omelettes a la Julia Child

Sautee some onions. Fill the kitchen with the smells of good cooking.

Start with your eggs room-temperature if possible. Crack them both into a mug or bowl. Add the dash of salt. Add a quick little glug of water - about a tablespoon. (Julia said this is what allows you to froth up the eggs so that the omelette is nice and light.)

Using a fork or whisk, whip up the eggs/water/salt. Get your elbow into it.

Add some butter to your hot pan, enough to coat the bottom and the sides. Sizzle! Swirl it around to make sure the pan's coated. Now BEFORE the butter burns, pour your eggs out into the pan. It should make a nice searing sound.

Let it sit for 10-20 seconds like that. Then, using a spatula, do this: choose any point along the edge of the egg mixture, and pull that edge towards the center of the pan. As you do this, tilt the pan so that the runny stuff fills in the gap you've just made. Do this all the way around the pan.

Now add your cheese, and your onions, and whatever else to ONE SIDE of your eggs. Let sit for another minute or so.

To get it out of the pan: lift up your pan and bring it over to the plate the omelette will go on. Using your spatula for gentle assistance if necessary, SLIDE the egg mess out onto the plate so that HALF of it (the half with the stuff on it) is on the plate and the other half still in the pan. Using the lip of the pan, FLIP the side still in the pan over the half that's on the plate and voila - you ought to have a nice half-moon shaped omelette with a brown patches where it's been seared by the pan.

Serve with salt and pepper, a sprig of parsley and perhaps a few bloody marys.

Bon appetit!