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Omelet with Vegetables
A breakfast omelet may be varied by spreading it, just before folding, with a few green peas or asparagus tips, or a little stewed corn or tomatoes that have been heated and well seasoned.
A variation note rather than a full recipe: it assumes you already know how to make a French-style folded omelet and tells you what to tuck inside. The whole success of it rests on the filling being hot, seasoned and dry.
- The base omeletThe recipe assumes you already know it; no egg count, pan size or timing is given here. A plain folded omelet of a few eggs, beaten just enough to combine, cooked quickly in a hot buttered pan until the curd is set but the surface still glossy, is what the note is built on.
- Drain the filling hardThis is the hinge. Stewed corn and especially stewed tomatoes carry a lot of liquid, and any of it that escapes into the pan will loosen the eggs and make the omelet weep. Reduce or drain the vegetables until they hold their shape on a spoon.
- "Heated and well seasoned"Cold leftovers dropped into a hot omelet chill the centre and force you to overcook the outside. Warm the vegetables separately in a little butter and season them there — salt, pepper, and a scrape of nutmeg for corn or a pinch of sugar for acidic tomatoes.
- QuantitiesNone given. Reckon on 2 to 3 tablespoons of filling for a three-egg omelet; more than that and it will not fold without splitting.
- Asparagus tips and peasPresumably already cooked, since the recipe gives no cooking instruction for them. If starting from raw, blanch briefly and keep them firm, since they get a second round of heat inside the eggs.
- YieldOne three-egg omelet serves one generously or two lightly. Omelets do not scale up in the pan — make several small ones rather than one large.
The omelet is a standing device for turning a spoonful of yesterday's vegetables into something that reads as a dish in its own right, and eggs were cheap and always on hand. The folded omelet and its fillings are French in ancestry, and were catalogued at length in the French professional literature of the period; the framing here, though, is domestic rather than menu-composition — a container for whatever the previous dinner left.