#73: Omelets
It’s been awhile since we pored over the nitpicky details of mastering a particular genre of egg-cookery. Last summer I fixated on the perfect poach and the perfect scramble; perhaps you were hoping that this summer would bring a less precipitous egg-learning curve, but alas, it is not to be. How I’d love to tell you that the omelet comes more naturally and more quickly to most than something like the poached egg, but sadly that would be a wretched lie. For the omelet – let me revise that and say, the French omelet – is a fearful egg dish in its own right. Fast-paced and rife with room for errors, it took me a shocking number of attempts before I finally felt like I had created something worthy of exposing itself on camera.
You’re probably feeling one of two things right now. One possibility is that you feel ambitious and ready to become the type of person who just effortlessly rolls a beautiful French omelet onto your lover’s breakfast plate (it’s French, therefore anyone served it must be described as your lover). Your ambition will be rewarded with the recipe for BA’s Best French Omelet – an elegant masterpiece strewn with fresh chives and filled with silky Boursin. The second possibility is that you are desperately hoping for an alternative because truly nothing about your personality seeks to become an omelet perfectionist at any point in the foreseeable future. For you latter folks, your hesitance will be rewarded with a recipe for the omelet’s laidback cousin: the frittata. This one comes decked out with crispy roasted cauliflower and a whopping hit of smoked cheese. It also comes inspired from the mind of one of the great culinary geniuses of our time, Yotam Ottolenghi, thus making it an equally sharp contender for your attention today.
