Tortilla española con chayote

Tortilla española with chayote

Tortilla means something different depending on which Spanish speaking country you’re in. Growing up, a tortilla was something I would watch the Mexican neighbors cook over the flames of their gas stoves: flat flour or corn bread that you wrapped around meat or butter and sugar, or rolled up to push around the beans and rice and salsa on your plate.
When I went to Spain, I found that a Spanish tortilla was a different beast altogether. It’s more like a fritatta, I suppose, although tortilla can also refer to an omelet, so I suppose it’s rather omelet-like, although heartier.
The Spanish tortilla is traditionally onion, egg and potatoes. It is one of the first things that I remember my Spanish friends teaching me how to make. In the typical preparation, you peel and cut up a bunch of potatoes, boil them in olive oil, remove the oil from the pan, add the onions, and pour the egg over it, making a sort of crustless quiche, or fritatta without all the additional ingredients. In Spain they have special pans that basically mirror each other, so that you can flip the tortilla when the bottom is done without having to worry about ruining the nice cake shape. The tortilla can then be served hot, or cold in a sandwich. (The first time I ever ate tortilla española it was served sliced and cold on a plate; I was not impressed.
At any rate, I usually add extra fun things to my tortilla española when I make it now: red peppers, spinach, lots of garlic, and oftentimes sweet potatoes. Here in Panama, I have regular access to chayote, which is a vegetable in the squash family, that looks like a large pear and tastes much like a buttery but less starchy potato. I decided that chayote could be a substitute for potatoes – one, since I didn’t have any, and two because I’m trying to avoid root vegetables as part of a candida diet – so I tried it out.
I started by peeling the chayote and cubing it, then sauteing it with onions and garlic. Since it’s not as starchy as a potato, it doesn’t need to be boiled or cooked near as long. Besides, I always want my vegetables a little bit carmelized, so this was my solution. I cooked the vegetables in coconut oil, one because it’s sweet (which I’ve been craving since I had to cut out all sugar) two because it is highly recommended as a candida fighting ingredient, and three because it’s a tropical oil and it seemed to make sense to add it to a tropical version of a tortilla española.
So. I sautéed the chayote, onions, garlic and peppers in coconut oil, and as soon as the onions were clear and the chayote could be easily pierced with a fork, I scrambled up some eggs and poured them over the top. I turned down the heat pretty low and put a lid on it and let it cook.
Because of the less starchy nature of the chayote, the size of my pan and the fact that I was not making the tortilla as thick as it would normally be, I didn’t need to flip it: cooking it at a low temperature with a lid on it ensured that it cooked through without need of a special pan.

Buen provecho!

Mango brown sugar rum jam. Need I say more?

 

Homemade jam is always the way to go. Mangoes have a special place in my heart anyway, so I’m pretty much always going to say yes to them, in any way shape or form. The brown sugar in Panama and most other Latin American countries leaves absolutely nothing to be desired: it’s called raspadura, and it hasn’t been processed to high heaven, so there’s a molasses flavor to it, and so much of the syrup that comes from the cane that it’s extracted from that it holds itself together. (I don’t actually know if that’s true, but I think that’s the case. At any rate, once you’ve started eating raspadura, there’s no going back. White sugar tastes like plastic.)

Add a little bit of rum and you’ve got a perfect tropical near-the-equator jam, at least when Candice makes it. Here's her description: 

Mango Jam with Brown Sugar and Rum: Organic Mangoes.  Slightly chunky!  Great as a pie filling or on french toast and ice cream!   Use within 2 weeks or freeze.

 So, what do you do with it?

Well, I found that once I popped open the jar I couldn’t wait long enough to go get ingredients to make anything more involved, although I instantly had a ton of ideas of what it would be good with. Instead, I ate it on toasted yucca bread from one of the local bakeries. Yucca is a tuber that I most often see as either a potato-like mash or as fries here, but the yucca bread at Ceiba bakery has this crunchy sweet crust on the top, and it’s soft and squishy and just what you’re not supposed to like anymore in this day and age of whole wheat bread. I should have made it into French Toast, but like I said I was impatient, so I just toasted the bread and slathered it in jam. I had accidentally squished it on the way home, so it doesn’t look near as pretty as it could, but there you have it:

But as soon as I had eaten my way into a stupor, finishing the bread and most of the jam, I was finally able to think about other options for this delectable goodness. Here’s a short list:

• On French Toast or waffles, with whipped cream and toasted pecans
• Wrapped in a crepe with ricotta or mascarpone cheese
• Served on a cheese platter, with aged queso manchego or other hard aged cheeses
• On buttermilk biscuits
• Inside a scone, like the ones they sell a the county fair
• And I’m going to go out on a limb here, but it would probably be pretty tasty with cornbread with bacon in it. No? Fine. I didn’t want to share with you anyway.
• It would be great warm on vanilla ice cream, and as a glaze on the top of a tart. And you know what? It would probably be absolutely disgustingly amazing baked onto pork tenderloin medallions with cilantro. Just sayin.