eggs

Shell-shaped sushi (Hamaguri-zushi) for Girls' Festival

maki — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:52:50 +0100

From the archives, originally posted March 2, 2007. These delicately colored sushi are a great way to use usuyaki tamago. I know I’ve been re-posting things from the archives a lot lately, but I hope you’ll forgive me - I’m moving tomorrow! In any case, I hope you’ll give these delicate sushi a try, especially if you have daughters or granddaughters.

The 3rd of March is Momo no sekku or Peach Day in Japan. Peach blossoms usually start blooming around this time, signifying the coming of spring. It’s also the day for hina matsuri, the Doll Festival or Girls’ Festival. Households with daughters display hina ningyou-, traditional dolls that represent a princess’s wedding procession. This is because the ultimate happiness expected for a girl was for her to make a fruitful and comfortable marriage. Nowadays girls may be expected to do other things besides become happy wives, but on this day at least traditions still hold strong.

In Japan there is a long standing stereotype that girls and women like very sweet things, while manly men like less sweet and bitter things. So, for Hina Matsuri the guests are served sweet things like amazake (a very thick non-alcoholic hot drink made from the lees of sake, rather like eggnog in color and cloying sweetness), hishimochi (tri-colored mochi cake) and okoshi (colored sweetened puffed rice). Although there were three girls in our house, none of us liked amazake at all. However, my mother often made some kind of sushi for Hina Matsuri, which we really loved.

Here are two kinds of very pretty, girlie sushi in feminine pink, yellow and white with a touch of green. These colors fit the theme of Hina Matsuri perfectly: the traditional hishimochi is colored white, pink (or light red) and green.

The first is hamaguri-zushi or clam sushi, pictured here. It’s supposed to look like a clam, but to me it looks just as much like a little yellow flower. (Hamaguri are in season in March in Japan.) It can be filled with any kind of sushi rice, but here I have made a slightly pink-tinged sushi rice with lemony smoked salmon, mitsuba or flat-leaf parsley and white sesame seeds, wrapped in a usuyaki tamago or thin omelette. It’s related to chakin-zushi, where the omelette is wrapped in a bag shape and tied, but slightly less fiddly since all you have to do is fold it into quarters.

Besides making a very pretty spring party dish (for an appetizer maybe, or as part of a buffet), these work very well as bento items too since the sushi rice has good keeping qualities, and the omelette keeps the rice from drying out. Plus you can just grab them with your hands to eat.

The second sushi is smoked salmon temari zushi - the recipe is here.

Hamaguri-zushi (clam sushi) or yellow flower sushi

The rice:

4 cups of cooked plain white rice cooked with dashi stock
1/4 cup plum vinegar or raspberry vinegar
1 1/2 Tbs. sugar
3/4 tsp. salt
About 60g/2 oz smoked salmon, finely chopped, or 2 to 3 tablespoons of salmon furikake
2 tsp. lemon juice
1 Tbs. toasted white sesame seeds
2 Tbs. chopped mitsuba or flatleaf parsley leaves

The wrapping: * usuyaki tamago using 6 eggs

Garnish:

Salmon roe (aka salmon caviar) or ikura (which are salmon eggs marinated in a soy sauce mix)

Equipment:

Small non-stick frying pan
Rice cooker (will make your life a lot easier)
A heat-resistant brush for brushing the oil onto the pan, or a wad of paper towel
Spatula to turn the omelette
Rice paddle or spatula for mixing the rice

Make the usuyaki tamago. Dissolve the cornstarch in the water. Beat the eggs lightly with a fork or chopsticks (not a whisk or it will become too bubbly) with the sugar, salt and the cornstarch/water.

Heat the small frying pan over a medium-low heat. Brush lightly with oil. Put about 1/8th cup or 3 tablespoons of the egg mixture in the pan, swirl carefully so it coats the bottom of the pan but doesn’t slosh up the sides. Hint: use the same scoop or spoon to measure equal amounts of the egg - I use a 1/4 cup measure, half filled.

Cook just until the top is barely set, then carefully pick up the omelette with the spatula and flip over. Cook for about 10 seconds just until it’s set, then flip out of the pan. The omelettes should be yellow, and not browned.

Repeat for the rest of the egg. You should end up with about 12 to 14 omelettes.

The omelettes can be made the day before and kept covered with plastic in the fridge.

Make the sushi rice the day you plan to serve it. Cook the rice following the basic instructions. Turn the hot rice out into a bowl and break up lightly with the spatula. The sushi vinegar in this case is made with a red colored vinegar, either plum or raspberry (don’t worry, this won’t make the rice taste weird). Mix together the vinegar, sugar and salt in a pan and heat until the sugar and salt are dissolved. Pour over the rice, and mix/fluff the rice until it’s all a uniform pale pink. Let cool to room temperature.

In the meantime, sprinkle the chopped up smoked salmon with the lemon juice, and let sit for at least 10 to 15 minutes.

Fold the sesame seeds, salmon, and mitsuba or parsley into the rice, trying not to smoosh the rice grains too much. Here is how the rice looks. You can just make this into small rice balls and serve too.

Assembly

Divide the rice into as many portions as you have omelettes. Put the portioned rice on one quarter of one of the omelettes.

Fold the omelette in half, then into quarters.

Turn over so the rice part is on top (the weight of the rice helps to keep it stable). Squeeze the sides a bit so the insides can be seen.

Garnish with a few salmon eggs. This is optional but makes it really pretty. You can also sprinkle a bit of mitsuba or parsley instead.

Note that you do not need dipping soy sauce for this, since the sushi itself is already flavored quite well.

Tamago dofu: Cold savory egg custard

maki — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:17:35 +0200

Previously, I explained how some dishes that are not tofu are called -tofu, because of the shape, texture or both. This is the case with tamago dofu　（卵豆腐） , a smooth savory egg custard that’s served cold.

You can make it in a square mold, to make it look tofu-like. But I prefer to keep it a lot simpler by cooking the tamago dofu in the serving container it will be served in. This can be anything as long as it’s heat-proof. Here I have used some sturdy glass cups made of pressed glass, but I’ve also used little pudding molds, tiny glass bowls made for holding ingredients while you’re cooking, and even coffee cups.

There are very few ingredients in a tamago dofu: dashi or soup stock, eggs, and a few flavorings. Because of this, each component should be of top quality, because you’ll taste each one quite clearly. Traditionally the soup component is dashi, but I don’t really like the fish flavor of dashi when it’s cold. So I prefer to make a simple vegetable stock instead.

Tamago dofu should be served ice cold. It’s a great appetizer for a summer meal, or an interesting and soothing snack. I have been guilty of making 4 cups and ‘hiding’ them so I can eat them all by myself.

Recipe: Tamago dofu in a cup

Makes 4 servings of about 3/4 cups each

For the vegetable stock:

1 medium onion
1 celery stalk
1 small fennel bulb
1 bunch flat leaf parsley
1 bay leaf
1 piece of fresh ginger, about 1 inch / 2 cm square
1 piece of kombu seaweed about 15-20 cm / 6-7 inches long

Chop up the vegetables roughly. Put everything in a pot, and add enough cold water to cover. Bring up to a boil them simmer slowly for about 20 minutes. Strain out the vegetables. (This makes more stock than you will need for the recipe; use the rest in a soup, stew, etc.)

For the tamago dofu:

4 ‘large’ eggs
2 cups / 440 ml vegetable stock or dashi
1 Tbs. soy sauce
1 tsp. salt
grated fresh ginger
parsley leaves for garnish

Equipment needed:

4 heat-proof molds or cups or glasses
a fine meshed sieve, or a tea strainer
a large pan or pot with a tight fitting lid
plastic wrap
a kettle or something to boil water

Boil some water in a kettle while you assemble the tamago dofu. (I use an electric kettle.) You’ll need enough boiling water to come up at least halfway up the cups or molds you’ll be using when placed in the large pan.

Mix the soy sauce and salt into the stock. Taste and add a little more salt if needed (remember when it’s cool the flavors will dissipate a bit).

Beat the eggs with a fork or chopsticks, trying not to make it too foamy. Add 330 ml / 1 1/2 cups of the soup stock to the eggs, and mix thoroughly.

Strain the egg mixture through a fine meshed sieve. This smooths out the texture by getting rid of the bubbles and any bits of unincorporated egg white. You can skip this step if you can’t be bothered - it won’t affect the flavor, though the texture may not be as velvety smooth.

Pour the mixture slowly (so you don’t make any bubbles) into the 4 containers. Cover each with plastic wrap, then punch a few holes in the plastic with a skewer or knife tip. (The plastic prevents water drops from falling into the egg custard, and the holes allow excess steam to escape).

Put the containers into the large pan. Very carefully (don’t splash the water into the custard) pour boiling water into the pan so that the water comes at least halfway up the sides of the containers. Cover the pot with the tight fitting lid. Leave it there for 15 minutes.

At the end, the custard should be fairly firm and the color will have turned pale. It will still be wobbly. Very carefully remove the cups from the pot, take off the plastic film covers and slowly pour the rest of the stock evenly over the top of the custard. This prevents the surface from forming a film. Leave to cool to room temperature, then re-cover each cup with fresh plastic film and cool in the refrigerator until ice cold.

You can make this up to a day in advance. Serve with a little grated ginger and a parsley leaf garnish on top.

Notes

Normally tamago dofu is cooked in a steamer, or steam-cooled in a simmering water bath. Some people also make it in the microwave. For me, using any of these methods makes custard all bubbly and spongy instead of smooth. By leaving it in boiling water as specified the custard cooks all the way through but remains silky smooth. However, this method only works if you’re making individual portions as I am here - if you make a large square of tamago dofu, you will need to add heat.

If you serve this hot with some added ingredients like shrimp, ginko nut, etc. in it and serve it piping hot, it becomes chawanmushi, a classic winter dish.

(Sidenote: Sorry I took an unintended week off from blogging! What with a cold and being buried in boxes all of last week, I totally lost my appetite and my foodblogging mojo. Fortunately both seem to have returned somewhat. The cold is almost gone, though the boxes are multiplying like bunnies.)

Basics: Tamagoyaki or Atsuyaki Tamago, Japanese sweet omelette

maki — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 14:07:13 +0100

Tamagoyaki is such a integral part of Japanese food that I am rather kicking myself for not having posted a recipe for it before here. The name tamagoyaki means “fried egg”, and the alternate name, atsuyaki tamago, means “thick fried egg”. (Some books or restaurants erroneously called it just tamago, which just means “egg”.) A slightly sweet, moist square-shaped egg concoction, tamagoyaki is a bento box staple, as well as being a popular sushi neta (topping). It’s also great as a side dish for any meal.

You don’t really need a special tamagoyaki pan for making this. A regular small non-stick frying pan will do. The one advantage of having a small tamagoyaki pan like this one is that the size is good for making small, thick tamagoyaki without using extra eggs. Conversely, a big square tamagoyaki/atsuyaki tamago pan is used for making those thick tamagoyaki served at better sushi restaurants. (Cheap sushi places use manufactured tamagoyaki, which is an abomination.) However, I’m assuming most people are likely to own a small frying pan, so that’s what I’ve used for the photos here. The one I have is an ordinary (pretty cheap) Tefal model that I got at a sale somewhere.

Once you get the hang of making the multilayers of egg, it’s very easy to do. A 2-egg tamagoyaki takes less than 5 minutes to cook, and a 4-egg one just a bit more. 4 eggs is the maximum that’s practical to cook in a 20cm / 8 inch standard frying pan.

I prefer my tamagoyaki to not be too sweet so there isn’t much sugar in this - I’ve seen recipes that add up to 3 tablespoons for 4 eggs. You can add more or less to your taste.

Tamagoyaki or Atsuyaki tamago

Halve the quantities for a 2-egg tamagoyaki

4 ‘large’ eggs
1 Tbs. sugar
1 tsp. mirin
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. light soy sauce (usukuchi shoyu); you can use regular soy sauce instead
Oil for cooking

Equipment:

20cm / 8 inch (small) non-stick frying pan
A heat resistant brush OR a wad of cotton wool or kitchen paper, for spreading the oil
1 or 2 forks, or 1 fork and a pair of chopsticks - or if you are skillful one pair of chopsticks
Sushi rolling mat
Optional: a fine-meshed sieve

Heat up the pan on medium-low heat. Make ready a small bowl of oil, and the brush or wad of cotton wool or kitchen paper.

Beat all the ingredients together with a fork or chopsticks. Don’t use a whisk since you don’t want it to get foamy.

Optionally, strain the egg mixture through a sieve to even it out. (I usually don’t bother with this step but it does make for a finer and more even egg mix.)

Brush the heated pan with a little oil. Put in about 2 to 3 tablespoons worth of egg mixture in the pan. Cook gently (lower the heat if necessary) until it’s not quite set on top, but not runny. Roll it up with a fork or chopsticks to one side of the pan.

Brush the exposed part of the pan with a little oil.

Put another couple of tablespoons of egg mixture in the pan. Spread it around, lifting the cooked egg so that the uncooked egg flows below it.

Cook until this layer is almost set, then roll the whole egg to the opposite side of where it is.

Brush the pan again with oil. Add another couple of tablespoons of egg mixture in the pan, and spread around the pan and under the cooked egg.

Keep repeating this procedure until the egg mixture is used up.

Put the tamagoyaki on a moistened sushi rolling mat, seam side down.

Roll it up tightly. If you are eating this right away you can take it out and serve immediately, but if you’re making this for an (o)bento, leave the whole roll in the mat over a raised rim plate or bowl until it’s cooled to room temperature. This allows air to pass under and over it, cooling it faster.

And here is the finished tamagoyaki. Slice with a sharp knife and enjoy. (If you just want even pieces, just leave off the ends. These usually end up in my mouth right there.)

A 2-egg omelette is just thinner, making smaller bits, but is just as good. You will only probably need 3 layers of egg for 2 eggs, so it goes quickly. The picture here shows some slices of 2-egg tamagoyaki to the left, and 4 egg tamagoyaki to the right.

Notes

If you really want a purely yellow tamagoyaki, cook it over low heat and use light soy sauce. Using light soy sauce makes your omelette slightly lighter in color, if you want to avoid any browning. But I usually just use regular soy sauce since browning doesn’t bother me. Keep in mind that light soy sauce is not lower in salt content, just lighter in color. (It’s different from low-salt soy sauce.)

Vary the flavor and look by adding finely chopped green onion or garlic chives, or small bits of nori seaweed. To achieve a black-and-yellow spiral effect, put torn pieces of nori over each almost-set egg layer before rolling.

If your tamagoyaki seems a bit too runny, you can firm it up by nuking it in the microwave for about a minute. Don’t over-nuke or you’ll end up with a firm rubbery thing.

The ideal accompiment when serving piping hot tamagoyaki is some grated daikon radish, with a tiny bit of soy sauce.

A variant of tamagoyaki is dashimaki tamago, where some dashi stock is added to the egg mixture. This makes for very thin layers, and thus requires some patience.

Omuraisu (aka omurice or omu rice, Japanese rice omelette)

maki — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 19:11:45 +0200

In Japan, department store restaurants and kid-friendly "family restaurants" always have a children's set menu, called okosama ranchi. In my day this was unvaryingly the same wherever you went. It was usually a tiny hamburger, fried croquettes or similar child-friendly entrée, a small, moulded round of some kind of fried rice or pirafu (which was really still fried rice, but using butter and ketchup instead of oil and soy sauce) with a little paper Japanese flag on top, and maybe a tiny mound of some sort of vegetable, like boiled carrots. Or it was an omuraisu (omu rice). Omu rice, or rice omelette, is an example of yohshoku, Japanese food that originated in the west but has been changed around to suit the Japanese palette. It's an omelette stuffed with that same pirafu or chikin raisu (chicken rice), and topped with a dollop of red ketchup.

Going to the department store restaurant was a big treat for me. In all of my memories of eating at a department store restaurant, my oba-chan - grandmother - is there. In retrospect, as a young mother with two small children and a husband sent away by his company to England, my mother probably didn't have the budget or the time to treat us to restaurant lunches. So my grandmother made sure we had those treats whenever she visited.

I don't have many memories of my grandparents, because I only knew them for a few years of my childhood. I spent my growing up years moving around in Japan, England and the U.S., moving wherever my father's company sent him. My grandmother, my mother's mother, was never a very healthy woman. She had had 6 children, which was not an unusual number at the time, but by the time she had her first grandchild (me), she had already suffered her first minor stroke. She suffered from several strokes after that, and died in her early 60s, while I was in my teens.

I never knew my grandmother to wear anything other than a kimono. My other grandmother, my father's mother, wore dresses most of the time, but not my mother's mother. She was quite a traditional woman in that sense. She was quite strict, and had a rather severe face that rarely smiled (again thinking back, this was probably because her strokes had partially paralyzed her face), and I was a little afraid of her. But she was very proud of her grandchildren.

Here I am aged 3, at my shichigosan ceremony with my grandmother.

I never remember my grandmother cooking for us, except for her prized umeboshi - my aunt had taken over the household duties at the honke (the main house of the clan) by then. So when I think of oba-chan and food, I think of those oh-so-salty homemade umeboshi, and of okosama ranchi and omu raisu. The comforting combination of softly cooked omelette with sweet ketchup-flavored rice containing tiny bits of chicken, takes me back to my four year old self, gazing wide-eyed at the plastic food displays at the restaurant. I would glance up to oba-chan's face to see if I could order that beautiful yellow omuraisu - and maybe, just maybe, a chocolate parfait afterwards? Her answer was always yes.

Omraisu or omu rice (Japanese rice omelette)

1 cup cooked white or brown rice
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup chicken breast or boiled ham, cut into small pieces
butter
ketchup in a squeeze bottle
2 large eggs (organic preferred)
salt and pepper

Equipment needed: one large sauté pan, 1 20cm/8-inch nonstick or cast iron frying pan

Sauté the chopped onion until transparent in butter. Add the chicken or ham and sauté until done. Add the rice and toss until heated through. Add about 2 Tbs. of ketchup and toss rapidly - you just want to color and flavor the rice, not make it soggy. Season with a little salt and pepper. Mound the rice on a plate in a sort of omelette shape.

Start heating a knob of butter in the frying pan until the butter stops bubbling. In the meantime, crack the eggs into a bowl, add a little salt and pepper and whisk with a fork. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and make an omelette that is still slightly runny in the middle.

As soon as it's done, carefully turn the omelette onto the mounded rice. Optionally cut it carefully down the middle, so that the egg runs a bit over the rice.

Squirt with a little ketchup on top. Serve immediately, perhaps with a small green salad on the side.

Notes:

A lot of people put the rice in the omelette while it's still in the pan and fold it over, but that tends to result in a too-thin and overcooked omelette. I prefer the mounding on top method.
For the best example on film of how to make an omuraisu, watch the movie masterpiece about food by Juzo Itami, Tampopo.
Robyn (the girl who ate everything) recently had omuraisu in New York and posted about it.

Technorati Tags: egg, japanese, omu rice, omuraisu, omurice

Masterchef challenge, day 17: Spinach, Cheese and Tofu Frittata

maki — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 15:16:34 +0100

We are into Week 5 of MasterChef. The ingredients for day 17 are:

Mature Cheddar cheese
Spinach
Chili peppers
Sweet corn
Potatoes
Smoked haddock

I think that this list was meant to test if the contestants could judge whether or not certain flavors belong together. There are two very assertive ingredients here: the mature (aged) Cheddar, and the smoked haddock. As I've stated here several times already, most of the time fish and cheese don't go well together, and when it comes to smoked or cured fish, that holds even more true. The only exception is the classic combo of smoked salmon or lox with cream cheese, but cream cheese is such a mild flavor that it's more of a creamy accompaniment to the salty-fattiness of smoked salmon. But in this case we have a very strongly flavored cheese, with an equally strongly flavored smoked fish, and the two just don't marry well.

Since I've never cooked with an aged Cheddar before, I wanted to center my dish around that instead of the haddock. After some ruminating I settled on a frittata. A frittata (an Italian omelette usually baked in the oven) is a perfect lunch or brunch dish; less creamy than a quiche, and more substantial than a regular French omelette.

The one ingredient that most likely the actual MasterChef contestants would not have had on hand is the tofu. I added tofu to boost the protein content without adding more eggs, but it could be made with a couple more eggs too. I also had in mind making a dish that is low in carbohydrates for my low-carb loving friends. This only has 2 tablespoons of canned sweet corn in it, which could be omitted to make it even lower in carbs. It's also a vegetarian dish for lacto-ovo-vegetarians. The blandness of the egg and tofu, the slight bite of the chili pepper, the sort of almost creamy-smooth texture of the spinach, the crunch of the corn, with the occasional intensely cheesy mouthful, all went together very well. And the yellow, white, green with flecks of red looked really pretty too.

This is one wedge of an 8-serving frittata, and made a perfect lunch with a green salad. Optionally add some salsa or marinara sauce on the side. This rather large amount is easier to get right than making it in a smaller pan. If you have leftovers, frittata is delicious at room temperature, so it's a different and great take-along lunch. I would not freeze it however, because tofu and egg turn into a sponge-like substances when frozen.

Unused ingredients: potatoes, smoked haddock.

Spinach, cheese and tofu frittata

8 eggs
1 firm tofu
200g / 8oz. fresh spinach (a couple of very large handfuls)
1 chili pepper
3 Tbs. canned or frozen sweet corn
3 garlic cloves
Olive oil
100g / about 3 oz. aged cheese - aged Cheddar, or Gruyere

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 360°F.

Finely chop the garlic. De-seed and de-vein the chili pepper and chop finely also.

Crumble the cheese into rather large pieces.

Wash the spinach if needed, and chop roughly unless you are using baby leaves.

Drain the tofu well, dry off the surface a bit with kitchen towels, and cut into about 1.5cm / 1/2 inch cubes.

Crack all the eggs into a bowl and beat with 2 Tbs. of water, 1 tsp. of salt and some freshly ground pepper.

In a non-stick pan with an oven-safe handle, sauté the garlic and chili pepper in about 1 Tbs. of olive oil. Take out about half of it and reserve. Add the tofu cubes and let them slightly brown on all sides. Take out the tofu cubes.

Add the spinach and corn to the pan with the reserved garlic/chili, and sauté rapidly until the spinach shrinks and becomes a limp but bright green pile. Season with a bit of salt and pepper, and take out.

Heat up an additional 1 Tbs. of olive oil in the pan and swirl about. Mix all the ingredients into the egg mixture, and add to the hot pan. Immediately put the pan into the heated oven, and set the timer to 20 minutes. At that point check the fritatta - it should be a light golden brown on top.

Serve immediately or at room temperature, cut into 8 wedges.

Consider the omelette

maki — Sat, 17 Jan 2004 11:39:00 +0100

Sometimes making a particular dish takes a long time, involving several steps, but if you follow the directions carefully enough it's fairly easy. On the other hand there are things that only take a few minutes to prepare, but may take years to really get right.

One such item is a classic plain omelette.

To make a good omelette, you must start with good eggs. Good eggs are fresh (used within a week of laying), and preferably come from happy hens who have been raised organically, and are not cooped up in some horrendous egg factory. Even if you have to pay a premium price for such eggs, it's worth it. I know there are several tests that are supposed to show if an egg is fresh or not (such as that it sinks in a bowl of water) but the best way to ensure that you have fresh eggs is to buy them from a reputable source.

I mentioned before that we are lucky enough to have an organic farm within 5 minutes from our house. The main reason we love them so much is that they sell fresh eggs, from happy hens. The yolk color varies according to the season - in the winter it's a rich lemon-yellow, and in the warm months it's a deep orange. The eggs are also expensive, at 60 rappen per egg (about 50 US cents), but considering that just 2 to 3 eggs produce a delicious omelette, it's a bargain.

The other critical ingredient is butter. Use unsalted butter, as fresh as you can get it.

The perfect omelette should be just cooked with maybe a hint of brownishness on the outside, and runny and creamy on the inside. You must eat it when it's just out of the pan, so make everything else ready beforehand.

Great accompaniments for an omelette include boiled potatoes with a bit of chopped parsley and butter, a crisp green salad, and/or a crusty baguette. Add a glass of white wine (a Sauvignon Blanc or a Chenin Blanc would be nice - nothing too strong, like a Chardonnay) and you'll be in heaven.

The plain omelette

2 extra-large or 3 medium to large eggs
1-2 Tbs of cream
Salt and pepper
Unsalted butter

Equipment needed: a 20 cm / 8 inch non-stick frying pan. I have a 10 year old Tefal model that I basically only use for omelettes or fried eggs. Plus a clean kitchen towel.

Break the eggs into a bowel. Add the cream and mix with a form thoroughly. You don't need to use a whisk, you just want it to be thorougly amalgamated and creamy, not necessarily frothy.

Heat up the frying pan over medium-high heat. Add about 1/2 - 1 Tbs of butter and swirl it around. Heat until the butter has more or less stopped bubbling (that's a sign that all the moisture is gone).

Add a dash of salt and a few grinds of pepper to the eggs. As soon as the butter is melted, rapidly tip the egg mixture into the pan. Now, you have to work fast. Either swirl the omelette around rapidly to make the cooked part go to the middle and the raw part to flow out, or flip in the cooked edges with a fork, tilting the pan to let the raw part flow out. Repeat several times, all around the pan. Practice really does improve technique.

As soon as the bottom is set and the middle part is creamy and slightly runny, take the pan off the heat. Tilt the pan over a plate (heated if possible) and let one third of the omelette slide onto the plate. Turn the pan and flop it onto the plate in thirds.

To make the perfect oval omelette, using the kitchen towel gently press the omelette into shape.

Serve immediately.

Variation: to make this an omelette aux fines herbes, add some chopped herbs into the egg mixture. Some to try are: parsley, chervil or trefoil, and chives.

Japanese basics: thin omelette (usuyaki tamago)

maki — Sat, 13 Dec 2003 14:49:10 +0100

(This is a revised and expanded version of a recipe that I posted when Just Hungry was brand new.)

Japanese people love eating eggs in many ways. One of the most popular uses for the egg is to make a very thin omelette called usuyaki tamago (literally, thinly cooked egg). Usuyaki tamago is used julienned as a garnish, or as a wrapper for sushi rice and other things.

Japanese thin omelette (usuyaki tamago)

1 egg
1 Tbs. water or dashi stock
1 tsp. sugar
dash of salt
1 tsp. cornstarch or potato starch (_katakuriko_), dissolved in 1 Tbs. water - optional
peanut oil or similar flavorless oil for cooking

Beat the egg and water or dashi together. Add the sugar and salt and beat until dissolved. The cornstarch is optional, but it does add some more strength and stability fo the thin egg. You may want to use cornstarch when you are making usuyakitamago for wrapping something in.

To ensure a very smooth egg batter, strain the beaten egg mixture through a sieve or a large-mesh tea strainer.

Heat up a nonstick frying pan over a low-medium heat and coat with a little oil: Pour some into the pan, then use a paper towel to spread it around and wipe up any excess oil.

Add a little of the egg mixture (ho much depends on the size of your frying pan, but for a small 18cm/6 inch pan allow about 1/8th cup) and rapidly swirl it around until it just coats the bottom.

Cook on low heat just until the egg is set - this should only take a minute or so. It’s done when the edges are dry and the top is just about cooked.

Loosen up the edges with a spatula, then flip the pan upside down onto a plate - the omelette should flop out, like a crepe. Let cool.

You should get about 3 usuyaki tamago per egg. If you find the pan is getting too hot and the egg is browning too much, cool off the pan by pressing it lightly on a folded moistened kitchen towel.

To use as garnish, fold 1 or 2 usuyaki tamago over into thirds, and cut into thin strips or julienne with a sharp knife. This is called kinshi tamago (錦糸卵）, scattered on the top of sushi, noodles, and so on.

You can also use the whole usuyaki tamago as a wrapping - the bright yellow color makes anything very pretty. An easy way is to just fold it into quarters, as for these shell shaped sushi. A slightly more tricky way is to wrap a filling (such as some flavored sushi rice or a small onigiri) in a beggar’s purse shape. Here I have used a blanched parsley stalk as the tie.

This wrapping shape is called chakin; sushi in this shape is called chakin zushi. For this and other wrapping methods, the more stable version of usuyaki tamago with some cornstarch in the egg mixture is recommended.

Sunday Breakfast Fry-up

maki — Sun, 30 Nov 2003 06:33:00 +0100

One of the strangest habits of the Brits is the Fry-up. A fry-up is consumed for breakfast, is supposed to be a great hangover cure, and is a big greasy mess. Here is a rather sedate version. I've seen ones with fried kidneys, blood sausage, and more too.

I sort of wonder how the British got into the habit of consuming this lethal mixture of fat, protein, and more for breakfast while throughout the rest of Europe people settled happily for bread and coffee.

Once in a while though, like for a late Sunday breakfast that's really lunch, a fry-up is not so bad. I can't take the idea of cooking sausages and bacon though (eating it on holiday is another matter), so I prefer another form of crunchy stimulation. That comes from the crispy spicy potatoes. Again this is a free adaptation of a Nigella Lawson recipe (I do love that woman), using spices that are always on hand in our kitchen. Bacon can be added. I draw the line at sausages unless they are of the right kind - relatively small and very crispy, with most of the fat rendered out. Since it is impossible to get sausages of that kind here in Switzerland, we don't have sausages until much later in the day, if we do at all. (Let's forget all about kidneys and such.)

Recipe: Eggs and spicy potatoes (aka a Sunday Morning Fry Up)
Per person, you need:

2-3 fresh eggs

1-2 potatoes, depending on size. A firm variety for boiling or salads (not baking potatoes)

peanut oil

a mixture of all or some of the following spices: cardamon, turmeric, chili powder, red pepper flakes, cumin seeds, caraway seeds, curry powder, poppy seeds

Wash, peel and cube the potatoes into about 1 cm / 1/2 inch cubes.

Heat up oil in a frying pan or wok. Rapidly throw in the spices. Here you can put in as much or as little as you like, the more of the hot spices you throw in the hotter it would be of course. Add at least some sort of seeds for the texture. Stir it around just a bit - don't burn it - then throw in the potatoes. Toss toss toss until it's all coated. Then lower the heat and put on a lid. Peek in occasionally and turn.

Depending on how bit your cubes were, the potatoes will be done in about 20 minutes. You want the outsides to be quite crunchy, insides cooked through and soft. When it's done season with salt to taste.
Keep the potatoes hot and cook the eggs. Put some oil in a frying pan, or use a non-stick. (non-stick with a little oil gives you the best of both worlds - relatively low fat but that nice crunchy bottom). Cook over medium heat, then lower heat and put a lid on for a couple minutes until yolks are set. If you want to do over easy, flip the eggs at this point. I like a slightly runny yolk. Sprinkle with a touch of salt.

Server both piping hot. If you must , add some toast with jam to this.

Variations: add tomato slices, fried in pan. (I personally dislike sauteed or fried tomato slices.) Add sauteed mushrooms.(Mushrooms taste too much like "dinner" rather than "breakfast" to me.) Add fried bacon slices. (Now, crispy fried bacon on white toast with lots of strawberry jam is a real treat.)

eggs

Shell-shaped sushi (Hamaguri-zushi) for Girls' Festival

Hamaguri-zushi (clam sushi) or yellow flower sushi

Assembly

Tamago dofu: Cold savory egg custard

Recipe: Tamago dofu in a cup

Notes

See also

Basics: Tamagoyaki or Atsuyaki Tamago, Japanese sweet omelette

Tamagoyaki or Atsuyaki tamago

Notes

See also

Omuraisu (aka omurice or omu rice, Japanese rice omelette)

Omraisu or omu rice (Japanese rice omelette)

Masterchef challenge, day 17: Spinach, Cheese and Tofu Frittata

Spinach, cheese and tofu frittata

Consider the omelette

Japanese basics: thin omelette (usuyaki tamago)

Japanese thin omelette (usuyaki tamago)

Sunday Breakfast Fry-up