Spanish Omelette con el Hemingway

Don’t panic – there are no actual bits of Mr Hemingway in this omelette.  It’s just that I can’t make a Spanish omelette without thinking back to drunken evenings (or should that really be early mornings) with my lovely, all-things-Spanish loving friend, Conor Corderoy……They made an omelette. And the omelette they made was a Spanish omelette and a round omelette. And an omelette with potatoes in it.  I’m guessing you had to be there and a student and pretentious and just a little bit three-sheets-to-the-wind to understand quite how hilarious our efforts at producing these fine gems of eggy spuddy loveliness were.

Conor, although English, spent much of his childhood, barefoot rambling around an island in the Balearics acquiring a taste for literature, not all of it good and now writes fabulously filmic fiction…….beat that for a bit of alliteration!

So going back to the Spanish omelette, I’m a bit of an easy target when it comes to new foods in the supermarket and Sainsbury had pots of this uncooked, soft, unformed chorizo like sausage called Sobrasada de Mallorca last time I was in there wielding a shopping trolley and my debit card and I couldn’t resist.  I’ve spent ages trying to think of what to do with it and today, finally took the plunge and added it to my Spanish omelette.

I used half a block of it in this recipe.  I scraped it out of it’s tub and rolled it into little marble sized balls – be warned it’s a mucky job.  I think it would taste good as a pizza topping so that’s probably going to be tomorrow’s supper!  The sobrasada is really quite salty so you really don’t need to add any salt to this, even if you generally disagree with my position on salt!

Ingredients:

1 large potato, peeled and thinly sliced

1/2 a small onion, thinly sliced

200ml olive oil

1/2 tub of Sobrasada, rolled into little balls

4 eggs, beaten

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1.  In a small, oven proof, frying pan, fry the potato slices on a medium heat for about 8 to 10 minutes then remove with a slotted spoon and reserve, keeping warm.

2.  Fry the onion off for a few minutes until it starts to become translucent then tip the lot into the pan where you have put the potatoes.

3.  Using a slotted spoon, trying not to transfer too much of the oil back into the frying pan, transfer the onions and potatoes back to the frying pan, trying to spread them evenly around the pan.

4.  Nestle the sobrasada balls as evenly as you can around the pan amongst the onions and potatoes and then pour over the beaten eggs.

5.  Reduce the heat down to low and cook until the omelette is beginning to firm on top (probably 7 – 8 minutes)  then take off the heat and finish cooking (for about 5 minutes) under the grill.

6.  Slice and serve hot with cherry tomatoes and balsamic vinegar.