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Omelette with Mint
Crack eight fresh eggs in a bowl, add a half gill cream, half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons pepper and tablespoon of freshly chopped, fresh mint leaves and sharply beat up with a fork for two minutes. Heat a tablespoon butter in a frying pan, drop in the eggs, mix for two minutes and let rest for a minute; fold up the opposite sides to meet in the centre, let rest for half a minute, turn on a hot dish and serve.
A plain rolled omelette with fresh mint, sized for four. The only real technique here is the folding, and the original assumes you know when to stop stirring.
- Half a gill of creamA gill is half a cup (4 fl oz), so half a gill is about 2 fl oz, roughly 4 tablespoons or 60 ml. That is a modest amount for eight eggs and keeps the curd tender without making it wet.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is roughly a quarter teaspoon. Two saltspoons of pepper is about half a teaspoon, which is assertive but correct against the mint.
- Pan sizeEight eggs will not fold in a small skillet. Use a 10- to 12-inch pan; the single tablespoon of butter is lean by modern habit.
- The hinge: stop mixing earlyTwo minutes of stirring over moderate heat, then off the movement entirely. The minute of rest sets the underside into a sheet strong enough to fold; keep agitating and you get scrambled eggs with mint in them.
- Heat levelMedium is right. Too hot and the base browns and toughens before the interior sets; the finished omelette should be pale gold, not spotted brown.
- MintSpearmint is the usual kitchen mint and the safer choice here. Chop it just before beating, since cut mint darkens and loses aroma quickly, and add it to the eggs rather than the pan so it does not scorch.
- Doneness and yieldServes four as a light main, six at a larger table. The centre will be soft when it leaves the pan and will carry on setting on the hot dish, so serve it immediately.
Mint in eggs sits at the meeting point of English and Middle Eastern cooking: mint has been a standard English kitchen herb since the medieval period, chiefly with lamb and peas, while herb omelettes thick with mint, parsley and dill are a fixture from Persia through the eastern Mediterranean. A book presenting itself as international would take the pairing as a matter of course. The method described is the folded or plain omelette: brief agitation, a rest to set the base, then a fold. The instruction to fold opposite sides to meet in the centre gives a broad three-layered omelette rather than the tight cigar shape, and it is the more forgiving fold for a pan holding eight eggs.