Carlos Sainz Jr.'s Authentic Tortilla de Patatas
Grand Prix Gastronomy has introduced me to so much good Spanish food that it has changed my life
Welcome to Grand Prix Gastronomy! In 2024, this series is dedicated to cooking the favorite dishes of every driver on the grid.
The Foods That Carlos Sainz Jr. Loves
If there's one thing I know I can count on, it's Spanish Formula 1 drivers loving their Spanish cuisine, and over on the Formula 1 website, Carlos Sainz Jr. had nothing but good things to say about his home country's food: “Obviously from Spanish dishes, for me nothing beats a good tortilla or some good croquetas, maybe even some octopus. If not, my go-to cheat meal is always a hamburger.”
No hamburgers for us this week! We're going to be whipping up a tortilla and some croquetas! Bless your light, Carlos.
This Week's Recipes
I like to keep my recipes at least somewhat authentic, so that's what I was looking for with these dishes this week. My other goal was to keep both dishes a little simple and not too crazy, the way these dishes would be if you were just making them as a tasty weekend treat.
I grabbed my tortilla de patatas recipe from Spanish Sabores, a food blog that focuses on authentic Spanish food. Note here that a Spanish tortilla is not the same thing as a Mexican tortilla. A Spanish tortilla is kind of a frittata/quiche-like omelet, while a Mexican tortilla is a flat, unleavened bread. The naming convention allegedly came from Spanish colonizers; the Spanish tortilla was the original, but when those colonizers met Aztec peoples, they had their own round-and-flat food with a similar name, tlaxcalli. It was close enough that when the Aztecs were forced to adopt the Spanish language, it was a lot easier to call tlaxcalli “tortillas,” despite being a totally different food.
As far as the croquetas went, I opted for a recipe from NYT Cooking. Short, sweet, and to the point. (If you're struggling to access the croquetas recipe, stick the URL into 12ft.io — but you didn't hear that from me!)
Core Recipes:
Cooking Tortilla de Patata and Piquillo Croquettes
If you want to have your tortilla de patata and piquillo croquetas in the same meal like me, I'm going to give you a quick run-down on how to most effectively make that happen.
You'll start with the croquettes. You need a fair amount of mashed potatoes to start with, to which you'll add some bread crumbs, serrano ham (or prosciutto), diced piquillo peppers (or roasted red peppers), one egg yolk, one egg, some pepper, and some paprika. Mix that all up until everything is equally distributed, then form your croquetas. You want them to be fairly small, maybe finger-size, which I absolutely did not do — but that's fine. They still came out fine!
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You'll dip your naked croqueta into some flour, then dip it into whisked egg. Let the egg drip off a bit, then roll it through the remaining breadcrumbs. Put all your croquetas onto a tray, cover it in plastic wrap, and then let them set up in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
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That gives you plenty of time to get started on your tortilla — which is honestly super simple. If you have a mandolin, use it to thinly slice your peeled potatoes and onions. Pat the potatoes dry, then salt them, and fry them in decent olive oil until they're nice and soft. In the meantime, caramelize your onions in a different pan. When both are cooked, let them cool for a bit. Then, scramble up some eggs, salt ‘em, and mix the potatoes and onions into the eggs. Let that all sit for about 20 minutes.
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With that done, return to your croquetas. Heat oil in a pan and fry the croquetas in batches until they're browned on all sides. Remove from the oil and salt ‘em.
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While the croquetas are frying, heat up your tortilla pan and pour your egg-onion-potato mixture in. Let it cook for about 8 minutes, until the bottom of the tortilla is cooked well. Place a plate over the tortilla, then flip the pan upside down, holding onto the plate. The tortilla should easily peel from the pan, and you can slip the tortilla back into the pan to cook the other side. (If you have some egg fall out when you flip, that's OK; it happens! If you totally mess up the flip, that's also okay! Just stick as much of the mixture back into the pan as you can and let it cook; it'll still be delicious.)
Remove the tortilla to a plate and serve with the croquetas and a nice chill glass of white wine.
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The Wine List
I was really hoping to find an Albariño or a Verdejo, but they were simply impossible to source in my areas — so I opted for a Vinho Verde instead, which is from Portugal — close enough.
Vinho Verde is light and refreshing, with crisp flavors of apple and citrus. It's similar enough to Albariño that I was happy with the substitution — and it makes for a great pairing to dishes like the ones we made here. Tortillas de patatas are (in my eyes, at least) a tasty brunch food, and the light Vinho Verde works really well as a pairing. It also offsets the crispy, creamy croquetas thanks to its ability to cut through the heaviness of fried foods.
One of the best parts of Vinho Verde, though, is that it's cheap compared to a lot of other comparable whites. That's not due to quality; it's more about the fact that this wine is criminally underrated! The bottle I grabbed at my local grocery store was hiding on the bottom shelf of the wine rack, costing a grand total of $6. You can find affordable Sauvignon Blancs, Albariños, Chablis, and Picpouls, but Vinho Verde is an absolute winner on the price front.
So, What's The Verdict?
After my husband's absolute hatred of the paella I made for the Monaco Grand Prix and his fundamental misunderstanding of what a Spanish tortilla is compared to a Mexican tortilla, I was very convinced he'd hate Carlos Sainz's Spanish extravaganza. But if the mans hated rabbit paella, he adored this potato-fueled adventure. I absolutely have to agree with him.
I think the one thing I'd change is my croquette making process. It simply was not smooth. The croquettes all came out different shapes and sizes, and I think they were way bigger than they should have been. They were still frickin’ delicious, don't get me wrong — but it's a process that I could finesse in the future. But, not bad for my first time cooking them!
The tortilla was the highlight of the day, though. Oh my gawd. I'd never had a Spanish tortilla before I cooked my Spanish edition of GPG, and I was jazzed. It was like the greatest breakfast food I've ever had, combining three of my favorite foods in the world: fried potatoes, eggs, and caramelized onions. The onions make each bite a little sweet, and the eggs and potatoes are delicious. Just make sure you use a decent quality olive oil for your potatoes; they'll absorb a lot of the oil's flavor, so you want them to taste like halfass good oil.
Carlos Sainz, you legend. Please recommend me more food — your taste is impeccable.
Ready… Set… COOK!
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