Omelette Lyonnaise

Also known as a half-baked onion omelet. Well, half-broiled anyway. But half-baked sounds better.

The first step will take the better part of an hour. The finish will take less than ten minutes.

Step one: carmelize a pound and a half of onions. I used sweet onions, cause we have quite a few in the fridge. I was going to slice them with a knife, but decided that I could get them thinner with a mandoline. Now a pound and a half of sliced onion looks like an awful lot, but it will cook down to a large handful. To carmelize 'em:

• melt a few tablespoons (it looked like ~3 to me) of butter in a large saucepan on medium
• add the onions
• let 'em simmer until the onions start to sweat out their liquid
• make sure you have nothing else to do for a long while
• turn up the heat
  
• stir continuously until the onions turn dark brown
• remove from heat

Now at this point, all the recipes say to put the onions into a pan and pour the beaten egg mixture onto them. I did not do it this way.

I had previously whisked up four eggs and a three tablespoons of heavy cream and set this in the fridge. When the onions were ready and I could finally stop stirring, here's what I did:

• remove onion pan from heat
• place large skillet on heat, turn down to medium
• turn on broiler to preheat
• whisk onions into eggs & cream
• pour into now-warm skillet
• let cook for ~3 minutes (until the bottom is cooked and the center is starting to firm)
• remove skillet from heat and put under the broiler for about 2 minutes (until the top is browned)

The recipes say that the omelet should be slightly runny, but Lizzy doesn't care for eggs that flow downhill, so I cooked 'em a little firmer.

Cut that baby in half, toss it onto a couple of plates and splash on some balsamic vinegar.


Note that this did nothing to diminish our supply of strawberries. We had some for dessert with coffee. Lizzy made a couple of quicky drop-biscuit shortcakes for hers (bread may now be her enemy, but she still needs some), and I whipped up a little cream for mine. (Why would you ever buy that stuff they call whipped cream in tubs and tubes when it's so darned easy to toss a little sugar, a splash of vanilla, and some cream into a bowl and whip it up all tasty and fresh?)

I have a feeling my next recipe might be for a shortcake. It kind of depends on how tomorrow's ride down to McGuire's in Summerville goes.