Our goal: an enveloping sheet of tender egg cradling a soft-scrambled interior. I've been learning about omelettes for as long as I can remember. One morning, Uncle Pat, who looked exactly as you'd imagine a Jewish Florida retiree circa —white polyester suit, pastel dress shirt, chunky diamond-studded rings, and thin gold chain necklace, all capped with a terrible gray toupee—took me to breakfast at his local country club.
I ordered an omelette, which, at the time, I thought automatically came with cheese. When a plain flap of eggs arrived, I was crushed. Uncle Pat got the chef to make me a new, cheese-filled one, and the chef delivered it himself. Before he headed back to the kitchen, he pointed to his forearm, flexed one of its muscles up and down, and told me there was a mouse inside.
I was awestruck. First, because I'd just seen a guy who possibly had a rodent living in his arm, and second, because I'd discovered, to my horror, that some people ate omelettes without cheese. It'd be years before I'd develop an appreciation for a plain egg omelette, and even longer before I'd learn that something called a French omelette—simple, delicate, and pale gold—existed, and that it was the best of all possible plain egg omelettes. The French omelette, I came to realize, is also the best of all possible omelettes, plain or with cheese, or anything else.
How do French omelettes differ from American ones? Let me try to explain it without editorializing. Nah, forget it, I'm giving you my opinion: Rustic country omelettes, or half-moon-shaped, American diner-style omelettes, often overstuffed, with their lumpy, browned surfaces and fully set interiors, are inferior to French omelettes. It doesn't help that, more often than not, these browned omelettes are not just cooked but overcooked, puffed up with faintly sulfurous gas, not unlike Uncle Pat the morning after stuffed-cabbage night at the country club.
We've also got a guide on how to make really great American diner-style omelettes , if that's what floats your boat. A French omelette, on the other hand, is a tidy package of finesse and delicacy. Its exterior is smooth as silk, its inside moist and creamy, a sheet of tender egg cradling a filling of those very same eggs, softly scrambled. Baveuse, the French say. It means "runny," although I appreciate the word most because it also describes someone who's slobbery with drool.
