HFF 6.12: Eat Your Vegetables

 

The Challenge: Eat Your Vegetables. Make a dish that incorporated vegetables in some capacity.

Unfortunately, my garden plot's right between vegetable rotations at the moment, so my choices are herbs from the container garden and nasturtium leaves/flowers. Or the world's saddest little lettuce bits (the size smaller than 'micro-greens'). 

The Recipe: Egg Omelette (Another)

 

EGG OMELET--Frisk until light, the whites and yolks of twelve eggs, separately, stir well together with a tablespoonful of cold water, season with pepper and salt. Have about an ounce of butter boiling hot in a frying pan, pour in the mixture, shaking the pan as it browns to prevent it sticking, and turn up the edges all round with a broad bladed knife, and continue to roll over until the whole is brown. Lift on to a meat dish with an eggslice without breaking, and serve hot for breakfast. 

 

Another--To the above quantity of eggs [12], add a handful of fine curled parsely and twelve fresh nasturtium flowers, chopped fine.  

--Pennsylvania Farmer and Gardner, February 1861

The Date/Year and Region: 1861, Philadelphia

How Did You Make It: On a 1/6 scale (2 eggs, 2 nasturtiums, a small handful of parsley). After chopping the plants small, I I followed the first instructions, separating the eggs and beating them, then adding the water, parsley and nasturtium while the butter heated up. I then fried the eggs without turning them, instead lifting the edges and shifting the pan to encourage the liquid to solidify. Reading "meat dish" as "a meat-based dish of food" rather than "a physical dish usually used to serve meat", I finished the omelette by laying it on four small slices of fried bacon.

 

Time to Complete: About 15 minutes.

 

Total Cost: Everything came out of my garden or my friend's chicken coop. Except for the <1 Tbsp butter.

Omelette with parsley and nasturtium (and bacon).

How Successful Was It?: Lovely to look at, with the red and green of the parsley and nasturtium. I really like my eggs cooked through, so I was nervous about not flipping the omelette to cook on the other side, but it did fully solidify. I think the dish could use some salt; looking over the instructions again, I think there's room to interpret the recipe as calling for salt and pepper like the first one, though on my initial read I took it as "substitute parsley and nasturtium for the salt and pepper." I didn't really notice the nasturtium flavor except for one bite, though there was a low-key parsley flavor throughout. Overall, it tasted of egg and looked nice. I think that the water and beating the egg parts separately were meant to make the omelette lighter, but I didn't notice much of a difference over the modern omelettes I've made mixing the whole eggs.  

Despite not seeing much of a difference with separating the eggs, but the parsley and nasturtium do make a pretty variation on a simple egg recipe, and I would consider adding this receipt to my arsenal.

How Accurate Is It? I think I followed the instructions well, and am pleased that I could source home-grown ingredients for this one (including eggs from heritage-breed chickens, so for once egg size shouldn't have been a problem).