisfying. I grew up eating "fried potatoes" almost everyday. Dad didn't like onions, so when I was on my own I always added the onion & love it that way. Can't go wrong with asparagus prepared in that fashion! Great as usual.

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  6. I just saw a show where the chef made a potato dish that is like this one, but he only used potatoes and clarified butter. I have to say, your's looks much better.

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  7. Biscuit Girl - That's one of the reasons we made it - I sent it along!

    MM - Please try it and let us know if you make it!

    Patti - Is the other one with the browned butter?

    Kitchen Queen - I never liked it before, but just in the last few years have started using it

    Anonymous - Wish I would of thought of that at the time! I'll remember that!

    Fran - Thanks!

    Erin - Thanks, what show were you watching?

    EJ - Thanks!

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  8. Love the potato pie!

    Roasting asparagus is one of my favorite ways to cook them - and what could be better than a little balsamic vinegar.

    Thanks for sharing.

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