Potato Omelet
Put through the ricer sufficient hot potatoes to make 1 pint. Beat 3 eggs until very light, season with salt and pepper and mix with the potatoes. Melt 1 teaspoonful of butter in a frying-pan, pour in the mixture and stand over a moderate heat, turning from side to side that it may brown evenly. When the bottom is well colored fold carefully, turn out and serve at once.
A thrift dish that turns leftover boiled potatoes into a substantial egg supper. The proportions are generous with potato and light on egg, so the texture is closer to a thick pancake than a French omelet.
- A pint of riced potatoMeasured by volume, not weight: about 2 cups of hot riced potato, which is roughly 1 lb of boiled potatoes before ricing. Pack it loosely — pressing it down gives a dense, heavy omelet.
- Rice them hotPotatoes push through a ricer far more easily while hot; cold ones are firm and resist, and the extra working needed can make the result pasty. If working from cold leftovers, warm them through first rather than forcing them.
- Moderate heat means moderateOn a modern gas or induction burner this is medium-low. The mixture is dense and browns on the outside long before the egg through the middle is set, so a hot pan gives a scorched crust over a wet centre.
- "Turning from side to side"This most likely means tilting and rotating the pan over the burner so the heat reaches the whole base evenly, useful on a range with hot and cool spots. On an even electric element, simply shifting the pan a quarter turn once or twice does the job.
- One teaspoon of butter is optimisticIn a well-seasoned or nonstick pan a teaspoon will just do; in stainless steel use a tablespoon or the potato will weld itself down.
- FoldingA potato omelet is heavier and more brittle than a plain one. Loosen the whole edge with a spatula first, fold in half rather than in thirds, and expect a crack or two.
- Pan size and yieldAn 8- or 9-inch pan gives a layer thick enough to fold without being raw inside. Serves two as a main course, three or four alongside something else.
Potato omelets appear across European cooking wherever eggs were dear and potatoes cheap — the Spanish tortilla de patatas is the best-known relative, though that one uses sliced potatoes cooked in a good deal of oil rather than riced ones. This version, with its single teaspoon of butter and its three eggs stretched across a pint of potato, has the character of the economy cookery found in American household books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Potato ricers were a comparatively new domestic convenience in that period, offered as an alternative to pressing potatoes through a sieve.