Basque Potato Tortilla (a.k.a. Red Neck Vegan Tater Hash): French Fridays with Dorie

Nine eggs. NINE?! I screamed this over the phone to my husband as I ran to the store grabbing our food stuffs in the wake of this last two-inch state-of-emergecny snow we had--fearful we'd be "trapped" for a week and I'd be facing Thursday night, Dorie-less. "For crying out loud, it's a quiche we're making!" Husband is now silent as my diatribe calms down. To be quite honest, I am not much of a planner and had not even opened the book to this next recipe yet. I like to be surprised. Nothing like a nine-egger to throw you a curve. I vaguely recalled there being some potato thingy coming up in the French Friday cookbook--but the egg thing, not so much. Checklist in hand, I asked my DH to please finish reading me the ingredients so I'd be sure to have all I needed to re-create Dorie vegan. Oh please, potatoes and onions? I'm getting a little fed up with the French here or I am having one heck of a PMS bout (I think it's the latter). I can only say that for the American diet crisis we are in, using nine eggs in anything these days may get you put on a list of "Most Dangerous to Your Health Food Blogs" to follow. To her credit, Dorie does suggest that were you to make this, a serving option might be to cut this up into little squares and serve it from a toothpick--appetizer-like. Uh, okay.

I opted to make a "crust" of sauteed mushrooms, two shredded parsnips, some diced red pepper and about six crumbled crackers. I pressed this into my cast iron skillet--one that had been used to cook my onions and taters in, THEN, wiped clean (per Dorie--but I think this was to keep the Million Egg March from sticking), then put my cooked stuff back on top, set it in the oven for about 20 minutes to bake, then broiled it for another minute to give it a little of that browned and baked look, then served on a plate with a side of ketchup and dallop of my fave vegan sour cream and just a drip or two of hot sauce: Red Neck Vegan Tater Hash.

I am not going to wander much further down the rabbit hole with this post. I suppose there will be some smart vegan cook who will offer, "Why not use tofu, or cashew cream in lieu of the eggs?" A) I am not a fan of tofu. I sort of hate it actually. B) Not a fan of cashew cream either. I do love the cashew, just not in the cream style. (Sort of like creamed corn. It's wrong is all.) For more of the nine-eggers, please visit: French Fridays with Dorie. Next week looks to be a lot less egg-y. Thank. God.

Taters and onions, bit of rosemary and garlic, too--in a cast iron skillet cooked until you get this nice and brown with carmel-y pieces. I like to snack on those carmel-y pieces as I cook, so I have to keep turning this over to make more brown, carmel-y pieces.

Layer of parsnip, mushrooms and red pepper first, then layer of cooked taters and onions topped with a sprinkle of nutritional yeast and some vegan cheeses.

See y'all next Friday.