Facing the inevitable

Well, it had to happen eventually. There's only so long a blog about eating for one can survive without a post about that staple of singleton cuisine: the omelette. Delia dedicates most of a chapter to them, but my inspiration on this topic has always been Elizabeth David's classic essay, 'An omelette and a glass of wine'. Her note at the end, that "the enjoyment of food and wine seems to me to lie in having what you want when you want it" is a rule I live by, although one I sometimes struggle to link to the rushed cooking that life all too often seems to push me in to. So, in the recipes below, I've tried to offer a few suggestions for how one can add a bit of luxury to a simple dinner: if in doubt, though, add that glass of wine.

A month or so ago, I mentioned on twitter that I was planning on writing this post, and one of the most valuable pieces of advice I got back (thanks to my wonderful brother-in-sin) was to get the pan really hot. Of course, to do this, you also need a good pan. I recently purchased myself a 20cm non-stick French skillet, and would strongly recommend it as the perfect omelette pan. Mine is by Meyer/Circulon, cost me £20, and has a gloriously thick base which heats up quickly, holds all that heat, and then gets it right into the eggs like nobody's business. So, please, remove that ancient, slight-too-large frying pan with the rather warped base from your cupboard before trying these recipes.

Another habit I had, until recently, was to try and create an omelette by stirring the eggs once they were in the pan, trying to do that pull-up-the-edges-and-let-the-raw-egg-flow-in thing that I'd read about. I never made it work. Elizabeth David saved me once again: she quotes a recipe where the omelette is created by vigorously shaking the pan once the eggs are in. I had read this several times before, but refused to believe it could work; finally, I thought it was worth at least one try. I put my generous amount of butter in the pan; I waited till it was totally frothing; I tipped the eggs in; and I shook like a woman possessed. And, by some miracle, it worked. I got the lightest, creamiest, most evenly cooked omelette I'd ever made. If you've doubted this method before, please, please, give it a try: it might just change your life.

So: that's the eggs sorted. I need a little more for dinner, though, so beneath are a few ideas for what else to add to your omelette.


A mushroom omelette

This is the basic omelette I make when I have 10 minutes within which to both cook and eat dinner. I use around 5 medium sized basic supermarket mushrooms, very finely sliced, and fry them gently in a decent knob of butter and a beyond-decent amount of salt until they have wilted and their juices have mostly evaporated. You then need to remove them from the pan, and heat a fresh quantity of butter to a higher temperature. Once you've added the eggs and given them a good initial shake (i.e. once the omelette is around two-thirds of the way towards your preferred set), tip the mushrooms back in, and continue shaking. Some of the slices will sink down into the eggs, others will stay on the surface.

This is one omelette I like rolled up in a traditional fashion. In order to do this, you need to keep shaking the pan, but shaking it mostly away from you, so the omelette starts creeping up the far side of your pan. Give the underside of the far edge a little nudge back towards you, and keep shaking away, and nudging the underside towards you, until you have a neat little roll. The hardest part is getting this confection onto your plate without breaking it: I have no solution to this problem. Either way, it will at least taste good.


...and two ways to tart it up

The first way to add a little extra to your mushroom omelette is with a tablespoon or so of chopped herbs. I tend towards tarragon, because it has that highly refined aniseed flavour that is so reminiscent of classic French cookery; chives or some of the very small, soft leaves from a branch of sage also work well.

The alternative is to add a few drops of truffle oil to your eggs. The stuff is pricey (the bottle I'm currently on, from Carluccio's, costs £8 for 50ml), but you need such a tiny amount for such a vast amount of flavour and luxury that it's entirely worth keeping a bottle in your cupboard for emergencies. 1/2 tsp for a 2-egg omelette scents it perfectly; just whisk it in to the eggs before cooking them


Shrimp and pea

I had thought that the idea for this originated with Simon Hopkinson, but re-reading him lately I couldn't find any mention of it. Either way, this is a fairly tweaked version. In addition to your eggs, you need a tub of potted shrimp, a large handful of peas (defrosted frozen ones are fine), and perhaps a tablespoon or so of herbs (again, I tend towards tarragon, but parsley would also be good here).

Take the top layer of butter off the top of the shrimps, and heat in the frying pan. Once bubbling, add the eggs as before, and once they start to set, scatter the shrimps, peas, and herbs over the top. Continue to shake and cook until the omelette is set.


Chorizo, potato, and parsley

This is a recipe for those of you who don't think you like eggs enough to eat omelettes. When very little I was allergic to eggs, and although I grew out of it, I still didn't enjoy eating them in any obviously-eggy format until I tried something like this a couple of years ago. I'm now quite happy eating semi-raw, sloppy, unadulterated omelettes, but I still come back to this dish on a regular basis.

Frying the potatoes takes a while, so this isn't such a fast recipe as those above: one for when you have half an hour, not ten minutes. Also: I don't normally recommend a dish where you use 1/3 of the quantity of an ingredient as normally sold in supermarkets, but chorizo will last for a month or so in the fridge, so you'll have plenty of time to use this in other meals.

You'll need:

1 small potato
around 1/3 of a cooking chorizo
2 eggs
large handful of parsley

Chop the potato and chorizo into roughly 1 cm cubes. Fry the chorizo for a few minutes, until it has released its oil and is crisping up nicely, and then remove from the pan. Tip in the potato cubes, and fry gently for 10 minutes or so, until softened, then return the chorizo to the pan. Whisk the eggs up with the herbs, tip into the pan, and start shaking; you may need to stir this one a little to lift the potato and chorizo off the bottom of the pan and give the eggs a chance to get to the heat. The extra volume also means that it will take a little longer to set than the recipes above: maybe 3 or 4 minutes in total.


Glasses of wine with all the above purely optional, but highly recommended, as ever.