When All Else Fails... Make an Omelet

I was supposed to bike over to Mickie’s Dairy Bar, the local greasy spoon diner, to meet my coworkers for breakfast before work. The weather though had other ideas. I woke up at 5:00 to rain. By 5:30 it was a deluge that included lightening which continued through 6:15 – well past my departure time to get to breakfast.

At that point I was up and wasn’t going back to bed. I would instead salvage my morning with a little diner like action of my own. I would get out the French press to make some coffee but more importantly, would scrounge up ingredients to make an omelet.

Growing up, my father didn’t do much in the kitchen, but he was king at fried potatoes and eggs. For the latter his specialties are egg sandwiches and especially omelets. He even put his omelet “recipe” in the church cookbook, listing your standard omelet fillings – i.e. ham, mushrooms, onions, peppers, etc. – but then completed the list with the phrase “anything loose in the back of the refrigerator.” I would like to think that my omelet making skills are partly from my dad – and also from Julia Child. No really, I must have watched the French Chef omelet episode dozens of times by now…

This morning I decided on making a sensible two egg omelet. I cracked the two eggs into a bowl and added a splash of milk. Not everyone does this but that’s the way I’ve always known (how dad did it) and I swear it adds some fluffiness to the eggs. I whipped up the eggs and poured them into a very lightly oiled frying pan on medium high heat. There’s two important things right there. You can’t have too much oil, because if you do the eggs will just kind of bubble and sit on top of the oil and be messy. The pan also needs to be hot. If I remember right, Julia uses high heat, but I find medium high gives a bit more control.

The next step after pouring in the eggs is to swirl them in the pan. You can sort of stir / scramble them first (as Julia does) but I find that just swirling works fine too. Swirling the pan evenly distributes the egg in the pan to make the omelet even thickness. As it gets maybe halfway through setting, you then need to start prying at the edges with your spatula. You do this to make sure the edges come away from the pan when you want to fold, but also when you want to plate the omelet.

Once the omelet is about three-fourths cooked you need to add the filling to one side of the eggs. This morning I just put down a layer of cheddar cheese and some baby spinach. After the filling, then comes the tricky part – folding the omelet in half. This morning I happened to get the omelet cooked perfectly on the underside and had a good edge so I could really get the spatula under the egg and flip it over the filling. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it goes horribly wrong. Luckily it all tastes the same and I’m usually making an omelet for just myself anyway.

I have no pictures to prove it, but today was indeed one of those times it worked out – not only for my omelet but also for my morning. I didn’t get to bike to the diner this morning as I initially wanted, but as I sat down to have my perfect looking omelet with a nice fresh steaming cup of French press coffee, I was kind of glad it was pouring rain.

For Me, There Is No Such Thing As Too Much Corned Beef

My wife was away for the week last week, so that of course meant it was again time for me to make a large chunk of meat for my personal consumption. Last time she was out, I made a classic slow cooker pot roast, but last week with St. Patrick’s Day on Saturday I decided I needed to make some classic corned beef – as in corned beef with cabbage and potatoes. I of course always like Irish fair and corned beef is definitely not an exception. While I like the complete dish, I can say fairly confidently that corned beef itself is in my top ten favorite meats.

It made for a bit of a late night but I made my corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes (I used small reds), on Wednesday evening after getting home from work. Traditionally recipes from the British Isles call for boiling the hell out of everything and that’s basically what I did for this. I put the corned beef in a cast iron Dutch oven, added the seasoning packet, and added water to cover the meat. The pot was then brought to a boil and then reduced to a simmer. The recipe then called for simmering the meat until tender which they said would be 50 minutes per pound. My corned beef was four pounds, but it did not take over three hours. It was nicely tender after just two. Once tender, I added wedges of cabbage and probably around twenty red potatoes. I let the Dutch oven continue to simmer for another half hour. At that point, the cabbage was getting starting to get a big soggy and overcooked, so I pulled it out. The meat and potatoes continued to cook for only fifteen minutes more. I scooped those out of the Dutch oven and let the corned beef for a bit before slicing and going to town eating my Irish meal.

It was about 9:30 by the time I sat down to eat, so I was starving. The corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes definitely filled me up quickly though so I was sufficiently stuffed. It probably wasn’t so good that I was stuffing myself so close to bedtime, but my corned beef meal couldn’t have been much better. The only things I can think of would be if I would’ve had some soda bread and a pint of Guinness. It’s stereotypical, yes, but would have just seemed so right.

Making a whole Dutch oven of food, you can guess that I had a lot of leftovers to go through. On Thursday, my work provided a lunch of corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes for all employees so I partook in that offering but then skipped having my own corned beef leftovers that night. Friday night I did have some leftovers, reheating and again stuffing myself easily. Saturday morning though I did something special that I had planned for the leftovers. Corned beef hash!! I diced up the remaining potatoes, some of the corned beef, and even a small bit of cabbage. In a frying pan I heated some oil and quickly sautéed some shallot and garlic, then added the diced up leftovers after a minute. I stirred / tossed everything to get good mix of everything and then lightly flattened the mixture to the bottom of the pan. After a few minutes, the bottom side was browned and I flipped / tossed the mixture to do another round of browning. I browned the mixture one additional time and then dumped the mixture onto a large plate. It was a large breakfast for sure, but I always like good filling breakfasts on the weekends. It’s a much needed break from quick “milk and cereal” type breakfasts during the week.

On Sunday, I finished up what was left of the corned beef. I just sliced it up, reheated it in the microwave, topped it with good coarse-ground horseradish mustard, and put it between two pieces of wheat toast. It was a nice simply tasty hearty sandwich to finish off the meat. Sadly, I had to throw out the small bit of leftover cabbage as it was just getting too water logged and soggy. Still I can’t complain. The five straight days of corned beef were wonderful.