The Cook Jorge Baeza Manzaneque succeeds with its dry rice dishes at the PAU in Valdebebas with the cuisine of the Balear Restaurant, and now it can also boast of preparing one of the best potato omelettes of the Community of Madrid. His, prepared together with Marcelino Alonso, has been the winner of the 2024 edition of the contest organized by the Association of Chefs and Pastry Chefs of Madrid (ACYRE Madrid).
The curious thing is that Balear had already achieved another first prize in a similar competition of the Association, that of the best russian salad in the year 2022. With the well-deserved fame that its rice dishes already have, it is already a temple of three of the most iconic – and controversial – dishes of Spanish gastronomy. He would have to go up to the altars for his croquettes.
Focusing on the dish at hand today, the secret of the Balearic potato omelette is in its extreme creaminess, without flooding the plate with liquid egg ‘almost’ without curdling as is abundant in many bars in the capital of Madrid. And that creaminess is achieved by cooking the tortilla in several different textures, combining three cooking techniques, following Marcelino Alonso’s recipe.
“It’s an omelet in three textures: the first process is a poached potato, we break it to give it another texture with the frying of the potato and we finish with a socarrat so that there are crispy pieces. We curdle the potato hot so that it enters the egg and, once cooked with the egg, it curdles and becomes creamy.”
It’s an omelette with onion, which is prepared, as the competition requires, with local Madrid products, in its case Lomar onions and Mantua Carpetana organic Arbequina olive oil. This special tortilla will be available at the restaurant in limited edition on March 9, Tortilla Day.
In second place has been the tortilla Cecilia Malán, from Black Label, with a lot of onion and little curd; The third position has fallen to Alejandro Oliveira from La Faldathis one is the style of very slightly curdled tortillas, for which it uses eggs from free-range chickens from Granjas Villareal.
The jury of the competition was made up of Nino Redruellochef and owner of Grupo La Ancha; Pepa Muñoz, chef and owner El Qüenco de Pepa and president of FACYRE; José Luque, executive chef Hotel Palace; Domenico Vildacci, head chef at Deesa-Mandarin Oriental Ritz restaurant; and the gastronomic journalists Sabina Banzo and César González.
Images | ACYRE
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