Ortiga Tortilla

Now that the woofas have discovered that we can eat nettles we have a new culinary craze in our household. They were clearing around the fruit bushes this morning and of course what did they discover? Nettles. Lots of baby ones, which they picked and put into a large flowerpot . Todays lunch is Spanish tortilla with nettles. The Spanish woofa is in charge of  making the basic tortilla – there’s no disputing that they have the best technique- and I am in charge of the nettles which are washed and ready to sneak in with the spuds.

The potatoes are cooked with garlic in plenty of olive oil and the onions are cooked separately, which is where I sneak in the nettles. When all the veg are cooked the olive oil is drained off and everything is mixed with beaten eggs – six or seven in this case – seasoned with salt and then the mix is slipped back into one of the frying pans. When it’s half cooked the tortilla is inverted onto a plate and flipped over,

I have to say that we have always cooked our tortillas more but I’m beginning to realise that a ‘prized’ tortilla is slightly wet in the middle.

If you don’t eat it too quickly it does in fact firm up and cook completely – this is from the residue heat – and it definitely tastes good this way.

We ate it with ‘blond’ coleslaw on the side. The tortilla was delicious but next time for such a fatty tortilla I think we’ll use more nettles. The flavour was there but it was subtle enough.