Omelets in History and Mystery by Maya Corrigan - Potluck Monday

Image courtesy of Pixabay

Sleuths seeking the origin of omelets can't say for sure who invented the omelet. Some food historians trace the dish to the Persian Empire and others to Ancient Rome. Ovemele was the name of a Roman dish of egg sweetened with honey. A 17th century French cookbook uses a similar word: aumelette. By the 18th century omelette became the standard spelling in France and Britain, though the word is shortened to omelet in American English. 

The dish is a favorite of Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie’s detective with the egg-shaped head. In her story, “The Third Floor Flat,” he declares, “Me, I have a passion for the omelettes.” He even gives an omelet cooking lesson in Mrs. McGinty’s Dead (1952). He is stuck at a guesthouse, having to eat food prepared by Maureen Summerhayes, his landlady and possibly the worst cook in England. Her name comes up in a later book, Cat Among the Pigeons (1959), when her nephew says, “Aunt Maureen makes smashing omelettes.” The detective sighs with satisfaction and says, “Then Hercule Poirot has not lived in vain. It was I who taught your Aunt Maureen to make an omelette.”

An omelette is part of the mystery in Strong Poison (1930) by Dorothy Sayers. The book opens with Harriet Vane on trial for the arsenic poisoning of her lover, Philip Boyes. In summing up the evidence, the judge describes in his deadpan voice the preparation of the dessert omelette the victim ate shortly before dying: “Four eggs were brought to the table in their shells, and Mr. Urquhart broke them one by one into a bowl, adding sugar from a sifter. Then he handed the bowl to Mr. Boyes...Philip Boyes then beat the eggs and sugar together, cooked the omelette in the chafing-dish, filled it with hot jam...” After his recipe recital ends, the judge makes the point that no one who ate the omelet or any part of the dinner became ill except for Philip Boyes. This seemed to prove that he wasn't poisoned at the table, but earlier by Harriet Vane. One trial spectator, Lord Peter Wimsey, disagrees and is determined to prove her innocent.   

 

My well-thumbed copy of Strong Poison

Omelet moments appear in books by the writers on Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen. In Maddie Day’s new mystery, No Grater Crime, a mushroom omelet proves fatal. Watch this space on Friday, September 10, when Maddie will share a recipe for the Kitchen Sink omelet that her sleuth Robbie often makes. 

In Leslie Budewitz's Spice Shop series, Matt is clueless about food when he’s hired, then teaches himself to make an omelet by watching the Jacques Pepin video over and over until he gets it. And in Leslie Karst’s book, Dying for a Taste, sleuth Sally reminisces about her aunt teaching her the French technique for making an omelet, the best one she’d ever eaten. 

Julia Child introduced Americans to French cooking, and you’ll find her omelette recipe on this blog, along with other recipes for omelets: 

• Cleo Coyle’s guest Julia Child and her perfect omelet recipe

• Apple, Shallot, and Sage Omelet by Lucy Burdette

• Omelet Muffins by Leslie Budewitz

• Egg White Omelet by Daryl Wood Gerber

• Bacon Omelet by Lucy Burdette

• Magic Omelets by Peg Cochran

What's your favorite omelet? Leave a comment about it.

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Scroll down to Around the Kitchen Table and leave a comment there for a chance to win books by Molly MacRae, Cleo Coyle, Maddie Day, Lucy Burdette, and me. 

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Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mysteries featuring café manger Val and her live-wire grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Maya lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. Before writing crime fiction, she taught American literature, writing, and detective fiction at Northern Virginia Community College and Georgetown University. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

Visit her website to sign up for her newsletter. One subscriber wins a book each time a newsletter goes out. Check out the easy recipes, mystery history and trivia, and a free culinary mystery story on the website.

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Apple, Shallot, and Sage Omelet for Two or Three @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: I just got the completed cover art for my May book and had to share it with you! Isn't it a beauty?

Now back to food...I was about to mail Christy Ellingsworth’s Dash Diet 30-minute Cookbook to my brother, as they have new cooking/health challenges in their family. But I decided I should glance through one more time first. 

I was intrigued by the list of ingredients in this omelet. It tastes so fancy when in truth it’s not. It’s a recipe that turns out bigger than its individual

ingredients. John agreed, pronouncing it company-worthy, although it really serves two good-sized portions, three depending on what else is for dinner. So a small number of visitors…

3 large eggs

1 nice apple (I used Macoun)

1 shallot

4-6 fresh sage leaves

½ or so cup shredded Gruyere

Core the apple and cut it into thin slices (no need for peeling.) Peel and dice the shallot. Cut the sage into ribbons.

Beat the eggs together with a splash of water or milk.

In a big skillet, melt 2-3 tablespoons olive oil and or butter. Scrape in the shallot and apple and sauté over low heat until soft and beginning to brown. Add the ribbons of sage, followed by the eggs. When the eggs begin to set, add the shredded cheese. Fold half of the omelet over the other, and serve when cooked through.

Serve this with a nice green salad and maybe a stray biscuit and your table-mates will be delighted!

Death on the Menu, the 8th Key West food critic mystery, is available now from Crooked Lane Books. You can order it wherever books are sold! A DEADLY FEAST will be out in May, but can be pre-ordered now on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Indiebound, or wherever you buy your books.

And please follow Lucy on Instagram and Bookbub!

Malice Omelet with Crab and Brie

Like other MLK members here, I was at Malice Domestic last weekend. It was wonderful to hang out with a few hundred (literally) of my favorite friends, both writers and readers. But by Monday morning, most people had scattered to their homes, or at least to airports.

At the peak of the conference, the hotel’s sole restaurant was packed to bursting. By Monday you could count on the fingers of one hand the number of people in the dining room. Breakfast throughout the weekend featured a prix fixe buffet, complete with a working chef to make things to order. The number of choices was kind of overwhelming, but I was feeling daring by Monday, and I’m glad I was because I discovered an omelet new to me that seemed like a perfect combination of ingredients, especially if you’re in Maryland.

Yes, it's blue, at least until you cook it

Maryland is known for its crab (from the nearby Chesapeake Bay), mostly the Blue Crab. But it’s still early in the season for them, so I can’t swear where the hotel’s crab was coming from. (Nor can I get it in Massachusetts!) But whatever it was, it tasted good.

Anyway, at the breafast buffet I spotted the crab omelet on the menu and I was sold. Add Brie and I’m in heaven. It’s simple, easy to make, and tasty. Crab omelet, where have you been all my life?


Ingredients:

Fresh crabmeat (that means you have to take the hard shell off! And pluck out the good stuff. Oh, all right—you could use frozen if you’re desperate, but it will still taste good. Just don’t use the “Imitation Crabmeat”—I don’t want to know what that’s made of.)

How much? Depends on how big an omelet you’re making, how much you like crabmeat, how expensive it is at any particular time, and so on. Put it more than a sprinkling, and less than an ice cream scoop per omelet.

The legs/claws pictured here weighed a pound (including the shell) and yielded enough meat to make two omelets.

What came out of those legs

Brie cheese (It should be ripe enough to be soft at room temperature.) Slice it about 1/4-inch thick. Some people don’t like the velvety white mold on the outside (I’m one of them), but you can trim that off easily if you like. Be generous with it, again depending on how big your omelet will be. You should have a layer about one slice thick, covering half of the unfolded egg part of the omelet.)

Brie, unwrapped

Two or three eggs per omelet
Butter
Salt and pepper (taste the cheese first to see how salty it is)
You could add other herbs or spices, but that’s kind of gilding the lily. Crab and Brie both have delicate flavors, so why hide them?

Instructions:

Pick out the crabmeat from its shells (and check the meat twice to make sure there are no shell shards). Slice the Brie.

Make your egg mixture for your omelet (this can include milk, cream, crème fraiche, or whatever pleases you). Add salt and pepper sparingly to the mixture.

Melt the butter over medium heat in a round-sided non-stick pan. Pour in the egg mixture and gently shake the pan while it cooks to keep it from sticking. It should be round.

Just in

Halfway there

When it looks like the omelet is beginning to cook, distribute about half a cup of shredded crabmeat over the eggs. Continue cooking for a bit longer, then lay the pieces of Brie over one-half of it. 

Carefully fold the omelet in half, covering the cheese, and slide it carefully onto a warmed plate. Let it rest a couple of minutes to allow the cheese to melt, then serve, accompanied by French bread, croissasnts, crumpets, English muffins, or whatever you have handy.

I did it! I got it out of the pan without
making a mess!

The result? Pretty good for a first try. The crabmeat was tender, and the cheese made a nice gooey mess. I may keep it on the menu! 

Books, books . . . Aha! The next Relatively Dead book finally has a name: Revealing the Dead! Coming from Beyond the Page next week. Or maybe the week after. And the cover is almost ready for its big reveal!

Stay tuned for updates!

I love an avocado omelet ~ from author @DarylWoodGerber #recipe

From Daryl aka Avery:

Okay, health lesson for today: there are good foods and super foods; good fats and bad fats. I’ve been reading up on this. Why? It turns out my body is producing cholesterol. I’m eating right and I’m fairly thin. I exercise, and I don’t smoke. But darn it, I have to take medicine to keep my cholesterol low.

Do you know your HDL and LDL and triglycerides numbers? You should. Ask your doctor.

Anyway, let’s get to some technical stuff:

To lower cholesterol eat:

Oats, red wine, salmon, nuts, green tea, beans (or legumes, especially kidney beans and black beans), dark chocolate, garlic, olive oil.  (Yes, you read that right. Red wine and dark chocolate!) Blueberries are good for you, too!

What are some good fats?

Monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs) help reduce visceral fat, the type of fat that promotes cardiovascular health.  An avocado fits into this category. Yay for me! I love avocados.

What are the bad fats?

I KNOW trans fats are bad, but what are they? Where are they found? Is canola oil a trans fat? No, it’s not. It’s got zero trans fat and the lowest level of any saturated fat on the market. Trans fat (also called trans fatty acid) is created when vegetable oils are hydrogenated. The process saturates the oil and produces trans fat. The process also gives margarine its butter-like consistency. Be careful. Trans fats can be found in non-dairy creamers. I know a friend who likes a little coffee in her creamer. Watch it!

Is butter a bad fat?

Not necessarily. While doing research, I found these guidelines for fat consumption: if you stay below 10% of your daily diet for fats, you’re doing well. If you want to have butter, consider cutting back on other fats that are in cheeses and milk products. FYI, a teaspoon of butter contains 10 milligrams of fat or about 4% of your minimum daily amount, 300 milligrams.

But enough of the science stuff.

Food. I like food! I love to eat.

And I love an omelet.  I started to worry. Are eggs bad for me? Guess what? Eggs get a bad rap.

Okay, one more technical thing. According to the Mayo Clinic website, chicken eggs are high in cholesterol, but the effect of egg consumption on blood cholesterol is minimal when compared with the effect of trans fats and saturated fats.

So I’m going to make sure I cut back on those.

Now, in an omelet, I like to include avocados and green vegetables. As mentioned above, avocados are the “good” fat. Also, an avocado can increase your absorption of essential vitamins, which therefore reduces your risk for heart disease. Plus they are free of cholesterol and sodium.

As for my green vegetable, I adore spinach. I’m going to share one of the easiest ways to always have it on hand. My sister taught me this nifty trick recently. Take fresh spinach, a good-sized portion on a plate, cover with a paper towel and zap in the microwave for 1 minute. Remove from the oven, fold the spinach over on itself. It cooks perfectly while preparing the rest of your omelet.

THE PERFECT OMELET

Ingredients:

2 eggs

½ cup cooked spinach

½ small avocado, diced

2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese

1 teaspoon butter

For an omelet, I like to have everything at hand—ready to go—because once the eggs start cooking, the process is fast.

Mix the eggs in a bowl and set aside. 

Cook the spinach, as suggested above.

Scoop out a half of a small avocado out with a spoon and dice; set aside.

Open the flaky Parmesan cheese container.  [Parmesan cheese is very low in fat. 1 tablespoon = 4% of daily fat]

Put a teaspoon of butter (I like the flavor of butter) in an 8-inch skillet and turn the heat on high. When the butter sizzles, pour in the eggs and turn down the heat to medium-high.

Holding the handle of the skillet, swirl the eggs all around. With a spatula, lift up the edges of the omelet and let the runny portion flow beneath the edges. This cooks the eggs evenly.

When the eggs are half-cooked, layer in the avocado and spinach on one side of the omelet and the cheese on the other. turn down the heat to LOW.

Let the omelet rest for about a minute, then using the spatula, fold the cheese side onto the vegetable side. Slide the omelet onto a plate and enjoy!

http://bit.ly/GirlOnTheRun_Kindle

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By the way, I announced it on Facebook yesterday, so I might as well tell all you of you. I have written a suspense novel, a stand alone. GIRL ON THE RUN.

I'm very excited about it. It will debut April 9. It is up on Amazon and will be in other formats in the coming month. I'll let you know as the formats pop up.  FYI, it is NOT a culinary cozy BUT it does NOT have a lot of bad language or sex or violence. No children or animals are harmed. It is what the title says: a girl on the run to learn the truth.  Here's the cover. 

If you click on the link, you can read the blurb.

  

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Savor the mystery and say cheese!

Daryl Wood Gerber aka Avery Aames

Tasty ~ Zesty ~ Dangerous!

Friend Daryl and Avery on Facebook

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GRILLING THE SUBJECT, the 5th Cookbook Nook Mystery, can be pre-ordered. Click here to order.

FOR CHEDDAR OR WORSE, 
the 7th Cheese Shop Mystery.

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