Tortilla/Vegetable Soup and Grilled Chicken

Saturday 22 March

H: The real (or do I mean reál ?) tortilla española and not what we mean by a tortilla in NM, but a potato fry up (see below on "frahs"), I still had one nice chorizo, so a "little cake" was the very thing for a cold Saturday.
Fino's recipe was the sort of basis, except not at all, since it called for slicing the potatoes in 1 cm. rounds, then frying in an inch of olive oil, and breaking them up with the back of spoon, until they form a "dark brown mush," which is not only not appetizing, but makes the home cook, i.e. me, wonder what was the point of slicing them into 1 cm. rounds in the first freaking place. You're then supposed to leave the cake "runny" in the middle. We'll have to order one in Fino, when next we get to London, but in the meanwhile, authenticity yields to what I like to think of as common sense. So a compromise between Fino and New Joy, which in its own quiet multicultural way, is probably the greatest force for liberal progress and tolerance in America, as well as our most pleasant indicator of progress.
So three steps to a tortilla, Spanish style.
1. Slice up a bunch of onions, and slowly caramelized them in olive oil. Pour into a mixing bowl.
2. Fry up the chorizo, and pick it out into the same bowl, leaving lovely chorizo flavored oil.
3. Slice up a bunch of potatoes into rounds and shallow fry them in the olive oil (getting the idea that olive oil is the thing here?). Flip them from time to time. Don’t worry if a few stick together. Try for a nice deep brown but not necessarily potato chip crispiness.
4. Break an egg in to the onion-chorizo mix. Add the potatoes once coolish.
5. Frah.
6. Flip. Invert on plate and dump back in. (Or next time I'll try just running it under the broiler, as per frittata).
I have no idea how authentic it was, having never had one in Spain (or London), nor was Barbara there to provide eye-witness testimony. It was dam' good though, and I'm sure some madre in some pueblo makes it exactly like that. Of course, she is probably widely despised in said pueblo as a inauthentic cook and not allowed to contribute her tortillas to the school bake sale.

B: We gathered for dinner with Jeff and Noah. The first course was Ehud's home-made vegetable soup. He started with chopped onions and garlic sautéed in olive oil, then added the medley of available vegetables (chopped carrot, potato, asparagus, a few little tomatoes, and parsley) and enough water to make it soupy, seasoned with salt, pepper, and lemon juice, and let it simmer for about a half hour until everything was tender and the flavors melded. A true taste of Midbar Sinai.

The meat course was Jeff's grilled chicken breasts. He used the Mediterranean marinade from Wegman's, and being unmoved by the freezing Ithacan climate, grilled them outdoors. They were moist and flavorful. Served on the side was a nice Italian-style bread seasoned with rosemary.

Dessert was pumpkin pie, which suited the fall-like temperature, though tomorrow is Easter.