THIS MORNING I HAD MY upper front tooth surgically removed and replaced with a temporary bridge. In a couple of months, once the bone has solidified and the dentist is prepared to put it in, I’ll have that bridge replaced with an implant and another more permanent bridge. It’s all from being kicked in the face when I was 15, and apparently my upper jaw is now a bit of a dental curio. They tried to hide the excitement, but all of the other dentists in the surgery came around during the procedure to have a look down my throat to see what was going on—I’ve never seen so many eyes peering over white masks. Honestly, about halfway through I felt like the middle of a two-up school on ANZAC Day. “Hand me those forceps and more gauze. No more bets please. Come in, suction!”

I’ve learned a couple of things:

1. I will never, given a choice, live in a place without modern dentistry and the anaesthesia that goes with it.
2. When a private health insurer tells you you’re covered for “major dentistry”, it’s probably means you’re actually not covered for major dentistry. I suspected it all along, but money in the bank seems to me like far more efficient private health insurance than Private Health Insurance.
3. I probably should have gone to the dentist more often in the 2000s.
4. And I think I should probably start cooking some things that don’t need too much biting or chewing.

(Sharp-eyed readers will already have picked up that this post is categorised under Dad Recipes, a theme I’ll add to when I get around to it).

Tortilla Española

It’s an omelette, but not as Len Deighton knew it. You can’t just cut potatoes up really finely, put them in an omelette with some ham and cheese, call it tortilla and charge $13.50 for it: I’m thinking in particular of a Newtown café I won’t name.

• Five eggs
• Four potatoes the size of a fist (well, my fist, which is an honest size for potato)
• An onion
• A clove of garlic
• Salt and pepper
• A fair bit of oil
• A thick frying pan and a dinner plate which fits neatly inside the diameter of the pan. This is important.

While you’re at it, you’ll probably want:

• A salad
• I quite like a splot of Thai sweet chilli sauce on top of a slice
• A beer

Here’s one I prepared earlier.

Cut your potato into thin chunks the size and shape of woodchips. You can cook them halfway in a deep fryer, which is the Spanish way, or just boil them, which is the way you do it when like me, you don’t own a deep fryer.

While the potato’s on, brown up your onions and garlic in a properly generous amount of oil. As they they’re done, crack your eggs into a bowl big enough to fit everything in, beat them just enough to break the yolks and irritate the whites, and add the hot onions and hot, just-about-cooked potato, with some salt and pepper. Stir it up a bit with a fork to cook the eggs a little bit in the bowl.

Add more oil—look, if you’re worried about my intake of fat and sodium you’re reading the wrong blog—and pour the potato-onion-egg mix all into the pan. Flatten it out with a wooden spoon, and turn in the edges from the side of the pan. Once it’s cooked on the bottom well enough to have a skin you can lift, put the dinner plate over the top of the tortilla, put your hand on it, then lift the pan and flip it over once. Give it the same cooking time. Put more salt on the top.

If the potato isn’t undercooked, and the egg yolk is still a bit runny on the inside, you win. And the best thing about tortilla is that what you don’t eat is just as good cold for lunch.

Does it occur to others that Iberian food is almost always easy on the teeth? Is it bad to live so near New Canterbury Road’s Portuguese strip with its bacalao and beans and rice and pasteles de nata? Is it wrong to be thinking about a tapas night of albondigas and patatas bravas and gambas al ajillo so soon after dental work?

I figure I’ll just make my compromises with the world I live in.

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