Home › Meatless Menus › Spanish Omelet
Spanish Omelet
4 ounces bacon 1 small onion, minced 1 tomato, chopped fine 5 mushrooms, chopped 1 clove garlic 6 eggs 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper 1 teaspoon shortening Cut bacon in thin slices and then into 1/2 in. squares. Fry gently until crisp and add chopped vegetables; cook for 15 minutes. Rub spoon with clove garlic. Break the eggs into bowl, add seasoning; beat thoroughly and turn into frying pan in which teaspoon shortening has been melted. Bake as usual until nearly set, spread bacon and vegetables quickly over, fold, set in oven for 1 minute, turn it upon hot platter and serve with tomato sauce. Serves 6.
A folded omelet with a bacon-and-vegetable filling, written for a heavy skillet that can go from burner to oven. Two instructions need translating before you start.
- "Bake as usual" means cook in the panThe eggs go into the greased skillet on the stovetop and are cooked over moderate heat until nearly set. Only the final minute happens in the oven, to firm the fold; the recipe specifies no temperature.
- The garlic never enters the dishA cut clove is rubbed on the spoon and nothing more, which is the mildest possible garlic treatment. If you want the flavour to register, mince the clove and add it to the pan with the onion in the last minute of frying.
- Fifteen minutes is too long for the fillingChopped tomato and mushroom will collapse to a wet paste in that time and thin the omelet. Six to eight minutes over medium heat is enough to soften the onion and drive off the tomato liquid; the filling should be moist, not soupy.
- Drain the bacon fatFour ounces of bacon renders a good deal of fat, and the vegetables are cooked in it. Pour off all but a tablespoon before the vegetables go in, or the fold will leak grease onto the platter.
- ShorteningIn a book of this vintage this means a solid vegetable fat or lard. Butter or oil works, and butter gives a better surface on the omelet.
- Yield is optimisticSix eggs divided six ways is a small portion by current standards, and a six-egg omelet in a single pan wants a 10 to 12 inch skillet to stay thin enough to fold. Treat it as three to four servings, or make two omelets of three eggs each.
- Tomato sauceThe recipe assumes a cooked tomato sauce is already on hand but gives no formula. A plain sauce of tomatoes reduced with a little onion and salt would suit it better than a heavily herbed pasta sauce.