Confidence Building and the Six Egg "Julia"

Trying to make an exceptional omelet is difficult enough.  Trying to make a true French Chef-type omelet is a fairly daunting task....trying to make it a la Julia Child is, well, humbling and exhilarating at the same time.

It all seems easy enough; whisk some eggs, throw 'em in the pan, let it rip.  Sure.  Ever had to dance with a skillet on a hot burner? That's kind of how it goes when  working with this dish. 

Beat eggs well

Once you've committed yourself to the deed, go at it full steam ahead....stick to it 'til the bitter end.  You'll be amazed with what can be accomplished with a little patience and a lot of elbow grease. 

First make sure your eggs are beaten well.  For this particular omelet, we don't want to capture a lot of air.  That would be essential for the "puffy" omelet, but for this one we just want to beat the eggs into a liquid state.

Surf's up!  See the curl forming?

After that, it's all in the pan action.  Get it hot, get the beaten eggs into it....wait a few moments, then start shaking the pan vigorously across the flame.  As the eggs solidify, you'll notice a "curl" developing along the far end of the pan. Kinda looks like you'd expect a surfer riding on the thing. That's good! Keep it up!

You'll notice the egg acting more like a crepe, moving as a unit around the rest of the pan. This is when I start adding ingredients...cheese first, then tomatoes and this time some pepperoni that had been heated earlier in a pan to cut down on the greasiness.  In fact I used a dab of the pepperoni grease to lubricate the omelet pan.

Omelet fold close-up

Once your omelet "innards" are added give the pan another shake, this time when you shove forward, lift the far side of the pan slightly toward you.  This will help develop the fold.  Sometimes you'll need to coax this folding with a spatula, sometimes you don't.

In some circles, using a spatula to help with the fold is considered a no-no, but I'll not go there.  It's breakfast, fer cryin' out loud!  I need more than one cup of coffee and a dry piece of toast before venturing that perfection!

Anyway, after the fold is completed I sometimes top the omelet with a little cheese before serving. The cheese's  tanginess especially nice with all that pepperoni!

Some people say you can't make anything less than a six egg omelet...that anything less will not turn out.  I disagree.  I've made "Julia" omelets with as many as 12 and as few as 2 eggs and they all turned out fine. They require the same steps and the same amount of attention to detail.

This dish is appropriate for not only breakfast but lunch and dinner too.  Once mastered, the omelet will become one of your "go to" dishes for quick, tasty, even a little impressive fare for family and company.
Enjoy!  And as always, you're invited to share ideas, recipes and thoughts anytime!

THOUGHT FOR FOOD....Recipes as legacy

Iron Chef Chairmn

"If memory serves...." that's how the Chairman on the original Iron Chef show usually began his musings of the coming challenge.  He'd scratch his chin, take a bite out of a pepper and regale us with a thought or two before sending his combatants into Kitchen Stadium for a head-to-head cook off.  

I love that show....and many of the other culinary broadcasts that have come our way since Madame Julia graced us with her presence (and persistence and patience) as The French Chef.

Julia Child in her West Bank apartment

To her and the countless others who brought real food to the American table should go several generations of gratitude from home cooks, wanna be chefs and Micheline Award winners the world over.  For it was those pioneers who really gave us a kitchen consciousness.  Before that, the place was just somewhere for wifey-poo to sling hash or, in more opulent society, where the servants were sent to do it....so to speak.

From a young age I was interested in food; in how to coax flavors, mix different colors and textures...and as luck would have it, mine was a large family with lots of food holidays, gatherings and Sunday dinners.  So there was ample opportunity to work with the stuff...to learn its traditions....to build a passion.


Mom had most of her standard recipes in her head, but there were some that were so special they were written down....or their cookbook pages saved with index cards or paper clips for future reference.  You could tell when something special was going on.  Mom would bring out "the big guns," like Fannie Farmer or Joy of Cooking and scan through the recipe box until she found just the right thing.  

More often than not she'd add an interesting variation or two; partially because some members of our large family were picky eaters. But I think there was more to it than that. I think it was her creativity shining through.
My mother was the first Foodie I ever knew.  

And I soon discovered I had been born into a whole family of 'em!
Aunts, Grams, Cousins....when we got together for a get-together, be it picnic or wedding reception, everybody brought something.  Their  "speci-ality."   Mom's famous meatballs, Aunt Virg's eggplant parmesan, Aunt Anne's green bean casserole, Dad's expert hand at the grill....on and on.  

To this day, sister Carolyn and I swap recipes and exchange ideas-regardless of the miles.  It's in our blood.

Recipes are more than a means to an end...more than just a pinch of this and a dash of that.  They are bits of memory; reminders of moments shared with friends and family. They are often passed down, generation to generation as part of a legacy.

There was a time when recipes were treasured and valued as gold.  Only certain people had them.  The rest of society hand to put up with what they could figure out on their own, until the printing press, common languages and measurements and inexpensive reproductions came along.


There's been quite a lot of history between that wooly mammoth steak on the cave man's fire and Chef Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares!

My recipe box

Even with times being tough, there's still an awful lot to be thankful for. We have blenders, sharp knives, modern stoves and so on.  We don't have to use bows and arrows to bring home the bacon.
And even when we do "rough it," we've come a long way from scavenging  on the open planes.  

Our hunting ground is a supermarket - the only things we have to deal with there are other customers getting the best deal first, sticker shock as the prices go up and the occasional botulism scare.


So as I go to my recipe box for inspiration, I am reminded of just how good it is to be alive...in spite of, and maybe even a little because of all the craziness going on in the world today. For you see, I have all the wonderful memories each treasured recipe brings and only have to start cooking to not only bring them to live, but make new ones in the process.

Now THAT'S magic!


As always, please feel free to share your thoughts, ideas, memories and recipes!  Full credit will be yours!