Truita de patates

I am craving a coffee so terribly badly right now I may have to run across the street and get one, and that sweet little fact, well, facts makes me already miss living here. We're heading back to TO for a whole lot of weeks, as in for the summer and the coffee there? Meh. The coffee here is so outrageously good......and so terribly handy......gonna have to go and have one very very soon.

Before the coffee though, I am going to try and tell you how to make a truite de patates. This is one of the things I really wanted to learn how to make well, and now I can usually pull it off. It is so very very good. Next I want to learn how to sharpen a knife to a blade that will cut a hair with a touch.

For the truite you will need four regular sized potatoes, not huge, not tiny, regular. And they should be those new looking thin skinned boilers.

Cut them up along with half a green pepper and half an onion, and cut them pretty thinly...you can see below, you also need to add a couple of teaspoons of salt, and fry them in a fairly large pan....so they have lots of room to bathe in the boiling oil:

You may notice that there is a LOT of oil in there. I have too little. You cannot make good truite de patates and fear oil. Or salt, because there is a WHOLE lot of salt in there too.....like two teaspoons, maybe more. Cook it over a medium low heat, slowly, stirring from time to time and maybe adding some more oil. They should be mostly covered in the oil. Don't let it for browned crusts though.....

Meanwhile you break 5 eggs into a bowl.....


Look at those eggs, I used to think an egg was an egg was an egg....but not anymore. See that wider flatter yellower one at the front? In any normal situation that would be a gourmet egg, sold from a small local egg producer, but not from a farm or anything, this is a commercial egg operation. Those almost orange-y ones? That if you look closely you can see are totally holding their round shape? My local egg lady. Can I just tell you that eggs are different, and some are indeed much much better than others.


All that said, whip them up. I have to say my lady's egg yolks resist breaking up admirably....if you look below now, you will see, in my sadly blurry photo, that the potatoes are ready, they are transparent through and they are starting to break up...nice and soft.

Put them, piping hot, directly into the egg mixture. This is very important. Drain a little of the oil off the taters as you take them from the pan, but stir them right into the eggs, you can actually see that some of the egg is starting to cook. This is a Very Good Thing. It means that it will all stick together properly.

Now, pour out the oil into a glass or something and save it, because you HAVE to use good olive oil for this (or not) but it is far too much to waste.....and then I was instructed to taste the raw egg mixture to see if it needs more salt. If find this kind of disgusting and not a totally safe idea, so what I am going to tell you to do is to eat those delicious greasy crispy scrapings from the potato frying pan. They should be really salty. Remember, there has to be enough salt for both the taters and the eggs....add more if it isn't really salty. You should think there is to much......


Now you need to put a smaller pan on to heat...please ignore my dirty stove top, m'kay? The pan needs to be thoroughly heated on a med/med low heat....and then add in a couple of tablespoons of the oil....when the oil is sizzling hot, pour in the egg...don't be fearful, really pour it in.
You see how it is bubbling up the sides there? That is also a Really Good Thing. It means that the eggs are setting up and making the skin you are going to need. Don't leave it here a long long time, when you can slide a knife down the sides and they come loose, but the center and top still seem impossibly liquidy, it is time to flip it.

You will need to put a plate on top of it, move it to a surface where you can put hot things down and with hot mitts on each hand you quickly flip it over so that it falls out onto the plate.

Now, I don't want to scare anyone, but we are actually talking boiling oil, so...please don't try this in a bikini, and you must rotate the plate/pan combo so that the plate rotates towards you, so....the plate is on top, you have a hand on either side, and you have to rotate it so that the pan rotates away, and as it turns you see the plate passing you and the pan emerging from the top. You have to do it quickly too. Oil will fall out from the FAR side, which is why you must rotate it AWAY from you. You may practice with an empty pan and a bit of water before you try it....don't want anyone getting hurt.

Now look at the pan, if anything is stuck to it, scrape it off, give the pan a quick scrub, put it back on the heat and re-oil it with a couple of teaspoons of oil at least. Hear me now, don't fear the fat.

If great wacks of the truite stuck, no worries, m'kay? Put it on the plate with the rest of it for now.

Slide the biggest bit back into the now hot and oily pan and fit in anything that didn't quite work, the egg will harden and stick it together.

When you can pass a knife down an edge and slide the whole thing around, after a couple of minutes, flip it again, and again, AWAY from you onto a clean non-raw-egg-y plate...salmonella is G.R.O.S.S.

Slide it back on, you probably don't have to regrease from here on, but if anything is sticking to the pan, take it off as it will burn and taste horrible.

After this second flip, let it sit for a few minutes, over med-low heat, you don't want to burn the outsides, just cook the insides....

After a while, or when the bottom seems pretty brown, flip it again, and return it to the pan again. The first two flips make the skin and the shape, the second two cook it without burning it.

Again leave it for a few minutes to cook through, five should do, if not be too much, slide it onto a clean plate, and

It should look a bit like that, please not how much smaller this pan is, you want it thick.

It is always delicious, but if you have some crusty french baguette, smear the bread with the juicy innards of a sliced tomato, drizzle on some really good olive oil (don't fear the oil) and place a slice of the truite aboard (don't fear the carbs either)

OMG a little slice of BCN.

Oh, and be nice to yourself when you have problems, I have so far made a perfect one, made one where I forgot the salt, made one where it broke, and one that wasn't cooked through when I went to eat it and had to go back in the pan for a while....

We haven't watched our grannies cook it since we were knee high, it takes some doing.

Hope you like it!