• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 226 0

Washington. Since I had by then published the Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook and the incomparable Daniel Boulud’s Cooking with Daniel Boulud, I picked up the phone and asked Patrick O’Connell, the chef/proprietor of the Inn, if he would like to make a third. So we met at the Inn, and the fine book that resulted is like Patrick, wise, elegant, honest, the result of years of discriminating practice, and, as he writes in the preface, “uniquely American though full of influences from other countries.” The Inn at Little Washington Cookbook stayed on the Washington Post best-seller list for weeks. His lobster omelette with rainbow salsa is as easy to make as it is a joy to serve. It was awarded GQ’s Golden Dish Award as one of the ten best restaurant dishes in the world. How GQ managed to test all the restaurant dishes in the world to determine its list of ten is unclear. Patrick’s lobster omelette is the school-lunchroom Spanish omelette with great panache, fit for a king’s late supper with his lover or lunch with his wife the next day. For those who cannot make the journey to Little Washington, at the edge of the Shenandoah, Patrick’s Inn at Little Washington Cookbook is a reasonable substitute.

PATRICK’S LOBSTER OMELETTE

For a two-egg omelette to serve one, whisk two eggs in a small bowl with a tablespoon of water, a few grains of sea salt, and a dash of white pepper. In a small sauté pan, melt a chunk of butter and warm a tablespoon of finely chopped shallot and enough coarsely chopped cooked lobster to fill a two-egg omelette. If you warm a little extra, serve it alongside the omelette. Then, in a seven-inch sauté pan (I use Teflon;Patrick, a purist, does not), melt a tablespoon of butter and, tipping the pan this way and that, spread the butter across the bottom and along the sides. You may prefer to do this by holding the butter with a fork and painting the pan with the melting butter. Patrick holds his pan over a flame. I improvise a bain-marie by placing a pan over a pot of simmering water. In either case, the pan should not be too hot. As soon as the butter foams and gives out its aroma, add the eggs and scramble them with a fork. When the curds mount up nicely, stop stirring and remove the pan from the heat. If you are using a non-Teflon pan, gently loosen the eggs from the pan with a rubber spatula. Sprinkle a vertical row of grated white cheddar through the diameter of the omelette. Top the cheese with the lobster/shallot mixture, and cover with another sprinkling of cheddar. Patrick folds the omelette neatly, like a letter, by bringing the bottom of the egg mixture to the middle of the pan and folding the top of the mixture down, to make a flat package with a seam. He then plates the elegant omelette seam side down. Since I’m not serving paying guests, I simply roll the omelette with its filling up with a fork and slide it onto a plate. The salsa is a little diced red, yellow, and green bell pepper with some diced red onion marinated for a half hour or so in equal parts balsamic vinegar and spicy olive oil and lightly warmed. Salt and pepper to taste. Spread the salsa along the length of the omelette, and place any extra lobster at the side.

*Sokolsky’s further contribution to history was his effort to promote the idea that the Communist takeover of China was the fault of a left-wing Democratic conspiracy. Roy told me that Sokolsky served as the bag man for the China Lobby, distributing money from Chiang Kai-shek’s backers to various congressmen and others to support the Nationalist government in exile and, with the slogan “Who Lost China?,” imply that the Democrats had handed the country to Mao. When I asked Roy how he knew this, he said, “I saw the boxes after he died.” “What boxes?” I asked. “The boxes of money,” he replied, and explained that he had been the executor of Sokolsky’s estate, and the boxes of money in George’s closet were meant for the China Lobby’s propaganda campaign.

TEN

LAST RESORTS

When I find myself overwhelmed by human folly and the idiocy of nations, I think of exile. My first