Omelette Archives - Retro Food For Modern Times

Tag: Omelette

13
Oct
2024

Girl Dinner

categories: Cooking The Books, Eating Alone, Modern Times

Hello Friends and welcome to Cooking The Books! Each year I try to think of something new to do here to keep both you and me interested! The pandemic brought the idea to cook my way through all the novels of Agatha Christie, my ever-expanding magazine collection brought us my 20 Years Ago Today Posts. My obsession with both old and new cookbooks has now spawned Cooking the Books. This might be a review of something new and exciting in my collection. Or something old and exciting in my collection. Basically, it’s an opportunity for me to cook from some books that otherwise would be languishing on my bookshelves. And that’s no way to treat a cookbook!

Girl Dinner: The Book

Girl Dinner is a new addition to my collection and it is a super fun book! For those of you not familiar with the concept of Girl Dinner, author Jamison Diaz-Imlah explains the concept as follows:

“Girl dinner is a simple meal made by arranging ingredients that are readily available in the store or kitchen pantry. It started on TikTok when a user named Olivia Maher responded to a video mocking medieval peasants who had to eat bread and cheese for dinner. Olivia’s response was simple – “But that’s my dinner!”- and the girl dinner was born”

Friday night has long been my Girl Dinner night – it is ususally something snacky, nearly always includes cheese and is just fun quick food!

Above all for me, this book was fun! The recipes aren’t going to win any awards for ingenuity. This is not Heston inspired food. But it is simple food, beautifully presented and let’s face it, we’re probably far more likely to cook from this book rather than a modernist creation on a busy weeknight! Recipes include a Smoked salmon bagel, a croque madame and a Boursin and potato omelette. But, they are given fun and witty names – Holey Art Thou, Broke Madame and Sometimes You Get The Bear respectively. These really tickled by love of puns! My favourite name was “All I care about is pasta and like three people”. Swap out pasta for cheese and that is me in ten words!

Girl Dinner also contains some great ideas for eating for one. I feel this is an area where people may tend to skimp on presentation or care for ingredients. This book acts as a little form of self love in showing that food for one can look beautiful as well as being quick to prepare and mostly healthy!

I would say, for me, the only drawback to Girl Dinner is that some people may not be able to access some of the exact things that the authors suggest you use as your hack ingredients. For example, are Greek meatballs and caulilfower gnocchi available everywhere? I don’t know, I’ve never bought a ready made meatball and I don’t like gnocchi. Having sald that, I’m sure some type of meatball or gnocchi will be available if not specifically Greek and cauliflower. Or you could make your own. Or skip that recipe. Theres a lot to choose from!

Girl Dinner: The Look

One word: Gorgeous!

But here’s a few more: Beautiful Food, presented and photographed beautifully. Here are a few examples:

Can you believe this spectacular salad takes only 10 minutes to make?

Here is a Turkey and Brie Melt AKA Living for Leftovers

These Greek Meatballs (Sunday Kind of Love in Girl Dinner language) are high on my list of things to make:

Girl Dinner is fun and vibrant – the authors talk about combining simplicity with style and this is exactly what you get!

Girl Dinner – The Cook

I’ve made three things from Girl Dinner thus far. Above you can see Holey Art Thou and Sometimes You Get The Bear. The third thing I made was a Whipped Feta which is called Everyone’s Doing It.

I made the most amazing girl dinner, using the Whipped Feta in two different ways. The first was as a base for a Greek inspired salad (pictured above).

I simply spread some of the whipped feta on a plate, and added chopped tomatoes, cucumber, kalamata olives and red onion. I usually have dill on my Greek Salad but I didn’t have any so I added some mint from the garden instead. This was delicious. So fresh and so easy to do! This with some bread would be a perfect lunch for me! I could also eat Greek Salad everry day. I absolultey love it and this was an interesting play on a classic.

As I was having this for dinner, I wanted something a bit more substantial. So I also added my take on Prawn Saganaki. Again, I used the whipped feta as a base, swirled in some tomato paste, some roasted and roughtly ground fennel seeds, some prawns, chilli flakes and some chopped tomato and red onion. Ten to fifteen minutes in the oven and voila!

This was so good. I loved the little kick of pickle brine in there! It was also great both hot and cold! Here’s the recipe:

All in all, for me? Girl Dinner = Girl Winner!!!!

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of Girl Dinner from the publishers (Thank you so much). Regardless of this, the thoughts and opinions above are entirely my own.

Have a great week!

21
Jul
2020

Waste Not – Spaghetti Bolognese Omelette

categories: Eggs, Leftovers, Omelette, Pasta

Towards the end of the second Fridge, Freezer, Pantry week I used up some Bolognese sauce which had been in the freezer. The first meal I made from this little batch of Bolognese was a traditional Spag Bol. Lovely, tasty, delicious spag bol However, there was still a little sauce and pasta left over so I decided to cook up a dish that had been on my radar for a while now – a Spaghetti Bolognese Omelette!

This recipe comes from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s Love Your Leftovers. This is a very handy book if you are keen to reduce your food waste.

So, as I was making this, delusions of grandeur were flitting through my head. What if the Spaghetti Bolognese Omelette…or the Spag-Om / Bol was to become the viral fusion food of 2020? Move over Dominque Ansell and take your cronuts with you! This is the year in which coronavirus and the Spag-Om™ take over the world. Before you start to mock me, remember that I have been in lockdown pretty much since March. That’s FOUR months. As of the coming Wednesday, we cannot even step out of our houses without wearing masks. No wonder I’m becoming delusional

So is the world ready for the launch of the Spag-Om™?

In a word, no.

This was not very nice. I feel the same way about the Spag-Om™ as I do about chocolate cheesecake. Each of the components is lovely, delicious yummy.

On their own.

But mix them together and you open a minor circle of hell. The Bolognese totally overpowered the omelette. If I was going to wrap my spaghetti Bolognese in something think I would have preferred a tortilla or other sort of wrap that you could toast until the bread got crunchy…maybe add a bit of garlic butter…happy days!

All is not lost though. I think there is something here. I feel a less meat-heavy sauce than Bolognese may be a better option for the future of the Spag-Om™, I have some pesto in my freezer. Maybe next Fridge, Freezer pantry week will see the launch of Spag-Om™2 Electric Booglaoo aka The Pesty Spag-Om™

Stay tuned, stay safe and have a lovely week!

19
May
2020

Omelette Berrichonne – Murder on The Links

categories: Dining With The Dame, Eggs, Omelette

Welcome to the third chapter of Dining with the Dame. If you haven’t read chapters one and two, this is a series about the food found in the novels of Agatha Christie. Murder on the Links is the third Christie novel, published in 1923. This one, let me tell you had me worried. There are plenty of mentions of dejeuners (it is set mostly in France) but no actual food until towards the very end when finally, Poirot and Hastings sit down to “an excellent omelette”. Thank goodness! My back up, given the proximity of a golf course, was going to be a Golf Pie. I would totally eat it but I think it may be a little too basic B for Poirot! Luckily I was able to choose an Omelette Berrichonne as a more classy alternative!

Murder on the Links – The Plot

After meeting a charming girl on a train from Paris to Calais, Hastings returns to London eager to tell Poirot about the love of his life but Poirot is having none of it. He is bored and irritated by his current cases. He then reads a letter from Paul Renauld imploring him to come to France as soon as poss. They arrive at Merlinville to find Renauld has been murdered on the golf course next to his home by masked men who took him from his home leaving his wife tied up in the house.

There is:

a sexy neighbour and her mother, possibly the mistress of the dead man
a disinherited son
shonky South American business dealings
rivalry between Poirot and the French Inspector Giraud
a crime from the past
another dead body found in the shed and
Hastings’ romance with Dulcie Duveen who will go on to become his wife

There is no shortage of action in this one! I whizzed through it in a couple of days. I am really enjoying these reads!

The Covers

This has become one of my favourite parts of this series. I love seeing how the covers have changed over time. Here is a selection of them and there is not a dud in the bunch. Well, maybe the one in the bottom left corner but all the rest are crackers!

I love the top row second from the left and second from the right which features a Magritte style man with a goofball head. And of course the second from the right on the bottom row with its pulp fiction cover!

Do you have a favourite?

The Recipe

“Finally…we set out for the town. It was past our usual hour of dining, and we were both famished. The first restaurant we came to assuaged the pangs of hunger with an excellent omelette, and an equally excellent entrecote to follow”

Murder on the Links, Agatha Christie

The book did not give much away in terms of what kind of omelette the excellent omelette was so I had to improvise. I turned to the expert, Elizabeth David. And also followed her example by pairing my omelette with a glass of wine!

I used David’s recipe for an Omelette Berrichonne because I had a leek in the fridge and mint in the garden!

Here are some suggestions on how to make the perfect omelette. And here are Elizabeth David’s additions for the Omelette Berrichonne.

I was a little bit unsure about the mint here but it worked really well! Delicious!

Other Food Mentioned in Murder on The Links

Entrecote

The next read is The Man in the Brown Suit. I am already about half way through as it is another page turner…or whatever the ebook version of a page turner is!

Hope you are having a wonderful week.

Stay safe friends!

24
Feb
2015

Crespéou (70’s Style Retro Picnic Bling)

categories: 1970's food, Eggs, Feta, France, Omelette, Turmeric

In his introduction to the Crespéou in Plenty More, Yotam Ottolenghi says

If I was going to sum up my cooking style in five words, 70’s-style-retro-picnic-bling would not be them”

Huh…Weirdly enough that’s exactly the style of cooking I aspire to.

Still, with an introduction like that, there was no way I was not making a Crespéou! I was already thinking about having a month of food I have no idea how to pronounce (Kouign Amman anyone?). Google tells me this is Cresp-ay-oo. And also that it’s from Provence and so-called because the layers look like crepes. Never say I don’t do the research hard yards for you…

So what is this unpronounceable piece of 70’s style crepe like Retro Picnic Bling?

Well, it’s layers of three differently flavoured omelettes stacked on each other and baked. One red, one yellow, one green. Which just goes to show the difference between those classy people of Provence and around here. We’d be calling it something dumb arse like “Traffic Light” Special.

Crespéou – Red Layer

Yotam suggests red peppers for this layer. I used sun-dried-tomatoes because red peppers and I have a love-hate relationship. Without the love.

Hmm, I have realised in looking at this picture of the red layer that I may have put in fresh coriander rather than ground. Oops.

Still, I think that is one of the benefits of a dish like this. You can mix up the flavours. I have seen other recipes where people have used, zucchinis, mushrooms, olives, all sorts of things. It could really become a “clean-out-your-fridge” type dish.

Crespéou -Yellow Layer

The yellow layer was intriguing. I have never used turmeric in an omelette before. It really works!!! If I was going to mix this layer up a bit thin crispy discs of pan sautéed potato would be great!

The trick with this dish is to leave the top of your omelettes much more runny than you would any other omelette. The idea of this is that when you stack them and bake them the egg will solidify and the layers will stick together.

Crespéou – Green Layer

Another genius combination – green onions, green chilli, basil, tarragon and cumin!!! Wow!!! This layer was really perky and fresh!!!

Once you have cooked all your omelettes, stack them up as neatly as possible. And into the oven they go to cook up that last bit of runny egg.

Once cooked through, you can eat your Crespéou as is or trim the edges with a sharp knife to be able to see the layers. I used a small square pan so I cut mine into four cubes…

These were superb. I had it for lunch I think 3 days running and looked forward to it on day three as much as I did on day one.

And I know what you’re all thinking. Which layer tasted best? I did separate one of my cubes and ate each later alone. And they were all really good. But the combination was a-may-zing!!!!

Yotam Ottolenghi also says of the Crespéou that:

“If there is one recipe that might make me cringe in years to come, it will, for sure be this one”

I say “I love you. Can you not be so happily gay and be my boyfriend? You could cook me Crespéou and we could go on a picnic in a field in Provence and I could dance around listening to “Total Eclipse of the Heart” on a vintage Walkman. Or…hold your head up high and embrace the Crespéou for the lunchbox saviour that it is. And I’m sure even better on picnics. Especially picnics in Provence. With heaps of rosé wine and 1970’s disco music on your vintage Walkman.

Which is fairly redundant – I can’t think of ANYTHING that wouldn’t be better on a picnic in Provence with heaps of rosé wine and 1970’s music on your Walkman. Can you?

Speaking of which…before she was Totally Eclipsed in the Heart Bonnie Tyler was Lost in France which would actually be the perfect musical accompaniment to the Crespéou…

The full recipe can be found in Plenty More or online here

GlitterPhoto
Bonnie Tyler being Lost in France is here:

Make. Listen. Drink lots of rosé and imagine yourself lost in France.

This week, I’m cooking up some more 70’s Style Retro Picnic Bling courtesy of Jane Grigson! Have a tres fantastique week what ever you get up to.

And turn around bright eyes.

And P.S. – I’m totally contemplating the name of this blog to Retro Picnic Bling. Loving it madly!!!

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