For decades what I had always thought of as a French Omelette apparently isn’t French at all! I don’t know if mine has a particular moniker, but it seems it’s not French, at least; but that’s ok, it ties in with the way I learned to make one.
Soon after Mike and I met, he showed me how his mother, Dawn, made omelettes, which he said were French (and certainly the word is French) and anyway, why would I disbelieve this man I would marry one day? His family lived on a farm with plenty of laying hens and a couple of cows, so eggs and fresh farm butter were both plentiful; and just as well, with four young mouths to feed. They had their eggs the same ways we did in my family – scrambled, hard boiled, soft boiled, poached, and fried, with or without toast and other foods like bacon, sausages, tomatoes, and mushrooms. But interestingly I don’t remember Dawn ever making an omelette like this when I was around, and perhaps they were mostly a breakfast thing.
Yesterday our son, Chef Ivan, of Kansas City, emailed me a great link to all you need to know about making a French Omelette My response was to say that today I’d make what I’ve always thought of as a French Omelette, take a pic or two and send them, and so I made this omelette for breakfast this morning.
I googled ‘French Omelette’ hoping to find some kind of confirmation of my view, and on the images page, without reading all the recipe links, what I found was that there’s a huge, infinite number, of omelette styles that their makers call French ! Some of them even look distinctly like scrambled eggs, and several have bread in them which puts them into the cheese pudding category, in my view! And then I found a Julia Child video on Youtube – OMG Meryl Streep got Julia’s actions and that dreadful voice down to a t, and it was as much as I could do to watch until 2:23, by which time I already knew what she regarded as a classic French Omelette, and mine’s not close. She said her video would cover lots of other kinds of omelettes, but frankly I didn’t have the stomach for any more of that voice. So anyway, this is what I made for our breakfast this morning!
You need 2 medium eggs per person, separated; an approx walnut-to-small egg sized dob of butter for the frypan; S&P to taste; a good sprinkle of grated parmesan or other very tasty cheese. This morning I added 2 cups of a vegetable salsa, though, and once you do that, in my lexicon that omelette becomes a Denver Omelette. For the salsa – finely dice onions, saute, add diced tomatoes and capsicums/sweet peppers, as I did this morning. But you could also add veggies leftover from last night’s dinner, and maybe that little bit of left over gravy, or some tomato puree with a little garlic – anyway, stirfry whatever you have all together and you’ll come up with something good to go over the omelette.
The eggs were pretty small, and as my bumble fingered separating resulted in 5 being broken open before I had 3 totally uncontaminated whites in the red bowl which really whipped up to a good volume and very stiff (see above) In the white bowl are the 3 yolks with 2 whites+yolks – pretty much equalling 4 medium eggs, so that was ok. Now, as the result of beating, the yolk mixture in the pic grew to more or less the same volume of the whites, by which time it was clear these two mixtures would not fit into the one bowl for folding, by hand, lower left. So watch for that đŸ™‚
Into the heated medium heat pan with melted butter, you need to smoothe the mixture out to an even thickness. Cook on low-medium heat while you cook the salsa. (unless you did that first) After about 5 minutes sprinkle the cheese – not too much or it will flatten the air out of the omelette – which is why I recommended finely grated very tasty cheese so less is more, or at least enough. When the edges are shrinking away from the sides of the pan, fold one half of the omelette over the other half, divide that and place on the plates, put salsa over each portion, and serve immediately. For a Denver Omelette many would say that veggies plus diced ham are served inside the fold of the omelette: but that wasn’t how one of our favourite breakfast places served it while we lived there 30 years ago.
Mum’s omelettes were more like in the video, with a bit of stirring stopping short of scrambling the eggs, and ending up almost like a pancake, really. But certainly, once we were all teens, with at least one of us on a diet at any one time, and all wanting different things, Mum at last settled for tea and toast for herself, and left us to cook or prepare whatever we each wanted for breakfast. In time we all moved away from cooked breakfasts to the cereals, especially muesli, with yoghurt and fresh fruit that were making inroads to the Australian cuisine. With our own family we tended to have eggs and other cooked things for breakfasts on the weekends, when there was more time, a tradition Mike and I continue to this day, though for retirees this is really no longer relevant!
Some time back Ivan also sent me this video on ways to prepare eggs: Every Way To Cook An Egg (59 Methods and if you have half an hour to spare on a rainy afternoon or something, I recommend this fascinating and at times hilarious video, with some great ideas and serious flops included – anyone for hard charred eggs from the Weber? Or how about, um, a kind ofegg lattice, cooked rigid in a waffle iron?