Adventures in cooking

Hello, everyone. Today we drove down to South Padre Island to take in the Rio Grande Valley Quilt Show. It was neat. There were *so many* quilts on display, and so many of them were artistically beautiful and or technically impressive. I'm so glad DH went with me and we were able to talk about the many designs and color choices and techniques.

After we drove home, I got the thought to try and ring changes on the tried and true Spanish Tortilla de Patata. (There is no gluten in this, by the way, as it's basically a form of omelet or fritatta.) So I got out the mandoline and sliced a couple of calabaza squashes into slices. (Calabaza is a Mediterranean type of zucchini, great flavor.) I salted it and set it into the strainer to let the excess water out. Oh, if only I had followed up on this by squeezing the squash bits in a towel! But I am ahead of myself.



 I set the medium sized iron skillet on the burner to heat and cut up a couple of rashers (love that Brit-speak!) of thick cut bacon into straws and put them in the skillet. Then I pulled the (previously cooked and cooled) pot roast out and cut some slices off and cut them into bite sized bits and when the bacon was approaching hot I threw them into the skillet, too. I also threw a few shakes of onion powder into the pan...didn't feel like dicing the one remaining onion in the house when only a little would be needed. This all cooked along until the meat bits were cooked but not crisp nor burned. Then I took the squash slices and dropped them into the skillet. (This is where I probably should have squeezed them to get even more water out.)

Meats and squash slices cooking

Eggs ready to rumble.

The whole pile cooked for a while, with occasional stirring, and when it seemed that they were pretty much cooked through, I turned to the egg half of the dish. I had put 4 eggs into another bowl and beat them around a bit with a fork. Now I tempered them by adding a spoonful of hot stuff into the egg bowl and beating it around with the fork, then adding another spoonful and another and eventually the eggs get warm. At this point I dumped the whole bowl into the skillet and stirred around a bit so eggs and meat and veg were well mixed. And cooked. I will admit that I put the lid onto the skillet so the top layer would get warm too while the under parts were cooking.

Then I ran a table knife around the edge of the skillet to loosen the edges of the food and put a plate on top of the skillet and (using my oven mitts) flipped the skillet so the food would fall out.

Oops. Nothing fell out.

Hmm. Let's see what we can do. I stuck the spatula up into the skillet and tried to loosen the bottom of the food from the pan. It fell out, all right, but it fell in chunks. That was not the plan!

So I scraped the bottom of the skillet to get out the bits that were still stuck on, and then poured some olive oil into the pan and let it heat up. (Speaking of things that maybe should have been there when the bacon straws hit the iron.) Then I eased the tortilla into the pan as if it had come out intact and let the bottom layer cook.

Broken tortilla returned to skillet to finish up.

When it appeared that the bottom part was cooked, it was time to repeat the flipping trip with a new plate. (The other one had been in contact with uncooked egg. I don't like to use that one to receive the cooked and ready to eat tortilla. The reasons should be obvious.)

Tortilla flipped for second time and ready to serve.

We were full after eating half of it!

So I learned that you can never trust a piece of summer squash to be dry enough to do things with. And I practiced coping skills.

By the way, a nice glass of Spanish Verdejo wine is good with this. And since it includes vegetables as well as the eggs and meat, it's pretty much a (low carb) balanced meal. Win!