Patatas a lo pobre con huevos rotos is made with eggs, potatoes, and onions. With ingredients like these, you might expect it to be a simple recipe for simple tastes. It is not. This is a delicate preparation that’s quite difficult to make successfully. You need small, fresh, waxy potatoes, which can be hard to find in the winter. Cook the potatoes in boiling water until they’re very soft, then slice them into medallions. Meanwhile, caramelize the onions over low heat, then add the potatoes along with a few eggs. You want to have enough eggs to bind the dish together without covering everything up. One might be tempted to call this an omelet, but I think that would be quite wrong. It is a Spanish recipe and if it was an omelet, which it isn’t, it would be called a tortilla. You want to end up with sweet onions that blend into the soft potatoes and creamy eggs, with little distinction in texture between all three. If you cook the onions too long or the potatoes not enough, or if you overcook the eggs, the balance is lost.
We had this with a Sangiovese-Cabernet blend from Tuscany, which is just about the worst pairing you can imagine. This kind of dinner is why Chardonnay was invented. You might think about adding some kind of tomato sauce (certainly a part of the Spanish palette), but then the dominant flavor will be the fiery tomatoes, which may not be an improvement. Patatas a lo pobre even has its own website with variations that omit the eggs and use peppers or cream. But when it comes to the version I’ve presented here, I think it’s best if you keep it simple. You can think of it as a transformation of potato chips and onion dip into more sublime form.
(Photo: Heritage Park Museum, Hot Sulphur Springs, Colorado. Recipe is from The Food of Spain by Claudia Roden.)
365 Days of Food 