French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [111]
OMELETTES
As everybody knows, there is only one infallible recipe for the perfect omelette: your own. Reasonably enough; a successful dish is often achieved by quite different methods from those advocated in the cookery books or by the professional chefs, but over this question of omelette making professional and amateur cooks alike are particularly unyielding. Argument has never been known to convert anybody to a different method, so if you have your own, stick to it and let others go their cranky ways, mistaken, stubborn and ignorant to the end.
It is therefore to anyone still in the experimental stage that I submit the few following points which T fancy are often responsible for failure when that ancient iron omelette pan, for twenty years untouched by water, is brought out of the cupboard.
First, the eggs are very often beaten too savagely. In fact, they should not really be beaten at all, but stirred, and a few firm turns with two forks do the trick. Secondly, the simplicity and freshness evoked by the delicious word ‘omelette’ will be achieved only if it is remembered that it is the eggs which are the essential part of the dish; the filling, being of secondary importance, should be in very small proportion to the eggs. Lying lightly in the centre of the finished omelette, rather than bursting exuberantly out of the seams, it should supply the second of two different tastes and textures; the pure egg and cooked butter taste of the outside and ends of the omelette, then the soft, slightly runny interior, with its second flavouring of cheese or ham, mushrooms or fresh herbs.
As far as the pan is concerned, I have already given a few notes about this in the chapter on kitchen equipment (page 66), so it will be sufficient to say here that a 10-inch omelette pan will make an omelette of 3 or 4 eggs. Beat them only immediately before you make the omelette, lightly as described above, with two forks, adding a light mild seasoning of salt and pepper. Allow about oz. of butter. Warm your pan, don’t make it red hot. Then turn the burner as high as it will go. Put in the butter and when it has melted and is on the point of turning colour, pour in the eggs. Add the filling, and see that it is well embedded in the eggs. Tip the pan towards you and with a fork or spatula gather up a little of the mixture from the far side. Now tip the pan away from you so that the unset eggs run into the space you have made for them.
When a little of the unset part remains on the surface the omelette is done. Fold it in three with your fork or palette knife, hold the pan at an angle and slip the omelette out on to the waiting dish. This should be warmed, but only a little, or the omelette will go on cooking.
An omelette is nothing to make a fuss about. The chief mistakes are putting in too much of the filling and making this too elaborate. Such rich things as foie gras or lobster in cream sauce are inappropriate. In fact, moderation in every aspect is the best advice where omelettes are concerned. Sauces and other trimmings are superfluous, a little extra butter melted in the warm omelette dish or placed on top of the omelette as you serve it being the only addition which is not out of place.
L’omelette de la Mère Poulard
As everyone knows, the Hôtel Poulard, formerly the Auberge de Saint-Michel Tête d’Or, at Mont St. Michel, became famous for the omelettes made by the proprietress. Many writers have attempted to account for the wonderful flavour of la Mère Poulard’s omelettes, explaining that her ‘secret’ lay in adding this, that, or the other ingredient. Here is a letter, dated June 6, 1922, which she wrote to M .Robert Viel, a celebrated Paris restaurateur and collector of a famous library of cookery books:
‘Monsieur Viel,
‘Voici la recette de l’omelette: je casse de bons œufs dans une terrine, je les bats bien, je mets un bon morceau de beurre dans la poêle, j’y jette les œufs et je remue constamment. Je suis heureuse, monsieur, si cette