A chef’s omelette

Bernard Levin had arrived, in a cape. He peered blinkingly around the room with its crowded tables with no tablecloths, took in the ambience of raucous clamour and looked disdainfully at the menu. He spurned the scallops and the foie gras, ignored the turbot and the pheasant and murmured that he would “just have an omelette”.

At the time Levin was probably our finest living journalist, the scourge of public utility companies, a noted Wagnerian – and he was also rumoured to be a great gourmet. I was delighted to see him, at last, in our restaurant but I was upset by his attitude. He should have had more respect for our omelettes.

Omelettes are so easily disparaged. Vegetarians complain in restaurants, perhaps with some justification, that they were offered only an omelette. We offer them much more, but I hate to see omelettes maligned in this way. A much worse offence against the dish is the television show in which chefs compete to produce the fastest omelette. The result is that in about 20 seconds they produce a sloppy pile of badly mixed egg with lumps of shell, and then raise their hands aloft to claim victory. The victory, one presumes, is one of man over egg.

I hoped that the great journalist at least enjoyed his omelette. It would have been a soft pillow of egg flavoured with nothing more than a few fines herbes such as chervil, tarragon, chives and leaf parsley. Spring mushrooms, sorrel, cheese and even crab can also be deployed as flavourings but it is important to remember that an omelette is about eggs and is not a vehicle for other flavours, although there are few better ways to enjoy truffles. In that instance, even Bernard Levin might have shown some appreciation.

Rowley Leigh is the chef at Le Café Anglais

rowley.leigh@ft.com

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Rowley’s drinking choice

An omelette and a glass of wine? Elizabeth David suggests yes, although experts claim that eggs spoil wine. Most whites and light reds have no problem but tannic wines will taste fruitless.

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Omelette fines herbes

At the restaurant we use heavy iron frying pans which are never washed but polished with salt and stored with a little film of oil. At home I resort to a little Teflon-coated non-stick frying pan. The coating will not last that long unless you are incredibly careful with it but it will certainly work for a while.

One tip: although an omelette does indeed cook incredibly quickly, many people panic and try and shake it and turn it too soon. All this activity can stop the omelette from cooking. It is also worth knowing that it will not colour in the early stages and it is only towards the end that it is important to turn and agitate the omelette. Serves one.

Ingredients

3 fresh eggs

A few sprigs of parsley, chervil, tarragon and chives

Salt and pepper

10g butter

● Wash the parsley, pick the leaves from the stalks and then chop all the herbs: the parsley should be chopped quite fine, the chives snipped quite fine also, while the others should be roughly chopped so as not to bruise them or damage their flavour.

● Break the eggs into a bowl and whisk them thoroughly with a fork or whisk so that yolk and white are completely integrated (the dangers of overbeating are generally overstated; in my view lumps of unassimilated egg white pose a much worse threat). Season with a small pinch of salt and a little freshly milled black pepper. Add the herbs.

● Heat the pan with the merest film of cooking oil. The pan should be hot enough that the suspicion of a heat haze is discernible but not so hot as to be actually smoking. Add the butter and before it has a chance to burn, pour in the eggs. Do nothing for 30 seconds, apart from keeping the pan on a high heat, and wait until the eggs start to bubble up from the bottom of the pan. At this point scrape around the sides of the pan with a wooden spoon or fork and then, holding the pan slightly angled away from you and pushing it in that direction, give it a sharp jerk towards you so that the raw mixture at the back is tossed down to the bottom. Do this two or three times, making sure none of the mixture is sticking to the bottom of the pan.

● Once the mixture has set but is still soft and runny, hold the pan at an angle away from you and give it a sharp knock on the stove so that the whole omelette slips down towards the edge of the pan. Roll the mixture from the side nearest to you down to the opposite edge and then, inverting the pan, roll the omelette right out of the pan on to a plate.