No. 2894

Havanese Omelet

Omelette Havanaise

Chop up some chicken livers and mushrooms; fry the livers in butter, add the mushrooms and moisten with port wine and espagnole sauce (No. 414), then reduce. Cut some peeled tomatoes in two, press to extract the juice and fry them in oil, also sweet Spanish peppers. Fill the inside of an omelet with the tomatoes, the chopped liver, the sweet peppers and the mushrooms; finish the same as the Argentine (No. 2878). Surround the omelet with the peppers and pour over a little thin Colbert sauce (No. 451).

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade with a stocked sauce station, so most of the work here is in the cross-references rather than the omelet itself. Sort out the two sauces first and the dish assembles in minutes.

The cross-referenced saucesEspagnole (No. 414) is the classic brown sauce, built on stock, mirepoix and browned roux and cooked down at length. Colbert (No. 451) is classically meat glaze loosened and whisked with butter, lemon juice and chopped tarragon, served thin. A good reduced brown gravy or demi-glace stands in for the espagnole; the Colbert is quick if you have any concentrated stock on hand, and should be poured on at the last moment or the butter will split.
Sweet Spanish peppersThese are pimientos, sold today as jarred piquillos or roasted red peppers. Ranhofer means a mild fleshy pepper, not a bell pepper eaten raw and not anything hot. Some go inside the omelet and some are used to ring it, as the recipe directs; it gives no proportion between the two.
Chicken liversChop them, dry them well, and fry in hot butter, working briskly; the recipe then has them moistened with port and espagnole and reduced, which finishes the cooking. Livers held long over heat turn granular and bitter, so add the liquid and reduce fast, and make sure they are cooked through rather than pink at the centre.
Pressing the tomatoesHalving, seeding and squeezing out the juice is the point of the step, not a nicety. Wet tomato inside a rolled omelet will run out and thin the sauce on the plate. Fry the halves in oil until the cut faces color and the flesh has collapsed.
Finishing "the same as the Argentine"The cross-reference is to the omelet treatment given at No. 2878, which is not reproduced here; in this period it means the standard French rolled omelet, the beaten eggs cooked in butter over brisk heat and stirred until barely set, the filling laid down the middle and the omelet rolled out onto the dish. The interior should still be soft.
QuantitiesThe original gives none. For a two- to three-egg omelet per person, figure roughly two chicken livers, a small handful of mushrooms, one tomato and one pepper for each; a tablespoon of port and two of espagnole reduce to about the right amount of binding for one omelet.
YieldAs written this is a single omelet, a first course or a luncheon dish for one. Omelets do not scale in the pan, so make them one at a time and hold the garnish warm.

A Little History

The recipe comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, where the omelet section runs to many numbered variations distinguished chiefly by their garnish. The name is geographical dressing rather than Cuban cookery: in the French kitchen of the period, tomato, sweet pepper and oil signalled Spain and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, and the neighboring No. 2878 "Argentine" is named on the same principle. Chicken livers with mushrooms in port and espagnole is standard nineteenth-century French garnish practice, and the finishing Colbert sauce is traditionally said to be named for the seventeenth-century minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert. What the entry records is Delmonico's habit of naming plates after places and patrons, at a period when Havana was a familiar destination for wealthy New Yorkers and its sugar and tobacco trade ran through the port.