Ex-elBulli chef shares how to make the perfect Spanish tortilla

Catalonian chef Ferran Tadeo Domènech is Head Chef at the Embassy Room at Park Hyatt Bangkok. He has a stellar curriculum, having started out at none other than elBulli and Tickets in Barcelona. His career has taken him from Spain to the US, before he moved to Hong Kong where he headed up Catalunya and La Rambla, and now to Bangkok, Thailand. Below he shares with us his tips for the perfect Spanish tortilla. 

Chef Tadeo Domènech decided to move to Bangkok during the pandemic, with Hong Kong severely affected. The chef is very happy in Thailand, with a whole new culture to learn about and absorb.

“I really like it,” he says. “It’s very different to Hong Kong. There everything is much [more] organised, here it’s a little bit more chaotic, but at the same time you have a lot of things, restaurants everywhere. Bangkok is a really cool city.”

With experience of different cultures, the chef’s cuisine contains international influences, but the basis is Spanish. His formative training and culinary identity are Spanish. His first professional kitchen experience was at elBulli.

“I went from Spain to the US and from the US to Asia, and I’ve been here for six years, so I’m a bit of a mix of everything right now. I have my Catalan, Barcelona part, which is Spain, and then you travel around and you see different things, new flavours, and then you start to bring that into your cuisine. 

“It was amazing, one of the best times of my life,” he says of his time at elBulli. “I was very young, only 21 years old, and it was a very good opportunity for me. I took it really seriously. Two seasons in elBulli, then we closed it. It was very beautiful there, we learned a lot of techniques. The guys from Disfrutar were there, we learned a lot from them. We learned how to cook, but it wasn’t all about cooking, in the end, it was how they opened your mind, how they changed the way you think, about food, about everything, how to live. 

_{Embassy Room at Park Hyatt Bangkok}

“I like to use some of those techniques but [they’re] not really dominant in my kitchen. The base of my culinary philosophy is the product. If you don’t have the right product, you don’t have anything. My menu is about Spain, different parts of Spain. That’s the basis of my cuisine, then you can find some local flavours. I try to change my mind a little bit, but the base is always Spanish.”

How to make the perfect Spanish tortilla

“If I cook at home,” says Tadeo Domènech, “it’s potato, onion and egg. It has to be a little bit raw in the middle. There are so many versions, people like it only with potatoes or only with onion, it changes with every person, how they make it at home. It’s a very rich culture. 

“I don’t know if it’s perfect, but it’s the one I like. Normally I confit the potatoes, until they are very soft, then I fry them, so they are very soft, but crispy outside. Then I mix with caramelised onions, egg and normally I try to include more egg yolk. Then when I cook [it] I try to make it a bit liquid on the inside.”

Ingredients

300g waxy potatoes

6 large eggs

4 egg yolks 

1 large Spanish onion

Extra virgin olive oil

Method

Cut the potatoes into even slices. You can use a mandolin for perfect slices. Toss the potato slices in olive oil and then layer them onto a baking tray. Place the baking tray in the oven on low heat for about 2 hours, or until the potatoes are nice and soft. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Chop the onion and caramelise in a frying pan and set aside.

Take the potatoes and fry them in a large non-stick frying pan until they are crispy on the outside. Add the caramelised onion.

Whisk the eggs and egg yolks in a bowl and then pour over the confit and fried potatoes and allow them to set. Use a spatula to move the potatoes and allow the egg to run around the potatoes and to spread across the pan.

When the bottom side of the tortilla has properly set, use a plate to flip the tortilla from the pan and then slide it off the plate back onto the pan, to cook the other side. 

Cook for a further 7 or 8 minutes until cooked on the outside but nice and runny in the middle.

Slide the tortilla off the pan onto a clean plate and it is ready to serve. 

To serve 

“I serve it with Spanish tomato bread,” says Tadeo Domènech, “that’s all. Sometimes I open a bottle of wine, but I actually don’t like red wine. Unless I’m eating beef or something very heavy. I drink white. Maybe a good riesling.”