Patatas bravas

Ingredients

• Potatoes — in 3 cm cubes800 g
• Plain flour2 tbsp
• Sweet paprika2 tsp
• Hot paprika1 tsp
• Chicken or vegetable stock300 ml
• Sherry vinegar1 tbsp
• Garlic2 clove
• Olive oil for the sauce3 tbsp
• Oil for frying800 ml
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Cut the potato into uneven chunks: broken faces give more crisp surface. Rinse off the starch and dry them thoroughly.

   12 min

2. 2

   Fry at 140 °C for eight minutes until soft, without letting them colour. Set them aside to cool at least ten minutes.

   20 min

3. 3

   For the sauce, fry the garlic in olive oil, take the pan off the heat, add the flour and both paprikas and stir. On the flame paprika burns in seconds.

   5 min

4. 4

   Return it to a low flame, pour in the stock in a thin stream, stirring, and cook five minutes to a sauce. Add the vinegar and salt.

   8 min

5. 5

   Raise the oil to 190 °C and fry the potato three minutes more, to a deep gold. Salt it at once.

   6 min

6. 6

   Pile them on a dish and pour the hot sauce over immediately before serving.

About the dish

A real brava sauce is flour fried with paprika and let down with stock, not a tomato sauce. Tomato appears in tourist bars, and in Madrid that counts as a fake.

The potato is fried twice: first at 140 °C until soft, then at 190 °C for the crust. One pass gives either a raw middle or a tough shell.

The sauce goes on hot, over hot potato, immediately before serving. Within three minutes the crust starts giving way.

Worth knowing

• — The potato has to cool between the two fryings. Straight from the first into the second gives no crust: the moisture has not had time to redistribute.
• — Rinsing off the starch is not optional. Without it the pieces weld into one lump in the oil.
• — Aioli beside bravas is a normal way to serve them, but it is a different sauce and a different plate. Mixing them over the potato is not done.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

420 kcal

Protein

6 g

Fat

22 g

Carbs

48 g

More from Spain

• Paella valenciana — Rice in a wide pan with chicken, rabbit and beans. It is never stirred once, and the crust on the bottom depends on that.
• Spanish tortilla — A thick omelette of potato and onion, where the potato is not fried but poached in oil until it is nearly a purée.
• Gazpacho — A cold tomato soup blended with bread and oil into an emulsion — that is what makes it thick rather than watery.