Oye Siri: How to Make a Spanish Tortilla?

So, the Tortilla post wasn't finished. Because...what (and why) is a Spanish omelette? Really??

It was a Monday night. Mondays are the most stressful day. She needed to prepare her dramatic interpretation of the chameleon's partial transformation into nine zoo animals in Eric Carle's "The Mixed-Up Chameleon" for her second graders on Tuesday and write a serious blog post and mop the floors and go on her Monday Run and call her mother, but she decided instead that this was the night she would attempt to cook a tortilla. Only in making one herself could she find out.

She had a couple of recetas, two kilograms of baby golden potatoes, one enormous zucchini, garlic, olive oil, a dozen room temperature eggs, and far too much energy, because she had accidentally bought herself a third cup of coffee on the way home from school.

So, it began.

After a moment of research, she realized that a recipe for tortilla con calabacín may not actually have any patata in it at all. Well, that was going to create a problem. A large sack of potatoes was dominating a pantry that had very little space to keep them. So she ninja-sliced some up anyway and threw them into the mix.

Experimentation in the kitchen is her philosophy.

And it started out well. Really well, actually. Everything smelled wonderful. This was going to be easy. She felt like she might need to make an ASMR video about this.

*can you hear these vegetables?*

She poured the veggies into the eggs and then slid the eggs back into the pan. Things were starting to frittata, essentially.

But then it was time to do the flip. The large cutting board was going to be the plate. "It's slim pickings around here," Cheryl said. This made her nervous. She didn't feel like she'd thought all of these pieces through. However, every moment she waited, the eggs kept cooking. She knew she was supposed to preserve a little runniness, though. She had to move, and she had to move fast.

And this is when the tortilla took… a turn.

(Sorry...)

Emily pulled out her camera.

Here are our results:

Photos of the spill were sent to various Americans and Spaniards for their feedback, and to lead a very miniature & very last-minute social experiment. 10% of Spaniards who saw this photo offered uplifting words of encouragement. The other 90% threw their phones across the room at seeing green vegetables in a tortilla and, after recovering, offered (mostly) polite suggestions for ingredients to use the next time she attempted this feat (ham, cheese, and chorizo).

The American response was split exactly in half, with 50% not responding to her Spanish-style stream of texts at all, and the other 50% saying it looked like delicious scrambled eggs (and to enjoy).

Cheers to Monday night laughs, cultural literacy, trying new things, and trying again.

P.S. She then decided to make the fly for her Chameleon interpretation out of Adidas tube socks and paper towels after they cleaned up this mess. Though her tortilla was a failure and it remains a conceptual mystery to her, she can proudly report to you that her giant sock fly was a raging success.

Till the next one,

XOXO

BONUS: 11 actual text responses to my photo:

1. "Jajjaja!! Nothing different than what could happen to a Spanish! My first tortilla was an absolute disaster!"

2. "Jajajajajajaja first times are always tough!!! Not that bad. Keep trying!"

3. "It doesn't look that bad! And what really matters is the flavour! Does it taste good?"

4. "poco hecho"

5. "Oh no did you put green things in that diego is going to have a COW"

6. "muy bien ellie. buen intento. hajaj." (- Diego)

7. "Ponle jamón de york, hombre" (*update: this Spaniard thought that this tortilla was a French omelette, not a tortilla de patatas)

8. "It's okay it's all about the taste"

9. "Not bad! Patata, huevo y cebolla (opcional) y un poco de sal"

10. "Zucchini in a spanish omelette... I have no words"

11. actually no words, just 10 laughing-crying faces