Tonight for dinner we made Tortilla, a very yummy dish from Spain.

The first time we tried Tortilla was while hosting that beloved daughter of my heart, Schada. Morocco is so close to Spain, so there’s a lot of cross over there. She wanted to make something and this is what she chose to do.

I have to admit, I had no idea that “tortilla” could mean something that didn’t include a little flour or corn disc.

Oh no, tortilla is rather breakfasty. Mostly it is eggs and potato and onion! We love our breakfast meals so going for a Tortilla is bound to hit it off with this crowd!

So tonight’s dinner is dedicated to Schada and my main helper was Caramon. (Shocked it wasn’t Joram? Oh don’t worry, he had some kitchen action!)

We pulled out some of our supplies:

See Joram behind my supplies? He’s excited! At his insistence we purchased that rather fancy looking extra virgin olive oil and he busted that puppy right open for me!

We had onions cut from another meal, so all we needed to really do was take care of the potato. Caramon set in while I did some dishes:

We needed to saute veggies, and Caramon watched a how to video.

The Tortilla is made kind of like an omelet. You mix your veggies into some scrambled up eggs and then throw it in a skillet. You let it cook and then flip the whole sucker over.

Here’s ours before we flipped it:

Now here’s the thing… I can’t flip a pancake or an omelet. I don’t know what it is, I just can’t do it. Isn’t that sad? Don’t worry, I’ll try to stay away from any burger flipping jobs, too! So I tried to flip it once, and that was absolutely unsuccessful. I then tried to go ahead and loosen it away from the skillet. That time I tried to flip it and in lifting my skillet my wrist cracked really bad and I nearly dropped the whole thing. Our skillet is real big and I have some wrist issues. Guess I need to see my chiro again soon!

What a mess. In the end, we finally ended up with some Tortilla to eat. Yum!

Joram was anxious to do something and the poor boy experienced his first failure today. I feel bad, but I was just so busy trying to deal with the dishes, dinner, and answering various food questions.

Before Joram embarked on his cooking week adventure, he saw someone on TV make a strawberry meringue cookie. We looked high and low for strawberry extract, which my mother finally found for us.

He was just so anxious I told him to try to make his cookies. I made meringue cookies all the time as a kid so I figured he could rock this and I could finish dinner. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice he went for a plastic bowl or was having trouble with the egg separating.

Here’s his gear complete with my camera lens doing something real wiggy with depth of field… that should really say everything:

You don’t even want to know. We ended up with very liquidy nothing. Yech.

My mum even came over to help out. We also actually pulled out the hand mixer. I never use that thing, I hate those things! We whipped up a second batch, in a metal bowl, and it came out great.

Ahhh now THIS is what meringue should look like:

Joram insisted on making these pretty, so I pulled down the cake decorating box for tips and bags and whatnot. He made up some rather cute looking meringue cookies and while they weren’t done until 10 at night, the boys each got to try one.

Don’t they look so good? The strawberry extract gave such a delightful flavour! Now, I need to find something else to make with strawberry extract because woah yum!

Meringue has a mixed history. It could be French, Swiss, Italian… who knows! The general response from my family was, “Nom nom nom”. We don’t much care, for it is fantastically tasty!

For a little review, over the last few week’s we’ve traveled through our kitchen to:
Switzerland, Germany, Italy, France, and Spain. Don’t forget the good ol’ USofA!

It’s all in fun, right?

–Lady O