Country French Omelet
- By Katie Roche
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- 16 Apr, 2020
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"Jeffrey and I have a wonderful routine when we go to Paris. We arrive late morning, drop our bags, and rush to Café Varenne for lunch. They make this fabulous country omelet with bacon, potatoes, and chopped chives. It's such a satisfying breakfast or lunch." This is most of the introduction for this recipe - I'll come back to the rest of it later - but can we just talk about how rich you have to be to have a ROUTINE when you GO TO PARIS??? And also, after a trans-Atlantic flight, who is going to "rush" anywhere? Ina and Jeffrey are like 70 years old. Do they not want to nap?
ItemQuest took me to the butcher (yay!) for bacon and then to the store for chives. I had everything else - potatoes, milk, eggs (multicolored, even!), butter, and olive oil. This may not be an issue you have, if you're one of those Americans who makes a personality out of being obsessed with bacon (btw, that's not a personality at all) but I always end up with more bacon than I need when I have to buy it at the grocery store. This is one huge pro of buying it at the butcher: you can buy only and exactly as much bacon as you need. I still ended up buying twice as much as I needed, because I am bad at estimation and was unsure of the weight equivalent of "3 slices" but I still don't have as much extra as I would have if I had bought an entire pound. The other nice thing about going to the butcher is that you're never met with that blank stare of confusion when you order things in pretty much any phrasing, like you get when you try to order things at the Kroger deli. I have yet to figure out what exact phrasing they'd like me to use that would give them the clarity they desire. "Quarter pound": blank stare. "Four ounces": blank stare. Either of these at the butcher: on your way out with your product in a fraction of the time it would take to get your meat from the deli and you don't even have to try to explain fractions. I buy all my meat at Ole Timey Meat Market of Spring Valley and highly recommend them. Cheese appears erroneously in this picture; I thought it was for this recipe but it is actually for next week's. (Check me out, thinking that far ahead! Quarantining has made me grocery-acquisition-responsible.)
ItemQuest took me to the butcher (yay!) for bacon and then to the store for chives. I had everything else - potatoes, milk, eggs (multicolored, even!), butter, and olive oil. This may not be an issue you have, if you're one of those Americans who makes a personality out of being obsessed with bacon (btw, that's not a personality at all) but I always end up with more bacon than I need when I have to buy it at the grocery store. This is one huge pro of buying it at the butcher: you can buy only and exactly as much bacon as you need. I still ended up buying twice as much as I needed, because I am bad at estimation and was unsure of the weight equivalent of "3 slices" but I still don't have as much extra as I would have if I had bought an entire pound. The other nice thing about going to the butcher is that you're never met with that blank stare of confusion when you order things in pretty much any phrasing, like you get when you try to order things at the Kroger deli. I have yet to figure out what exact phrasing they'd like me to use that would give them the clarity they desire. "Quarter pound": blank stare. "Four ounces": blank stare. Either of these at the butcher: on your way out with your product in a fraction of the time it would take to get your meat from the deli and you don't even have to try to explain fractions. I buy all my meat at Ole Timey Meat Market of Spring Valley and highly recommend them. Cheese appears erroneously in this picture; I thought it was for this recipe but it is actually for next week's. (Check me out, thinking that far ahead! Quarantining has made me grocery-acquisition-responsible.)
Part one: mise en place. That is perhaps the most significant cooking advice I have ever received from my mother (in case you're unfamiliar, it's a French phrase meaning to get everything in place); other than that, I share almost no food traditions or preferences with her. I actually did not start learning how to cook until my early 20s when I finally met someone I wanted to cook for, ironically, he inspired me because he was one of the first guys I had met in a while who did not constantly joke-not-joke about a woman's place being in the kitchen. (S/o to Christian college for teaching me, among other things, that guys like that really are the worst.) Many women really do enjoy kitchen endeavors, I among them, obviously, and when I was first beginning to attempt recipes, my mom gave me the advice to prep all my ingredients and to read the ENTIRE recipe before beginning. These are both very good pieces of advice, and can prevent a lot of disasters. The rest of her food beliefs are a bit more suspect, such as that you don't need to use butter because margarine will do, or that fresh herbs are a waste of time and money. She has, certainly, mastered her own repertoire of extremely delicious dishes, but our tastes differ vastly. So! Here I have chopped my chives and diced my potatoes so they'll be ready when I need them. I did these first because the only other item I needed to chop was bacon, and I wanted to only use one cutting board.
I have noticed, generally speaking, that men do not share the affinity for using as few dishes as possible when cooking. If Dan were making this he would very likely have chopped the bacon first and started it cooking, put that cutting board in the dishwasher, and gotten out another one to chop the other ingredients. One *growth aspect* of marriage for me has been learning not to criticize this difference of approach. How *I* would do it is not as important as appreciating that it got done. Nevertheless, I find it hilarious that using lots of dishes seems to be a theme among men in the kitchen. Anyway, chopped bacon.
Ina really has you heat olive oil to cook this bacon in!!! As if bacon didn't have its own fat, like in a big way!!! Has she been girls' day-ing it with Paula Deen? Actually can you even imagine that? Would they kill each other? I think they would. Paula Deen would say something racist and Ina Garten would, like, heave her off of the yacht where they were brunching into the ocean. Or Ina would be like, "I make the best grits" and Paula Deen would shoot her. I bet Paula Deen carries.
The potatoes cook in the bacon grease. This is definitely something my mom would do. She cooks literally everything in bacon grease. Even pancakes, I'm not kidding. For the record, I do not approve, but I also don't really approve of pancakes. Team Waffles, all day.
Ok so you do actually then drain the bacon grease and oil from the pan, but then you just follow it up with melting a tablespoon of butter in there, just to keep the party going. And then you pour in five eggs, beaten with a little bit of milk, and then disperse the cooked bacon, potatoes, and chopped chives on top. The whole mixture goes into the oven for 8 minutes, no stirring involved, which I dig.
And then it comes out perfectly done! We ate this as Breakfast For Dinner, which Dan declares he "doesn't really like" as a concept - I find that horrifying. His charming review of this as a dish was to say that it was basically all the stuff from a Denny's breakfast in one dish, followed by exclaiming "It's not delivery - it's Denny's!" Personally, I'm a big fan of this. I wouldn't normally think to put chives in an omelet but I LOVE the flavor of chives in savory dishes and they're excellent here. I suppose it looks a bit laborious to have to chop and cook everything separately, but it's really not because you only have to use one skillet and once you're done, you have breakfast for two people without having to make two separate omelets. The last line of Ina's introduction, though, made me laugh: "If you want to serve four people, double the recipe and make it in two pans." Basically, if you want to service twice as many people, make it twice. How about no. So I would recommend this recipe if you're making breakfast for you + one other person, or maybe even just for yourself, as you could definitely store the other half in a Tupperware for the next day. Alternatively, I think it would be fine to actually quarter the omelet if you're serving anything else with breakfast for four - a quarter of it would be plenty with some fruit or toast. You could also quarter it and serve it on toasted bread like a sandwich. I like it quite a lot! Would I "rush" off of a trans-Atlantic flight for it? No. The only thing I ever "rush" for is coffee. But I would definitely make it again!
For this post, I wanted to combine two summertime flavors into the crisp recipe one of my oldest Alaskan friends passed on to me years ago. Rhubarb, if you're unfamiliar, is a reddish stalk that kind of resembles really big celery. It's very tart and is most commonly paired with strawberry. I've rarely seen it star in its own show dessert-wise, but my friend Kylee has been making rhubarb crisp for years and it's the best crisp I know of. Blueberries are usually in season in late summer; I have not been home for a blueberry season since Dan's last deployment in 2018 so in order to make this recipe I actually used blueberries from a friend's parents' farm in upstate SC! They're a little sweeter than the blueberries I'd have picked at home, but they worked well. I'm going to pretend like I was actually picking blueberries at home in Alaska for the purpose of showing you what that would look like.
I was getting all ready to write this post, going through my process with photos starting in my kitchen when I realized that a lot of my friends probably don't know what fireweed is or where it comes from and this recipe actually starts far, far away from my kitchen. This will be the first of a few posts highlighting iconic Alaskan ingredients. I've wanted to do this for a while because my home inspires me in so many ways, writing and cooking particular among them. Fireweed is a wildflower that is rather ubiquitous in southcentral Alaska and is often considered a gauge for how long summer will last. It is said that when the blooms reach the top of the plant, winter is six weeks away. Whether or not that's accurate, fireweed is found all over in late summer in Alaska. Here is some I spotted in mid-July by Eklutna Lake:
If you know Dan and me very well, you probably know by now that if our life were a sitcom, he'd low-key be the funniest character. Because that is true, I thought I'd include his bottom ten with accompanying remarks before giving the actual bottom ten. His are hilarious, but aren't as legitimate as mine because he actually tried way fewer of these than one might think. I realized as he was flipping through the book that my old coworker Cam probably ate more of these foods than anyone else did. The overarching theme of Dan's song of Ina Garten hatred is not the actual taste of the finished product but more how asinine he finds that particular recipe to be. So here you are, Dan's bottom ten.
#1: Butternut Squash Soup
#1: Butternut Squash Soup
You guys asked for my top ten from the blog, so here we go! And I'm thinking that what you *really* want is actually the bottom ten, so I'll go ahead and give you those next week. That post will probably be A LOT funnier. While preparing to write this post, I had Dan flip through the cookbook to give me HIS top ten and he was all disgruntled as he did so and only came up with eight that he even liked at all. "I'm not a picky eater!" he insists. Yeah ok. Although to be fair, I've seen some cookbooks I would only make, like, one thing out of and plenty I'd make nothing out of, though sometimes that's because I find the chef so annoying. @ the Pioneer Woman. I just don't trust someone who puts sour cream in spaghetti and then bakes it. Plus all her recipe intros are about, like, Ladd or Tadd or whatever the heck her husband's name is "coming in from the fields starving for dinner". If I came in from working in a field and you tried to give me sour cream spaghetti, I'd be like, "How about a hot pocket instead? Thx." Anyway, this is not Dan's blog so these are not his top ten. You can ask him which ones he liked, but you'll end up in a long convo about how much he hates Ina Garten. Anyway, these are not ranked or anything, they're just in order from the cookbook.
So with that, #1: Juice of a Few Flowers
So with that, #1: Juice of a Few Flowers
It was Sunday afternoon and I thought to myself, "What a perfect time to make jam!" I mean, how positively quaint: just sitting in my home in suburbia, finished with weekend chores, relaxing with some knitting...why not? Why not make some jam? I mean, obviously my afternoon-kitchen-activity was directed toward jam-making because it was next up in the book BUT whatever, I was kind of excited! Also, this is the last recipe in this book!!! I'm still in the process of deciding what I'll do now, so if there's something you'd like me to make and tell you about in my own fashion - you know, with lots of tangents and jokes - please do let me know! I'll likely continue to tackle Ina content, but may start including some recipe faves and/or foods people text me about a lot! I get a lot of cake questions, a LOT of frosting questions (because meringue buttercream is bae and I've got everyone in my social circles who eats my food on board), and a lot of fish questions. So look for more food to come, even though this is the last recipe in Back to Basics.
We went to Publix to ItemQuest for this and Dan said, "Don't we already have strawberries???" And I had to confess that I had eaten them all because it's honestly amazing how good fruit can be when it's 1) in season, 2) somewhat local, and 3) not ludicrously expensive. I'm about to travel home to Alaska for about a month, and it's going to put a real damper on my current fruit-snacking habits when I go into Fred Meyer for some strawbs and they're like, $7/lb and already trying to be moldy. Also needed blueberries (partly for the jam, mostly for the snax), one Granny Smith apple, and more superfine sugar. Publix had all of these things, plus about a million old people 'cause Sunday + Publix = Old People City.
We went to Publix to ItemQuest for this and Dan said, "Don't we already have strawberries???" And I had to confess that I had eaten them all because it's honestly amazing how good fruit can be when it's 1) in season, 2) somewhat local, and 3) not ludicrously expensive. I'm about to travel home to Alaska for about a month, and it's going to put a real damper on my current fruit-snacking habits when I go into Fred Meyer for some strawbs and they're like, $7/lb and already trying to be moldy. Also needed blueberries (partly for the jam, mostly for the snax), one Granny Smith apple, and more superfine sugar. Publix had all of these things, plus about a million old people 'cause Sunday + Publix = Old People City.
I was glad Ina gave me something easy for this week, because I was packing for Alaska and just *did not have the time* to mess with hunting lobsters or weird cheeses from the internet or whatever. ItemQuest was fairly straightforward, just took Dan a trip to the liquor store next to the Publix for some limoncello. I grabbed this particular lemon curd in the British aisle of Publix; I think last time an Ina recipe called for lemon curd I bought it from Trader Joe's and it was DISGUSTING. I mean, truly awful. I would like to recommend making your own lemon curd if you have the time and the inclination. Ina's lemon curd recipe is phenomenal and it is one thing for which I can say she is truly correct: homemade is BETTER and store-bought is not at all as good. The most beloved cupcakes I have ever made were filled with Ina's lemon curd, and had the lemon curd mixed into the meringue buttercream frosting. HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!! Anyway, the rest of this was fruit that I had on hand, mint, and Greek yogurt which we did have to buy because I don't, as a rule, eat Greek yogurt of my own free will. It's chalky and disgusting.
Dates are something I honestly never even thought about until I did Whole 30. I have mentioned my Whole 30 experience several times over the course of this journey through Back to Basics, but if you're new to reading the blog, this is what happened: I did Whole 30 one time, just to prove that I could, because salvation-by-diet apologists were obsessed with it as the newest fad in righteous eating practices. It was a terrible experience; on top of hating every minute of it for myself and finding exactly zero wellness benefits, I also hated it for Dan who was not allowed to eat popcorn for 30 days. Dan is in love with popcorn; his addiction to it is almost at the level of my addiction to coffee. He gets rage-y without it. But anyway, Whole 30 recipes are big into dates as sweeteners and some of the things you can eat, like Lara Bars, are made with dates. Dates are impossibly chewy. I ate more of them in that 30 days than I ever wanted to, and now when I see them in recipes I can't help but think of that Whole 30. Fortunately for me, I got to begin this recipe by chopping TWO CUPS' worth of dates. Oh, they also kind of look like cockroach bodies, so there's that. The only thing I actually had to get at the store for this was oranges! I had everything else on hand, even Cointreau, thanks to many previous Ina recipes.
Alright so, I'm not the Muffin Man. I don't really make a whole lot of muffins, for a lot of reasons, one of the main ones being that on the rankings of breakfast foods they definitely do not crack the top five, maybe not even the top ten. If I have an option for a bagel or a waffle, I'll pick one of them over a muffin every single time. I also prefer cereal, cinnamon rolls, or *cue eye roll* avocado toast. I've just never risen from my slumber and been like, "You know what would really hit the spot right now? A MUFFIN." But!!! In recent months, since my friend Logan came into my life, I've been making muffins a lot more frequently because he really loves them. So the last blueberry muffins I made were from a 99cent Betty Crocker mix packet which he brought into my house and asked me sweetly to make, because they're what he grew up with and along with many preservatives, they are full of nostalgia for him. Here is Logan and me, preparing to mix the muffin batter. Out of respect (and to make up for the disrespect of rolling up with muffin mix), he wore one of my aprons. I will treasure this picture forever.
You guys...Ina has "a thing" about commercial granola bars. Her beef with them, apparently, is that they say they contain real fruit and nuts but that all she sees when she looks at the labels are like, ten different kinds of corn syrup. I'm going to go ahead and guess, just based on this, that none of the lunches her mom packed for her growing up contained any Fruit By the Foot. And surely if we introduced her to Gushers, she would die. This is a real shame. I also feel like this disdain for corn syrup is maybe just a tad self-righteous, coming from the woman whose frosting recipe calls for literally six entire sticks of butter. At that point, what's a little corn syrup to you really? People's nutritional hills-to-die-on really fascinate me (and also kind of annoy me sometimes) and the ones about sugar might get me the most. I feel like, at some point, sugar is sugar and whether you're baking with honey, white sugar, brown sugar, molasses, maple syrup, etc you're still probably making something that's not amazing for you so, in terms of sugar, why not just be in for a penny in for a pound, amirite? So while I'm on this topic, before I even get to the actual point (please, I know you're here for the tangents), I would like to just let anyone and everyone know that I'm absolutely not interested in your "healthy substitutes" for things that taste good in their original form. I do not WANT a chocolate chip pancake made out of bananas and grains you harvested in your field this morning. If I want a banana I will eat one, and if I want a chocolate chip pancake I will eat one, and that's that. And DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT come @ me with "cashew cheese". Just don't. I don't even think I should honor that concept with an explanation of why it's so wrong. If that's not self-evident, I can't help you.
So down to the granola bar ingredients. I rolled up to Kroger only to find that their already meager bulk bins had been EMPTIED because if you scoop dates into a bag and then someone else scoops dates into a bag, you might get the coronavirus. I'm glad they've taken the precaution of removing this shopping option, since I cannot resisting licking my hands after every grocery trip I make. Thankfully, they still had the lil tower of small containers of some of the weirder items right there in the organic section, which was where I was able to find dates. The rest of this stuff was on the baking aisle, with the exception of wheat germ which was, for some reason, with the cereal. I'm still kind of unclear on what wheat germ is actually used for by people, and the context of it being located on the cereal aisle makes me wonder even more. Do people eat it like grape nuts? Sprinkle it on stuff like how people like to do with nutritional yeast right now? ("It tastes just like cheese!" You know what else tastes like cheese? Actual cheese. You're welcome.) Anyway, I was very grateful that Kroger at least had everything I needed and I didn't have to go on a for real ItemQuest.
So down to the granola bar ingredients. I rolled up to Kroger only to find that their already meager bulk bins had been EMPTIED because if you scoop dates into a bag and then someone else scoops dates into a bag, you might get the coronavirus. I'm glad they've taken the precaution of removing this shopping option, since I cannot resisting licking my hands after every grocery trip I make. Thankfully, they still had the lil tower of small containers of some of the weirder items right there in the organic section, which was where I was able to find dates. The rest of this stuff was on the baking aisle, with the exception of wheat germ which was, for some reason, with the cereal. I'm still kind of unclear on what wheat germ is actually used for by people, and the context of it being located on the cereal aisle makes me wonder even more. Do people eat it like grape nuts? Sprinkle it on stuff like how people like to do with nutritional yeast right now? ("It tastes just like cheese!" You know what else tastes like cheese? Actual cheese. You're welcome.) Anyway, I was very grateful that Kroger at least had everything I needed and I didn't have to go on a for real ItemQuest.
At first I saw the pictures of this and thought, "YAY!!! Cinnamon rolls!" And then a couple of weeks ago, I actually tried making cinnamon rolls for the first time and realized that my inability to roll/shape/slice yeast doughs is still a thing. AND THEN I read this entire recipe and realized these get filled with raisins. So here we go!
ItemQuest was only dramatic because the stores just DID NOT have puff pastry sheets; I was only finding it in "shells". I tried Bi-Lo and Dan tried Food Lion before he finally located sheets at Publix. The rest of the ingredients, I already had on hand!
ItemQuest was only dramatic because the stores just DID NOT have puff pastry sheets; I was only finding it in "shells". I tried Bi-Lo and Dan tried Food Lion before he finally located sheets at Publix. The rest of the ingredients, I already had on hand!