French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [114]
OMELETTE A L’OSEILLE
SORREL OMELETTE
Wash a few sorrel leaves, not more than a handful. Chop them very fine. Melt them in butter; add a little salt; cook 4 or 5 minutes. Add this mixture to the omelette when it is already in the pan. One of the nicest of omelettes.
OMELETTE AUX TRUFFES
Périgord truffles are more highly prized than those of the Vaucluse, for they have a more powerful scent. There is, however, quite an important truffle market in the Vaucluse, of which the highly interesting little town of Carpentras is the centre.
In a village not far from Carpentras the local truffle hunter (he used a trained dog to sniff them out, not pigs as they do in the Périgord) who used occasionally to sell me two or three imperfect truffles for what amounted to a pittance compared to what he got on the Carpentras market for good specimens, told me that the proper way to make a truffle omelette is first to break your eggs into a bowl, then add your truffle, neither peeled nor cooked, but well scrubbed, and cut into fine rounds; cover the bowl and leave for several hours. By the time you come to beat up the eggs and make your omelette the eggs are beautifully scented with the truffle, and the minute or so which they spend in the pan with the eggs is quite sufficient to cook them.
Although in England the exact method of cooking a truffle omelette is not of very great moment, since we cannot buy fresh truffles, the truffle hunter’s system is all the same of some interest because I have never seen it mentioned in any cookery book, and the omelettes made in this way have a much better flavour than those one usually gets in restaurants. Like many such small culinary details, it is a question of putting one’s observations to practical use. For the truffle, from the moment it is dug out of the ground, starts giving off its powerful scent, which slowly loses its potency. Eggs, on the other hand, have a unique capacity for absorbing scents; therefore lose no time in putting your truffles and your eggs together, and the result will be a truffle omelette made under the best possible auspices.
LES ŒUFS BROUILLÉS
SCRAMBLED EGGS
For scrambled eggs, unlike those for an omelette, the eggs should be very well beaten, and it is an improvement to extract 1 white in every 4. For the rest, everybody has his own method, which is invariably the only right and proper one. Mine is to melt a very large lump of butter in a thick non-sticking saucepan, add the well-seasoned and beaten eggs, and stir over a low flame until they start to thicken. At this stage, add another lump of butter, and take the saucepan from the fire as soon as the first characteristic granules begin to appear. Go on stirring, because the eggs will continue to cook simply with the heat from the saucepan. Scrambled eggs should be evenly creamy and granulated, not half liquid and half set. Of course, they must be served at once, in a very hot dish. And eggs for scrambling must be of the most absolute freshness.
As far as French dishes of scrambled eggs are concerned, although one finds quite a variety given in cookery books, the only ones I remember ever having eaten in France (except in houses belonging to English people) were both in the Béarnais country. One was a dish of artichoke hearts filled with very creamy scrambled eggs and surrounded with a freshly made tomato sauce, the other the famous pipérade, for which the recipe follows.
LA PIPÉRADE
Because this concoction of eggs and peppers from the Basque country is one of the most widely travelled of all French regional dishes, it is also one which is frequently misinterpreted. Here is the very simple recipe.
Heat a generous tablespoon of goose or pork dripping or olive oil in a large frying-pan, and in this cook a finely sliced onion until it begins to turn yellow. Add 6 green peppers, core and seeds removed and cut into quite large strips. Cook