Spicy Omlette - by Alina Bhatia
The spicy omelette, the recipe that gave me the title of chef of the family. (Well, other than my uncle, who’s a Michelin star cook, but let’s pretend he doesn’t exist for this story.)
This recipe evolved from a single crack of the egg to the specific measurements of spices it has now. It all started when I visited India. I have 3 memories from this trip, watching my first horror movie, getting a black eye, and eating the best-tasting omelette ever made. One of my aunt's friends made me an omelette, I still remember taking that first bite, it was life-changing. When I came back home, I asked my dad to teach me how to make an omelette and that’s the first food I’ve ever learnt to make. In some ways I guess you could say, the egg came first… then the rest, like pasta, homemade pizza, and a lot more. Fast forward to summer of 2019, our cousins from the US were staying with us, about 12 people were in our house all week, and every morning I made breakfast for everyone, from pancakes to oatmeal, and the fan favourite: omelettes. I obviously didn’t just want to serve an omelette that’s too boring for me, so I found this random spice and added it to the egg mixture, hoping it tasted good. Thankfully, it was amazing. The specific spice was a Texas grill mix; I have no idea who bought it, but thank you for not letting me fail when I acted so confidently with my omelette recipe. So far there’s one more part to my full omelette recipe: it’s the technique. I joined a cooking class in 9th grade and we had an egg unit, unfortunately COVID started. I did get to poach an egg in class, not saying I’m good at it but I definitely know the instructions. I did learn one interesting fact though, adding spice to oil and letting it heat on the pan adds a sharp spice flavour to the oil. This was the last part to perfect my spicy omelette recipe. As an Indian spice is super important whether you can handle it or not, all the food is going to be spicy. I mean I personally hate milk, but you better bet if I’m sitting around eating some homemade Indian food I expect there to be milk in the fridge, just in case. My omelette recipe is the evolving recipe from the basic omelette, and it’s pretty simple but in the end it’s very special to me. |
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