busy busy

Not one but two work deadlines today, folks, hence the brevity of the past couple entries. However, alexpalex commented that I forgot to mention the existing controversy regarding whether a proper Spanish tortilla should include onions. There are those who believe the official Spanish tortilla should be made of just eggs, potatoes, olive oil, and a little salt. I did a brief unofficial survey and found a ratio of 7:3 of the recipes do include onions. As one author commented, I'm paraphrasing, no two tortillas will ever be the same. He continued, I make tortilla the way my mother makes it, who makes it the way my grandmother made it. His recipe, incidentally, included onions. I suppose, like with every "traditional" recipe, variations crop up over time simply because one grandmother's taste buds are different from those of the neighbor's grandmother. Case in point, there is a traditional PA Dutch recipe that I adore, called potato filling. If you scour every recipe for potato filling from the Internet back to great grandmothers' old church cookbooks, you will find thousands of recipes for this one dish, no two exactly alike. Back in Spain, there were probably a few grandmothers who got indigestion from onions and therefore omitted them from their tortillas. I plan to research this more thoroughly and will also poll Almendena and the other neighbors on the matter. Will keep you posted....in the meantime, I also suggest you make the tortilla both ways, with and without onions, and see which you prefer. And Spanish readers, please comment: did your grandmother include onions in her tortilla? hasta manana, mylifeinspain