Wednesday, November 20, 2002

Omelettes on a Tuesday. Long ago, the husband and I made a joint executive decision that omelettes for dinner were not only acceptable but elegant and luxurious.  (Well, maybe not elegant, at least not on Buffy nights, when we invariably wind up eating on the floor in front of the TV.)  So I did not wait for weekend brunch to make my first attempt at omelettes Julia-style.   We started out with Soupe a l’Ail aux Pommes de Terre, yet another garlic soup, this time with potatoes and saffron.  It starts out exactly the same – 2 quarts of water boiled for half an hour with a head of peeled garlic, sage, thyme, a bay leaf, a couple of cloves, some parsley and some olive oil.  At the end of half an hour, I strained it into a bowl, pushing the garlic cloves through the mesh, then put it back in the pot.  Then I threw in some diced potatoes – diced by loving husband, because dicing potatoes is something that can be done while sitting in front of the TV watching Buffy or BBC – and some saffron.  I’ve never cooked with saffron; I think I’d gotten it into my head that it was so outrageously expensive and precious that I shouldn’t be trusted with the stuff.  But after shopping for foie gras, ain’t nothin’ to it.  And it’s a hell of a lot prettier than foie gras, too.  I put a pinch in with the potatoes and let the soup simmer another 20 minutes or so.  Meanwhile I beat the eggs for the omelette, and get out my small skillet.  JC strongly recommends getting a French omelette pan, used for nothing but omelettes, and since for the most part she is not big on gadgetry, I’m a little worried.  But what am I gonna do, not make an omelette for lack of equipment?  This is not the Julie/Julia way.  JC has provided a series of drawings to aid me in following her directions for L’Omelette Brouillee, or scrambled omelette.  The drawings are a tad intimidating.  It’s an omelette, for chrissake….  Also, the directions are written for a right-handed person.  Also, they make it sound suspiciously like I’m going to wind up with scrambled eggs, and not an omelette at all.  I peer at the book nervously, practicing omelette-making with an empty pan.  My husband comes in. “Whatcha doin?” “Practicing omelette-making.” “We’re having omelettes?” “Yup.” “What kind of omelettes?” This is the question I’d been hoping he wouldn’t ask. “Plain.” “What do you mean?” “We’re having plain omelettes.” “I don’t understand.”  He begins to raise his voice.  “Omelettes are meant to be filled with things.  Omelette are vehicles.  A plain omelette?  A plain omelette?!!”  He is kidding, but the desperation is obvious. “I tell you what.  I’ll throw some parmesan in there.  How’s that?” The suggestion seems to relieve him.  I melt some butter in the skillet over high heat.  When it’s good and hot I, following JC’s instruction, pour in the eggs and “immediately” start sliding the pan back and forth.  “Immediately” meaning, in this case, as soon as I can glance at the drawing, put down the egg bowl, and pick up a fork, so I can “fork in right” – read: left – “hand, its flat side against the bottom of the pan, stir the eggs quickly to spread them continuously all over the bottom of the pan as they thicken.”  JC says that “in 3 or 4 seconds they will become a light, broken custard.”  Obviously, I, being unaccustomed to these strange ways of omelette-making, take just a hair longer than 3 or 4 seconds.  This is when I sprinkle in some parmesan cheese.  Then I “lift the handle of the pan to tilt it at a 45-degree angle over the heat, and rapidly gather the eggs at the far lip of the pan.”  The eggs are not omelette shaped, to my mind; they are, rather, broken-omelette shaped.  But that seems to be what JC wanted, so I’m going with it.  She tells me to “give 4 or 5 short, sharp blows on the handle of the pan… to loosen the omelette and make the far edge curl over onto itself.”  This makes it sound like she wants the thing to be all in one piece.  The drawing is unclear on the matter.  Meanwhile, the omelette is requiring no blows to loosen it.  I put it onto a plate.  JC says “the center of the omelette should remain soft and creamy.”  Whatever.  What I’ve got is broken up chunks and strips of egg – nothing creamy about it. We eat. The soup is quite good enough to persuade us to finish it off entirely.  The only thing I wonder is whether I ought to have added a bit more saffron, if for no other reason than that the color of it doesn’t seem to have sufficiently suffused it.  I wonder if I bought crappy saffron.  But garlic plus potatoes cannot be bad.  The omelette is a plain omelette.  At this point I’m going to side with my husband and say that omelettes ought to be filled.  We’ll see – maybe with practice I’ll manage “soft and creamy.”  In any case, next week is the more traditional-sounding “rolled omelette”, perhaps that will work better.  In closing, I would like to give my profound thanks to Victoria, who out of some eerie, otherworldly generosity saw fit to send me a meat thermometer (no more overdone pot roasts?), a book on cats that paint (a possible occupation to keep my cats from getting into the ceiling?) a book on making food look like cute little animals (no comment necessary), and a Philip Pullman book, “Clockwork.”  I have not read it, but I am a HUGE Philip Pullman fan – if Harry Potter strikes you as cute but a little wimpy, you will flip over Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy.  A million thank yous, Victoria – your kindness astounds! 8:01:17 AM    comment []