You will be hard pressed to find a french fry frittata on any menu anywhere. You may even find it difficult to find a good one on the web. We shall then assume that this post should be considered important. I am not a newbie to the frittata/tortilla español world. I have been honing my technique for many years. I'm not sure what's traditional in Spain and/or Italy, and I do not care. This is what I did and may continue to do in the future.
Start with potatoes. Slice them, and then julienne them. One could push this idea even further and make shoe string fries. I may try that in the future.
Good french fries are actually moderately difficult to make. You want to fry them twice. You fry them once in medium hot oil. This is known among fry masters as "blanching" the potatoes. Blanching the potatoes forces some of the starch out. When you remove your fries from the oil, they should be limp but not golden brown. The fries pictured above are actually on their second frying. The exuded starch on the outside of the fries will caramelize during the second, high heat frying, which will result in a crispy and colorful french fry. Salt your french fries as soon as you remove them from their second frying.
These are the fries that I added to the beaten eggs. I ate one or two of them to see if they were any good. They were.
The fries are salty, but you'll also want to salt the beaten eggs. Eggs taste very good when properly salted. When under-salted, they aren't all that tasty.
You'll want to put quite a generous amount of olive oil into the seasoned cast iron skillet before adding the eggs and fries mixture. If you want, you can start cooking the eggs on the stove top, on low heat, before putting the whole mess into a low oven, like 250 degrees. In Spain, tortillas may be traditionally cooked entirely on the stove top, not in the oven. The secret is low heat. You do not want to burn the eggs. The other secret is that bit about a generous amount of olive oil. When you put the egg mixture into the skillet, the oil should come up around the sides and pool on top.
This is the finished french fry frittata or tortilla español. Let it come to room temperature before eating it. It's better that way. You can also chill it. I cut a slice of this one and put it into a baguette from Woodstar cafe. I buttered the bread and spread a small amount of ketchup on the bread. It was good.
Don't start thinking that I made these today because I didn't. These shrimp are somewhat old. I have already digested them. They were delicious.
No, the real reason I'm posting them is because I feel like doing a post. Just killing some time, though I'm sleepy and could use a nap, before the opening and video showing at Flying Object tonight. The trick to tasty deep fried shrimp is in the shrimp (get good ones) and in the breading (season it amply).
Oh, and if I haven't repeated myself enough already, you also want to make sure your oil is very hot. Contemporary Americans have the notion that deep fried foods are bad for you, and to some extent they are correct. That said, deep fried foods done at home and PROPERLY are not so bad. If the oil is hot, the food doesn't swim in it for very long. These shrimp cooked in under 30 seconds. Plus, people, if you fry your food in good, unsaturated fat, well, you do the math.
So, I've always wanted to make McDonald's-style hash browns at home, you know, patties, but I've never really known how to do it, or rather, haven't really cared that much about learning how, since any old breakfast potatoes are usually good enough, so it was only by accident that I learned how to make hash brown patties. The hash browns in my last film, "Breakfast with the Pixies," however terrible they look, were actually the prototype for these babies.
I don't really recommend making these at home. The amount of work that is involved is not for the casual breakfast cook. Nonetheless, this is what you do:
I happen to have a cheese grater that can shred a potato really finely. Once shredded, I plopped my potatoes into a bowl and poured boiling water from the kettle over them. This "blanches" them and removes some of their starch. After blanching them, drain them and squeeze them dry. You want them dry so that the patty doesn't splatter when you drop it into very hot oil. Grease burns on the forearms are not for the home cook.
Salt the potatoes and form the patties. Easy. Because they are so finely shredded, your patties should hold their shapes without the need for a binder. Right. That's done. Now it's time to cook them. Twice.
Using the same technique I use for french fries, I first deep fried the patties in medium hot oil. If you haven't blanched them enough, the remaining starch will quickly turn your patty dark brown, like molasses color. OK, pull the potatoes out of the medium hot oil when they're getting a little color and set them out on a paper bag. Then crank up the heat under the oil as high as you possibly can and finish your patties. When they look like perfect hash brown patties, pull them out and set them again on a paper bag to sop up some of the oil.
In England it's typical to eat french fries with your eggs. I think it's probably typical in some parts of France, too, you know, an omelet with french fries is pretty common. In America, though, we usually isolate our french fries to plates with burgers or dogs on them. I'm not sure why this is. In any case, french fries are a great breakfast item, especially if you are hungover, which is exactly what I was when I made this breakfast at two in the afternoon yesterday. I'd finally summoned the motivation to make some food, and I knew that the potato in my pantry had to be included. Would it be hash browns or french fries?
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you probably know that I keep a 12" cast iron skillet in my pantry which is always full of oil for deep frying purposes. Now, in the past I shirked the fancy pants, high-end method of making fries because I thought it was unnecessary. Now, however, I do not. The key to good french fries is frying them twice, first on medium heat, then later on the highest flame you can get. Here's how you do it:
FRENCH FRIES
Slice your potato lengthwise. You can slice them thickly or thinly; that's up to you. Then, when you have your sheets, grab a stack three or four (or more if you can) and slice them into strips. These will be your fries.
Next, rinse and dry your strips. Dry them thoroughly so the hot oil doesn't go ballistic when you drop them into the pan. When the fries are somewhat limp, scoop them out of the oil and onto a paper bag. The paper bag will be unfit for the recycling bin after this. Sorry, Planet Earth. Crank the flame up to high, and let the oil come up to temperature.
When the oil is wicked hot, return your fries to it. Here, use your eyes and your nose. They will tell you when your fries are done. When they are crispy and have nice color, pull them out of the oil and immediately salt them. Eat ASAP.
This method will produce very good fries. If you just slice them and throw them into hot oil, you will get an edible product, but the product will also tend to go limp and get soggy.
Readers have been complaining about infrequent updates. They want to know what is going on. Why am I not updating OilChanges more frequently? "What on Earth" they ask, "have you been doing with your time?" Well, it's like this: I moved into this new office recently and I've been leaving my camera up here. I make some food, sit down to eat, look for my camera, and realize that there are two flights of stairs between me and it, and so I say, "Fuck that. I'm not climbing a bunch of stairs just to take a snapshot of some tacos." So here are some tacos I made this summer. Tacos that I think I already posted about. In compensation for that, some pointers on frying your own corn tortillas will follow the picture.
Clearly, those taco shells are brilliant. And you can do it, too! Seriously, you can. You too can make taco shells, tostadas, and chips. There is nothing like the smell of a good corn tortilla that is getting crispy in some hot ass oil. Seriously, it rules. So here are some pointers: 1) start with the best damn corn tortillas that you can find: I think that coarsely ground, maybe stone ground yellow corn tortillas—not white corn—are the best for frying. You get a harder, crunchier result with yellow corn tortillas. To know if you have found the right ones, simply use your eyes: does the "grain" look smooth or somewhat rough? If you can easily roll a room temperature tortilla into a tube without that tortilla cracking, spend some time looking for tortillas that will break if you attempt to tube them. 2) get yourself a pot or a big deep cast iron skillet: you want a vessel that will retain heat. Hot temperatures are essential to good frying. If you are making tostadas, you can use a fairly shallow pan, but for chips you want something deep. I use a 2.5 quart stainless steel pot with a heavy-duty bottom. Now about oil...
3) the darker the oil, the lower the smoke point. The smoke point is the point at which the solids, i.e. those things in the oil that burn, well, burn. Dark oils like sesame oil are totally unsuitable for frying. They will never reach a temperature that is hot enough to get a good result. Same is pretty much true for most olive oils—don't use them. I heard about a recipe for french fries fryed in olive oil and I politely said, "hmm, yeah, maybe," but I really meant, FUKCING STUPID. Basically, buy Canola or vegetable oil by the gallon and use that. Then, crank up your heat to pretty much full flame. If your chips or shells are burning before getting crispy, uh, turn that shit down a notch. Not rocket science, folks.
4) reusing your oil: oil is good for many sessions of frying, like 20. I keep a five gallon bucket in the garage for discarding wasted oil. One day I plan on giving it to someone who has a vegetable oil powered car. Anyway, when you are done frying, leave the pan or the pot on the stove until the oil has cooled. Then, do like I do: pour it into a big jar and save it for the next purpose. Or, get a pot that is only for frying and leave the oil in that pot. You don't even need to cover it. Just shove the pot into an out-of-the-way place and forget about it until you need it again. Oil does not spoil. No spoil oil.
Peace, and look forward to some more posting soon. Oh, and if you are making chips, hit them with some salt right after they come out of the oil. Tools needed: slotted spoon, forks for making taco shells. You need two forks; tongs will work, too. Come back another time for the technique, or simply go on youtube and watch some demos. Later.
I went ahead and made a video about my lunch. Which lunch? Another falafel sandwich lunch. Technically, though, it was a falafel "stroller," since I rolled it up and paraded it around my apartment before rapidly consuming it. In any case, the vid.
When you miss someone, and that someone is in a city known for good food, and you are in a small town that likes to think it's known for good food, and you are sitting around in your apartment, and you wish that that someone was with you, right now, sitting beside you and digesting her food, apart from endlessly browsing pictures of her on the internet, there is one sure-fire thing you can do to bring her closer: you can make shoe string french fries to go along with your tuna mayo (and that's English for tuna salad).
First of all, let me say that the new blogger is awesome! Look how huge that photo is! Look at those shoe string fries! No matter where you are, you cannot get shoe string fries like those at any restaurant anywhere. Not in Paris and certainly not in New York City.
Now it just occurred to me that I don't have too much to say about this lunch, except this: tuna salad in a buttered and pan fried, split-side hot dog bun is way awesome. The particular bun pictured above is maybe too wimpy for tuna mayo, but that is not important. What's important is that the someone mentioned above will take one look at my lunch, and a small magnet will rotate inside of her. A small magnet will rotate inside of her and, like a Muslim stopping and turning east at the call to prayer, she will stop in her tracks somewhere and, for a moment, as if pulled by the magnet, face home. At least, I would like to think so.
