Spain's tortilla wars

Spaniards are divided over the correct preparation of their iconic potato omelette - so I took an eggy deep dive into tortilla culture. Plus: what I've been drinking this week

In search of the perfect tortilla: clockwise from top left, Penélope Cruz, left, making her tortilla in Parallel Mothers; my finished tortilla, with Sainsbury's behind; onions and potatoes in the pan; Broken Eggs's superior sobrasada tortilla

I’ve been thinking a lot about tortillas recently. It’s probably because I’m looking forward to a summer holiday in Spain, but nevertheless the amount of public discussion there devoted to this humble omelette is impressive. It’s as if British national newspapers commissioned major pieces on cheese on toast.

Potato tortilla is, declared Madrid daily El País earlier this year, Spain’s “most debated and loved dish”. You can buy a slice of tortilla or a tortilla bocadillo at almost any Spanish bar, no matter how tiny or basic; likewise most Spanish restaurants, no matter how fancy, offer some take on the tortilla somewhere in their menus.

“You can tell a good Spanish place by their tortilla,” says my friend Bea Blázquez at the London Spanish Embassy’s Commercial Office. “It’s so simple but tricky to get exactly right.”

Yet like most food traditions, tortillas aren’t quite as eternally Spanish as they might seem. Potatoes first arrived in Spain from the Americas in the late sixteenth century but weren’t much eaten for many years, and potato tortillas are first recorded only in the late eighteenth century.

Morever up until a hundred years ago, Spanish food was intensely provincial, with few commonalities from region to region – reflecting the fragmentation long present in Spain, always the great fear of central governments. For this reason, fascist dictator Francisco Franco and others actively promoted the tortilla as a national dish. Yet in the grinding poverty of rural Spain in the post-Civil War years, many people were in fact too poor to eat eggs often: last year’s book Las recetas del hambre (Recipes of the hungry years) recounts how peasants would make tortillas from orange pith and a flour-water mixture.

Those days are thankfully long gone, yet the tortilla – just eggs, potatoes, and usually onions – remains deceptively simple. For a start, they’re tricky to make well, especially if cooked to order.  In London Blázquez recommends the tortillas at José and the Barrafina and Ibérica restaurants. Those at Boqueria in Battersea are also good, while for an unwavering focus on tortillas and little else, Fitzrovia’s Broken Eggs is the place to go.

On one thing, Spaniards can agree: “Everybody’s Mum makes the best tortilla,” says Blázquez. But they don’t agree on much else: what type of potatoes to use; how much to beat the eggs; whether it is permissible to add other vegetables, meats or seafood; how runny it should be; and then by far the biggest dividing line – whether or not tortilla should include onion.

“This is a very dangerous subject,” warns another Spanish friend, journalist Celia Maza. “You could create another civil war.”

Those who prefer tortilla without onion, the sincebollistas (it’s not Spanish’s fault that it makes tortilla tribes sound like guerrillas) say onion is simply unnecessary, even ridiculous. In Pedro Almodóvar’s most recent film, Parallel Mothers (2021), Penélope Cruz’s character makes a potato-only tortilla with mesmerising simplicity – and it looks delicious. Then again, Cruz could probably make unblocking a drain or taking out the trash look mesmerising.

However, an El País survey last year found that around 70 per cent of Spaniards prefer tortilla with onion (the same poll found that over 81 per cent of Spaniards consider their nation’s food the best in the world, followed by Italian and French.) And in March this year survey of 21 leading Spanish chefs by the same paper found that 16 preferred tortilla with onion.

“I believe the onion is an essential part of the recipe, providing a sweetness to the tortilla, but it really is down to taste,” says my friend Marcos Fernández, CEO of the Ibérica restaurant group.

The other key attribute that El País polled people about was how runny they like the centre of their tortilla – assuming that we’re talking about one cooked to order at home or in a restaurant, rather than just a pre-cooked slice warmed up. Over half liked it runny, against just over a quarter preferring well done.

“A tortilla must be runny,” says Fernández. “But when we say ‘runny’, you don’t want a very thin liquid but actually something more like a cream, which is achieved with the timings, a good mixing of eggs and potatoes and more egg yolk.”

Yet if I’m honest, I prefer a set tortilla to a runny one - what Fernández calls a “RENFE tortilla” in reference to the cafés of the country’s rail network.  Admittedly his may stem from nostalgia for my first years travelling alone in Spain as a teenager, when a warmed-up slice of tortilla and a beer at a train station bar felt like escape.

There are certainly easy options if this style will satisfy you: several British supermarkets now sell small, pre-cooked tortillas. Blázquez prefers M&S’s version, another Spanish friend Sainsbury’s. Naturally I conducted a taste test for this piece: they’re both not bad, if a bit bland in texture. The superior solution is of course to make your own – and I improved on my own time-honoured recipe by trying out an excellent one from London Spanish chef José Pizarro. This is my take on it:

Tortilla de patatas

• 250ml olive oil

• One large onion, finely sliced in half moons

• A few sprigs of thyme

• About 500g semi-waxy potatoes, halved and thinly sliced, ideally with a mandoline

• 6 large free-range eggs

• Salt and black pepper

Heat the oil in a medium-sized non-stick pan: you need this much oil because you’re almost boiling the vegetables in it rather than shallow frying. Add the onion and thyme and cook over a medium heat, just until the onion is starting to change colour, 10-15 minutes.

Add the potatoes, mix, and cook until tender but not falling apart – about 10 minutes. Meanwhile beat the eggs in a bowl and add seasoning.

When the potatoes are done, drain all of the potato-onion mixture (not the oil) into the eggs and mix together gently. Reserve a little of the oil in the pan.

Re-heat the pan over medium-low heat and when the oil is hot, tip in the egg mixture.

Now the tricky part. After about five minutes, use a spatula to lift the tortilla and check doneness: the underside will be starting to brown. Make sure the tortilla isn’t stuck to the pan, then put a dinner plate upside down over the pan. Holding the pan with your dominant hand, use the other hand to hold the plate while you flip pan and plate (if you’re doing this for the first time, it’s a good idea to do this over the sink in case of spills.) You now have the tortilla done-side up on the plate. Put the pan pack on the stove and use your spatula to slide the tortilla back into it. Tuck loose bits of egg and potato underneath, and try to tuck the edges under to make them rounded.

Cook for another 2-5 minutes, depending on whether you want the inside runny, fully set or somewhere in between. Put another dinner plate or a serving board over the pan and flip it again. Leave it to rest for a few minutes before serving.

Egg-xact science: M&S’s tortilla with pimientos, briefly pan fried

What I’ve been drinking this week

Domaine Barou “La Bonne Etoile” Viognier 2022, IGP des Collines Rhodaniennes - from a veteran organic producer in the northern Rhône, the Viognier grapes for this white come from outside the limits of the grape’s most famous home, Condrieu, so it’s labelled as a simple IGP (ie Vin de Pays, as it used to be known.) Fresh, clean and precise, with subtle apricot fruit: a lovely aperitif (was from the Wine Society en primeur, about £15; now N/A UK unless they’ve bought more to release later.)

Pieropan La Rocca 2021 Soave - Pieropan’s top cuvée is justly the most famous Soave: so complex and so perfectly poised, sweet fruit and classic nutty notes. Considering what the money would buy you in Burgundy, it’s pretty good value for a white wine made at such a high level (The Wine Society, Brunswick Fine Wines and elsewhere, from £30.)

Produttori del Barbaresco “Rebajà” Riserva  2016 - my very generous friend David served this amazing red Piemonte and the previous white at dinner at his on Friday - a serious treat (he’s an amazing cook too.) The Babaresco co-op has long offered a benchmark of quality in the area, and this cuvée, made only in the best years, is sublime. Fragrant yet savoury, with almost tomatoey notes, beautifully balanced, soft tannins, very long. As serious as Barbaresco gets (Armit Wines and elsewhere, mostly in bond and/or magnum, from £83.)