#4: Making Peace with Omelettes

Torta.

It's a bit unglamorous calling them that so let's just call them omelettes.  I am usually discouraged to cook these because one, they turn out to be hard, dry and gummy. Two, they don't fly out of my pan looking immaculately intact. In fact, the last 5 attempts before this successful last attempt looked more like messed up scrambled eggs. Three, I can't seem to think of anything decent to fill up these omelettes with. I mean, do I really have to cook ginisang giniling first AND THEN make it into an omelette? Isn't that too much effort? Might as well eat the ginisang giniling as it is, right?

Well, I finally made my peace with the omelette and here are the tips and tricks that I learned to make the omelette your friend in the menu list.

First tip: Make your egg mixture tender by adding some milk. Not too much though because too much will make your eggs runny. My personal proportion should be 1 tablespoon of liquid to one egg. I don't even require myself to use evap or fresh milk. You can even just use powdered milk mixed well in water. Also I add the salt and pepper to the milk mixture first before I add the the eggs. Then beat it to death, err... I mean, well to incorporate some air into the egg mixture. This will help make them fluffy when cooked.

This omelette from Sky Michelle. Thanks!

My second tip is make your pan practically non-stick. I just found the trick to cooking omelettes - take this - without using a non-stick pan! (Yeah, I don't have a non-stick pan.)  If you have a non-stick pan then you can skip this part. But if you only have a wok (aka kawali), what you do is you make it very hot first on high heat. As in smoking hot. If you start seeing some smoke then you are ready to add some oil, just enough to cover the whole surface of the wok very thinly. You swirl the oil around until most of the wok's surface is touched by oil. Then wait a few more to make the oil hot, too. Just turn the heat to medium right after you have poured your egg mixture. I assure you that your omelette will glide beautifully out of your pan and into your serving dish. You can apply this to anything you want to fry, especially to frying fish. (Isn't it soooo annoying to discover that your fish stuck to the pan and you end up dismemebering the whole fish just to get it off that darn pan?)

Third, don't be discouraged thinking that you have to cook something sophisticated to fill your omelette with. As for me, I have made my omelette the default left-over saver. Say you have some left-over adobo, or corned beef or afritada or menudo or curry. Instead of reheating them, why don't you tuck them inside a warm bed of fluffy eggs with some grated cheese melting in its arms? *sigh* Stick to left-overs that are relatively dry or moderately saucy, ok? Common sense is telling me to keep the soupy nilaga or tinola away from the omelette. 


Fourth, do not overstuff. An omelette made of two eggs will beautifully embrace about 3/4  cup of filling. It can still manage to hold a cup's worth of filling, even a bit more. Just let some of it cascade gracefully onto the plate. If your guts tell you that the eggs can still handle it then go ahead. However, placing too much filling will either tear your omelette or completely take over your serving plate, in the end, making your dish look like the same dump of left-overs from last night or even worse. So estimate the amount of eggs you'll need according to how much filling you have. 

Okay, I'll give you time to let this soak and get your thoughts together. Tomorrow, I'll share the omelette recipe I did that turned out to be fantastic for lunch. :-D