Wednesday, December 04, 2002

We’re quite with the eggs these days at the old Jackson Avenue homestead.  Tuesday night we had Omelettes Gratinees a la Tomate, Tomato-Filled Omelettes Gratineed with Cream and Cheese.  I had been intending to make these omelettes the old fashioned-slash-sane way, but at the last moment a heady burst of hubris gripped me and I attempted once more the JC-style rolled omelette.  Re-reading her instructions, I noticed particularly that she writes to jerk the pan toward you.  I had read that before and thought, “yes, yes, toward me,” and then proceeded to do not that at all.  But pulling toward you is really the way to go.  This is not to say everything went perfectly; I’m going to have to take an ice pick to one of the burners to get the hardened egg spillage off it, and in the end the omelettes were more scrunched than rolled, but they looked like omelettes nonetheless, and I think I’m even beginning to manage that “creamy center” Julia talks about as being essential.  In any case, I flipped them both onto a cookie sheet and smeared them with a little butter.  Meanwhile – I keep getting this in the wrong order, actually this happened before – I made the Coulis de Tomates a la Provençale.  Have I mentioned how much I love the word “coulis.”  Why should I have?  Well, I do.  First I peeled and juiced the tomatoes.  This I did while sitting in front of the TV watching maybe the worst episode of Buffy I’ve ever seen.  What’s more, it was a rerun – I’d already seen it.  God, what’s wrong with me?  Also, how have I become the kind of person who routinely peels tomatoes?  This is a procedure that not that many years ago seemed to me utterly absurd.  Now I do it on a regular basis, without any thought at all.  It’s not even that much of a pain in the butt anymore?  I don’t know whether to be proud or abjectly depressed. Anyway, after the tomatoes were peeled, I took them into the kitchen – leaving the bizarrely flat and exposition-laden Buffy episode behind – and chopped them.  At this point I ran into some supply difficulties.  I had managed to not have any onions.  I dug up a red onion piece of dubious heritage out of the back of the fridge and minced that.  I sautéed that in butter, then threw in the chopped tomatoes, a couple of cloves of smashed garlic – almost out of garlic, too – a bit of sugar, some parsley sprigs, a bay leaf, and some herbs: fennel, dried basil, saffron – thanks to Kristin for the saffron, fresh from exotic Istanbul!  Next time just tuck a plane ticket into the bag, so I can go back for more supplies… – and coriander.  I had not any dried orange peel, because it was TOO GODDAMNED COLD to go to the grocery store a few blocks out of my way that might have had it.  Ah well.  The whole mess simmered for half an hour or so until it was a tomato sauce. Insert description of omelette-making here. Once the omelettes were done and on the aforementioned cookie sheet, I slit them open and spooned some of the sauce into each.  I then poured cream over them.  Well, actually.  I didn’t have cream (!!!!)  So I used some nice organic half and half.  Then I sprinkled swiss cheese over.  I ran them under the broiler for about a minute.  Omelettes Gratinees a la Tomate. These are some hellishly good omelettes.  Wowza.  They’re like pizza omelettes.  I’d never run an omelette under a broiler before, but it’s great – just don’t overdo it; just a minute is enough.  And you should undercook the omelettes on the stove a bit.  They’re brilliant.  I love them.  Try them. In other news, I haven’t been doing the Nigella Ass Watch lately, not because the google searches haven’t been appearing, but because I have reason to suspect what we’ve got here is one lonely individual trying to get him- or her-self a mention on The JJP.  I’m a little disappointed.  For awhile there, I was hoping we had some kind of rising cultural tide going on. 7:41:28 AM    comment []