ET

The underestimated egg

Where omelettes are concerned, Rowley Leigh refuses to be left with egg on his face

WE take eggs for granted. Buying them from the supermarket, many of us are foolishly reassured by a 'free range' label, a description that is open to many interpretations. We like them to have uniform brown shells and, undaunted by the risk of salmonella, we eat them every day without thinking too much about it. So-called vegetarians consume them without a murmur. Those concerned for the welfare of the fox suck happily on the product of the battery hen, and those opposed to farming subsidies would not dream of paying the proper price for a genuinely fresh egg from a genuinely free-range hen.

It was a different story many years ago when I worked alongside an apprentice pastry cook, a young Mexican. We made huge amounts of genoises, bavarois and brioches, and recipes typically started with an instruction to take 60 eggs. The Mexican would carefully smell each egg he broke before adding it to the rest. How we laughed at his naive folly as we whistled through a box of eggs, cracking one in each hand. There was little point to his systematic examination of each egg: he would not have been able to detect salmonella by smell, and you could be sure that the eggs had been hatched and stored in strict rotation, so the chance of getting a bad one was negligible.

I was touched, though, for his care reminded me of my childhood in Northern Ireland, when my parents used to keep chickens in a fairly haphazard fashion. Though a few bad ones slipped through the net, when the eggs were boiled for breakfast they had an almost unimaginable flavour. What I liked about the Mexican is that he did not take eggs for granted.

Bernard Levin, the coruscating newspaper columnist, pundit and indulgent gourmet, once came to Kensington Place. He hated it. Three-star restaurants in France with starched linen, amuse-gueules and sommeliers with tastevins around their necks are more his thing than a noisy brasserie in Notting Hill. He looked around with contempt, took one glance at the menu and ordered an omelette as a kind of protest, as much as to say an omelette was all the place was good for.

I was not in a position to observe his reaction when the omelette arrived, but I hope he was just a little impressed. Our omelettes are soft pillows of egginess, pure yellow without a trace of colour from the pan, as light as air and subtly flavoured, generally with fines herbes or wild mushrooms. To me, they are miracles of alchemy, models of the transformations a cook is capable of. They are not easy to make, and we are inordinately proud of them.

Omelette Fines Herbes (for each omelette)

Delia Smith and Elizabeth David advocate the use of an aluminium pan, which should be regularly washed. I adhere to the iron pan theory: my omelette pan is never washed but rubbed occasionally with salt and stored with a little film of oil. It is possible to avoid the whole debate by buying a non-stick frying pan with a 15cm (6in) base. The coating will not last that long, unless you are incredibly careful, but it will work for a while.

Fines herbes should consist of approximately three parts parsley, two parts chervil, two parts chives and one part tarragon. The urge to use stronger herbs such as basil, coriander, dill, marjoram, rosemary and thyme should be resisted.

3 fresh eggs
salt and freshly milled black pepper
2 tsp of fines herbes, coarsely chopped
cooking oil
10g (1/4oz) butter

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 overstated - lumps of unassimilated egg white are much worse). Season and add the herbs.

Heat the pan with the merest film of cooking oil. The pan should be hot enough for the suspicion of a heat haze to be discernible but not so hot that it is 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 with the handle high, allow the mixture to run to the far side so that the base of the pan near the handle is free of mixture. Push the pan away from you and then give it a sharp jerk back towards you, so that some of the raw mixture at the far end is tossed back towards the handle end. Do this two or three times, using a wooden spoon to scrape up any residue sticking to the bottom at the handle end.

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 up the omelette from the side nearest to you, encouraging it with the wooden spoon if necessary, and turn the pan right over so that the omelette rolls on to a waiting warmed plate.

Although an omelette does indeed cook quickly (in about two minutes), many people panic and shake it and turn it too quickly. 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.

Quail's Eggs En Meurette (serves three to four as a substantial starter or a light supper)

Quail's eggs are delicious, with a gamey flavour that I find more interesting than that of the quail itself. This is a sophisticated starter or an alternative to the omelette fines herbes for supper on Easter Sunday. Use a young fruity wine, a Chilean merlot perhaps, or an Italian sangiovese that won't break the bank.

150g (51/2oz) button onions
sugar and salt
100g (4oz) butter, softened
100g (4oz) smoky bacon or pancetta
150g (51/2oz) button mushrooms
1 bottle red wine
1 clove of garlic
1 bay leaf
2 sprigs of thyme
30g (1oz) flour
1 slice of bread or brioche per person
12 quail's eggs

Peel the button onions (it helps to pour boiling water over them first). Stew them very gently in 25g (1oz) of butter with a pinch of sugar and salt, letting them colour on all sides and cooking them all the way through.

Cut the bacon or pancetta into lardons, 2.5mm square by 2.5cm long (1/8in by 1in) - rather like short fat matchsticks - and fry in 25g (1oz) of butter in a separate pan. If the mushrooms are large, quarter them and add to the bacon once it has coloured. Let them stew gently for several minutes.

In another pan bring half the wine to the boil with the clove of garlic, the bay leaf and the thyme. Let the wine boil vigorously until it has reduced by half. Combine the bacon, onions and mushrooms in one pan. Rub 25g (1oz) of the butter into the flour to make a beurre manié and whisk into the wine. Season with plenty of milled pepper and strain into the bacon, onions and mushrooms. Return to the heat, bring gently to the boil and whisk in the last 25g (1oz) of butter. Keep hot.

Toast the bread or brioche and keep warm. Bring the rest of the wine to the boil in another saucepan. Break each quail's egg on to a saucer and then slip it into the wine. Continue until all the eggs are poaching in the wine. Turn down the heat and watch the eggs as they return to the surface, poaching for a minute. Once they feel as though the white is firm, lift them out with a slotted spoon, trimming any trailing piece of white on the side of the pan. Place three or four eggs on each piece of toast and then coat with the sauce. (Strain and reserve the poaching wine to make gravy another time.)

Wine

Eggs are supposed to be ruinous to fine wine but, as Elizabeth David tells us, there is nothing like an omelette and a glass of wine. Crisp aromatic whites, such as sauvignon blanc, or young fruity reds, perhaps beaujolais, are delicious with an omelette, whatever the purists say.

Rowley Leigh is the chef at Kensington Place, 201-205 Kensington Church Street, London W8 (020-7727 3184)

-- Anonymous, April 23, 2001