The egg is another design they’ve improved on. When they make an omelet, for example, they start by heating a nugget of butter in a skillet. When it’s hot they pour in the appropriate number of eggs, beaten in a bowl with a fork, and then they wait. Twenty seconds or so may pass with the eggs heating in the skillet, forming a skin (not a crust) on the bottom, before the next move is made.
The French have a special relation to time that allows them to stand cool in front of a skillet on a flame and to not do anything. They are nervous people, but not nervous cooks. Personally, I think their sense of time is shaped by how they count. They go one to twelve, the way we do, but after that things differ. Thirteen becomes ten-three; fourteen becomes ten-four, and so on. When you count from sixty to seventy, you repeat the phenomenon – 71 becomes 60-eleven. Eighty becomes more time warpy as we watch how 81 becomes 4-twenty-1, and 91 becomes 4-twenty-eleven, but 97 inflates to 4-twenty-10-7.
What it means to the speaker and listener, is that they have to suspend time, and learn to hesitate.
97 seven is
4 ….wait
twenty…wait
ten…wait
seven …. Go!
I’m not sure something equivalent happens in other languages.
I believe the ability to wait in front of a skillet of beaten eggs, heating in warmed butter, without becoming flummoxed, derives from French numerizing.
Heat butter in skillet, wait till it warms
Beat eggs in bowl, have ready
Pour eggs into warm skillet/butter
Wait 20 to 30 seconds (don’t count to 97 however)
Shake the skillet back and forth over the flame
Watch the curds
Which formed on the bottom
Move to the top
Making room for more liquid to go to the bottom of the skillet
And ….make more curd
Keep doing that until there is still some liquid egg left
Then slip the omelet onto a plate
With a deft turn of hand that allows it to roll
Lookit that; or as you’d say if you were French: Voila.
You’ll have a lovely omelet
I never mentioned
Seasoning, i.e. salt
Pepper
The filling you might decide to put inside the pre-rolled omelet.
There is nothing on earth like an omelet made by the French.
My friend’s daughter has a Salon de The, a kind of lunch place. She will take a simple egg still in the shell and cook it a few minutes in boiling water. It’s perfect when the white firms nicely, and the yolk remains runny. She decapitates the egg, creating a hole large enough for a demi tasse spoon to fit inside. The egg is served in a little egg cup, and is garnished with a simple slice of baguette, spread with a mixture of butter and Roquefort. The slice of bread is then cut into three finger thick slices. Salt and pepper come on the side; the eater makes those decisions.
The Eater (like the Maker) seasons the egg to taste, then inserts a finger of Roquefort bread into the center of the egg in its shell. When removed the finger of cheese bread, coated with rich yolk, goes directly into the Eater’s mouth. No one has ever figured out greater pleasures from an egg.
My all time favorite egg is one that should inspire some young person to start a food cart, and to sell as street food in Portland. The egg is decapitated first. The entire contents are then dumped into the cook’s hands, while the cook allows the whites to slip through the fingers into a bowl, and to be used in some other way. The yolk is then slipped carefully back into the decapitated egg. Salt, pepper, chives, and quatre epices are added for seasoning and flavor.
The egg, with only its yolk, is set into a pan of simmering water. The shell floats because they are bottom heavy. The bobbing shells remind me of a boat that characters in a Beatrix Potter-like children’s book might use to navigate a harrowing escape on a cartoon river. I’m always amused as I set them hollow shells bobbing in the saucepan.
They float only long enough for the whites left clinging to the yolk to warm and coagulate. It’s heated, but not really cooked. When you look inside the opening of the shell you can tell the white has coagulated.
A small amount of heavy cream, whipped to soft peaks, replaces the useless white. The egg, nested in an egg cup, is served at once to a waiting Eater, along with a demi tasse spoon. The trick is for the Eater to spin the spoon inside the shell, only three or four times, and much to the Eater’s surprise, they will have created a warm mousse. If over worked, over mixed, the whole magic moment collapses. The Eater spoons cream, eggs, salt and peppered egg flavored with spice and herb. Usually their eyes glaze over as they surrender to the egg. I see a food cart.
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