The French Chef with Julia Child

ANNOUNCER

The following program is made possible with the assistance of a grant from S&H Green Stamps.

JULIA

So we're about to see a French omelette being made. You've just seen a French omelette made today on The French Chef. Welcome to The French Chef. I'm Julia Child. Today, I'm going to show you how to make a real French omelette, and it's a wonderful dish to know about. It's not just a breakfast dish. In France, for instance, they never eat them for breakfast at all 'cause they only eat caf au lait and croissants, but what, in France, what you use an omelette for is lunch or supper,

and there are all kinds of ways of making them

plain, with cheese, with ham. And I'm going to show you exactly how. I'm going to show-- The one that I just showed you was shaking the pan like this, which takes a little, as they say, tour de main. But I'm gonna show you an equally professional method in which you shake the pan like this and stir it with a fork. And then unmold it. I'm gonna do... I'm gonna do one first, and then I'm gonna explain exactly how I did it. There, in it goes. You shake the pan like this and stir with your fork, and as it coagulates... you let it get down into the bottom of the pan, and then you switch hands and over it goes. And there's your French omelette. This is neat and nice as anything you could see. And what's lovely about it, it's soft and creamy inside. That's not a hard, rubbery kind of a thing that you get on the tray. Now, this method is... Better wipe out my pan so I can show it to you again. This method is a very, very simple one, and once you know how to do it, you can go right out and make an omelette immediately. What you do, you get your butter very hot and you let it get into the pan, and then you shake your pan with this hand, and with the flat of your fork, you stir it, and as it begins to coagulate, you begin tipping your pan until it all gets down into the edge of the plate, and then you turn your pan, and you get your plate, and you just rest it on the lip of the pan, and over it goes like that. This unmolding sometimes seems to confuse some people, so I'm gonna put this omelette back in again and show you again how you unmold it. See, there it is in the bottom of the pan. You finished there with your hand like that. Then you turn your hand over here and you put your right hand there with the thumb on top. If you had your thumb this way, you wouldn't be able to turn the pan upside down, but with your thumb this way, you can do what you want with the pan. And then there's your plate that's tilted, it's resting, the lip is resting on the pan, and then just over, and you've unmolded it. And I'll do that once more. Now there's your omelette there. You slowly turn-- quickly turn the pan. I'm doing it slowly. Thumb on top. Resting on the plate. Now you don't have to do any flipping or anything. You just simply turn the pan over. And there's your omelette. And I'm gonna unmold it onto this platter 'cause we're gonna use them again. Now, I'm gonna do one more omelette, so that you'll be sure to see how it's done. No, I think I'll do a dry run because we're gonna do several more. Your eggs are in your pan, you're shaking it like that. You'll do like that until it gets down into the edge. You turn, and turn the pan over. And now, the most important thing about making an omelette is to have a pan that you can make the omelette in. If you have a sticky old skillet, all the eggs stick to the bottom of the pan, and you can't get the omelette out. So you have to have a pan that won't stick. This is an American pan made out of very thick aluminum. It's not terribly heavy, but it's some kind of aluminum that doesn't stick and it's just plain aluminum, but it works wonderfully and quite a few of the professional omelette makers in the country use this pan. As you'll notice, what you want in an omelette pan is a handle that you can shake. And also, you have sloping sides. You see how they slope a little bit that way. And I have two more pans. I've got a French one and I have-- This is an American pan. And it has a no-sticking coating in there, so that it doesn't stick at all and it's exactly the right shape and the right size. This one is... When they give pan measures, you never know what they're talking about, whether it's bottom or top. This one is eight inches at the bottom and ten and a half at the top. This one here is seven and this one is about, is about the same size as the other one. Now this one, you don't have to do anything about seasoning or curing when you first get it, but with this one-- I'm getting so many pans here. If you have either an iron pan like this-- this is just a plain, ordinary iron one-- or an aluminum one, you have to season it first before you use it, which means to make sure that it's not going to stick. So all you do when you buy it, you bring it home and you heat it until it's just a little too warm for your hand, that's all, then you pour oil in it, and then you let it sit overnight, and then, just before you're going to make your omelette, you put salt in it-- and I don't know why salt prevents pans from sticking, but it does. And you put it, the salt in, you put it on heat and you rub it with paper towel. And then wipe out the salt. And there you are. And it's all ready to go. Now, after, if you saw when I was making these omelettes, I didn't wash the pan at all. All you need to do is to wipe it out with paper towels. If by any chance you have to wash it, you can, you should oil it again, just slightly warm. It has to have oil in it. I guess it has pores that drink up oil like people's skin. And because an omelette pan will last you the rest of your life, don't leave it around if you've got a lot of careless people in the kitchen, 'cause if you do, they'll just ruin the pan 'cause an omelette pan should be only used for omelettes. Otherwise, you run into sticking trouble. Now I'm gonna make some other omelettes. I'm gonna make an herb omelette and a ham omelette. Now when you make omelettes, you want to be sure because you don't want to have the eggs stick to the pan. You don't want to have any liquid or any liquid-producing ingredients in the eggs. It's just plain egg and anything that's dry, such as chopped herbs. I have here a mixture of parsley and chives. And if you want to make what's called an omelette aux fines herbes, that contains any fresh green herbs. Usually, it's chervil and tarragon and chives and parsley. Now, the eggs. You just... You can do either a two egg omelette or a three egg omelette. If you do more than that, because the omelette has to be cooked very quickly... It just doesn't cook quickly with more than three eggs. And if you want really the lovely tender quality of a French omelette, don't make more than two or three eggs. As you'll see, it only takes less than 30 seconds to make. So you can serve six or eight people in no time at all. Now it gets in a little pepper and a little salt. And... I'm gonna put the herbs right in now. Oh, about a tablespoon like that. And then you beat it. But you just want to beat it enough to get the yolks and the whites thoroughly mixed up. It's about 30 or 40 strokes, and don't do a sort of itsy-bitsy beating. Do a nice big one, like that to get it thoroughly mixed up. Then... the other very important thing is getting your butter very hot. You just need about that much butter. That's about a tablespoon. This pan holds the heat very well, so it's still hot. But if you're using... The first omelette you make on it, you'll probably have to wait about two or three minutes for it to heat up. But you can tell how hot it is by how the butter looks. We've gone into this before, but it's a very useful thing to know because you can tell exactly the heat of the pan by looking at the butter foam. As you see, it's still foaming. But it's when the foam begins to subside, then it's time to make the omelette, but you want to make-- just be absolutely sure the butter is very hot because if it isn't, it's gonna-- your omelette's gonna stick to the pan. And you don't want your butter to burn and brown because it tastes of burned butter, which isn't nice. Now see, the foam is beginning to subside now, but the butter hasn't turned brown, so in go the eggs. Now we shake the pan this way, stir with the back of the fork. And it's coagulated and just gets scraped down there. And you turn your... pan that way, thumb on top, lip resting on edge, and over, like that. I'm gonna do some gratined omelettes. So I'm gonna put all these omelettes on a platter. Like that, and we're gonna do a very nice trick with them at the end. And now, we're gonna do a ham omelette. This is to show you how you do a filled omelette. I'm gonna show you two methods of filling omelettes. In the one, in which the filling goes in just before the omelette is folded, and the other one, where you open the omelette up and put the filling in. So I've got the ham all chopped up. And when you do any kind of a filled omelette like this, you always want to have the filling warm. So you get that all ready. You can't-- Don't ever make the mistake of trying to make the filling in the pan, in the omelette pan, 'cause then you'll really run into trouble. So we're having... We're heating up this. It just needs to be heated a little bit. And I'm gonna put in about that much. There, that's all ready. Then I'm just gonna keep it warm over here. Then we'll make our omelette. I'll wipe out the pan. So you get a little bit of egg in, but it just comes out very easily when you just wipe it with your towel like that. There. Now... Heat up the butter. And that's about a tablespoon. I'm not giving proportions here because they aren't necessary. All you need to know is two to three eggs. I'll make one with three eggs this time. That'll be just to show you how that goes, it goes a little tiny bit slower. Now I've got to put in salt and pepper. Salt. That's about... Well, just about that much. I had a little bit too much in my hand. Now beat them up about 30 strokes, just until they're thoroughly mixed. You could, with a filled ham omelette, add herbs, too, if you wanted. Now, you see that nice thick pan, you could make an awful lot of omelettes and the pan doesn't cool off. Now look at our butter foam. Now the butter's just right. So in go the eggs. When it's just about coagulated on the bottom, you've got your hot ham there. It goes right there. And then, just roll it over like that. And there you are. Then, as you remember, changing hands like that again. So I'm doing this to remind you that you want to rest the lip of the plate. See, doesn't that look nice? And now, if by any chance you find that the omelette hasn't formed up as you like, you can just push it with the side of your hands. Of course, I'm not using a clean plate here because we're unmolding them on everything. We'll have to get a-- move these things out of the way. If you're going to unload on a platter, as you see, you'll have to do it first on a plate and then you just dip it onto the platter. Now we'll get our first omelette. And there she is. Now, I wanted to show you about chopping herbs. I skipped by that so quickly. The French method of chopping herbs is the French chef's method for parsley, you line up all your stems there, and then you have your parsley like this. And you remember when we did the onion soup, there's your old chop-chop. Just like that. Then if you find you want to chop them a little more, you hold your knife like that and do that way. Now here's a very nice French two-handled knife that's very nice for chopping. You just have your herbs there. And you just rock it back and forth. I don't know if you can get this in this country or not, but I think you probably can. There. Now I'm gonna set these aside and clean up a little bit, and then we're going to make a very nice tomato sauce which we're gonna put in our omelettes. Well, oh... This is gonna be a tomato sauce I think you'll enjoy knowing about, 'cause you can use it for so many things. And I'll leave my herbs. There. Now I'll go and get my tomatoes. There. Now, very often, in French recipes, when you run into the use of tomatoes, they say that you're to have peeled, seeded and juiced tomatoes. And that means that to peel them is the easiest way to do it. Is to drop the tomato for exactly ten seconds in boiling water, lift it out, then with a little sharp knife, cut out the stem end like that. And then the peel just comes off very easily. I think this is the easiest way of doing it. You can hold the tomato over a burner, but if you have a quite a few of them to do, this is much easier. There. And then to get the juice out of it, you cut it in half-- there's that little stem. (laughs): This is so slippery. There's the-- oh, I can't hold onto it at all. Well, anyway, the stem end is at one side, and you peel it that side. Then you hold it up and just squeeze like that. And all the juice comes out. See? And the seeds come out, too. And there's another one, you just squeeze it. And then the juice, I always think, is a dividend for the cook. There's not very much there, but I think the cook... should have it. It always tastes very good, and is refreshing. Then, you chop them. Or I'm gonna-- you see, we just chop them down that way. And then across, this makes a much neater chopping than doing that way. And we want them to look rather neat and nice. So, and here's some that I've already gotten chopped. This sauce is called a tomato fondue, which, a fondue means "melted." And we're gonna cook them-- I'm gonna cook this sauce in our usual nice, no-stickum pan, which I just like in the ordinary pan. It's gonna have some onions in it. Now, here again, proportions aren't necessary. Depends on how much onion you like and so forth. I'm gonna put in about, say about two tablespoons and they're supposed to cook down until they're soft. It'll take about, takes about two minutes. I'm not gonna cook them exactly that long, because everybody knows how to cook onions. You don't want them brown, you just want them to cook until they're soft and translucent. And then when they're... and then when they're soft and translucent, you put in your tomatoes. About-- with this tomato pulp, about five tomatoes of the size I showed you-- about like that-- makes a pound. And I'm gonna put in about a cup and a half. And one pound, or five tomatoes, makes about a cup and a half of pulp. And then, we're gonna put in some herbs and seasonings. If you happen to like garlic, you can put in some garlic at this point. There's a whole clove. You just put it in, you don't even need to peel it. I think probably not too much with the eggs. Then you put in herbs. This is a very nice blend called Italian seasoning that you can get at all the supermarkets. It's got, oh, thyme and... I can't remember what all in it, but it's a very nice Mediterranean taste. Then we'll want a little bit of salt. I'm gonna turn the heat down a little bit. Just enough salt to flavor it. And pepper. Now what we want to do is to get all the juice out of the tomatoes and a good way to do that is to begin by putting the cover on, and letting it sit for two or three minutes, depending on how high the heat is. If you're right there, and you can control it, then maybe it'll take two minutes, and if you are doing other things, you can turn the heat on rather low and keep coming back to it. But you must, always in cooking, just remember that you've got something going, so that you're not gonna burn anything up. When you are used to cooking, you can do things awfully fast. And it looks as though you were doing them carelessly, but you aren't. I think one of the most important things in French cooking is infinite care about details. So we will say-- see, just a bit of juice has come out there, and then you keep on cooking at it, fairly high heat, until the juice is evaporated. And now we're gonna fill the omelettes. Now, we've got a group of omelettes here, and for most fillings, you'd have either an herb... well, doesn't make a difference what you do. Depends on what you think would go with your sauce. So to open the omelettes up, you take a spoon and fork and just pull them apart, like that. And the nice thing about this dish is that you can do it ahead of time. Then, you put your sauce in there. I could've opened those up a little further, but it doesn't really make very much difference. Then we're gonna put a little herb on, and some sour cream. This is just ordinary sour cream. You can use thick, fresh cream if you like. But we're on a diet today, so I'm using sour cream that has less, that's less fattening. Then cheese. And we're gonna gratinate them in the oven. There. Now we've got the broiler on very hot. And in they go. Now, at this point, you must be very careful. You can do all of the rest of this ahead of time. You put them in the refrigerator and then gratinate them just at the last minute. But an egg cooks awfully quickly, as you saw. It coagulates at about-- Heavens, what is it? 160 degrees or something like that. And having the tomato sauce on and the cream slows down the cooking enough so that it can brown. And you have to just keep your eye on it. Now, this is, with the other omelettes that I made in the beginning, you have to really serve and eat them immediately, but with these omelettes here, you can do them ahead, and it makes an awful nice luncheon dish, which is what we're doing them for. No. It's not quite gratined. Always takes about a minute or two, but you've really just got to stand over it. It wants to just brown through and just heat through. That's one of the very important things in good cooking, is don't keep things hot. If you kept a plain omelette hot, it would just toughen into old leather. Now, that's almost ready there. No, I think you... I've made enough omelettes, so I'm sure that you can see how it was done. Just remember that you get your butter very, very hot in your pan, and notice the butter foam. And if you've got a heavy pan, be patient. Wait until the foam has come up and then begins to go down and the butter's almost ready-- keeping my eye on that omelette-- until the butter's almost ready to brown but hasn't browned. And then you've beaten up your eggs, and just enough until they're blended, and then in they go into the pan, and you're shaking the pan with this hand and stirring with a fork in that, and gradually tilting until it comes up to the edge. And then-- I mean, until it comes down to the edge, and then turn your pan, change it with thumb on top, and remember, in unmolding, rest the lip of the pan on your plate, and then just turn it over like that. There, I think those are done. Yes, they are. There. We're gonna serve these for a nice light luncheon. That makes a very attractive meal. I think we have our omelettes with tomato sauce and sour cream and cheese and a crisp salad of fresh spinach leaves and lettuce. French bread as always, 'cause we're being French. But this time we have butter. Usually, in French, at a French meal, you don't have butter. Because you have butter in the cooking, and that's one way of saving yourself, and we also have a lovely Liederkranz cheese. This is not a French cheese, of course, but most French people whom I've served it to over here think it's perfectly wonderful. And we have a traminer white wine which will go very well with the omelettes. (clears throat) Now, I think I'm just, I'm sure that if you practice that omelette, you can go right out in the next minute and make one. Because it's not difficult to do. The first one that you saw me do where I shook the pan is a great deal of fun to do and you can do that with some practice. I'd advise you to do the second one with a fork. And then when you feel you've really mastered that, then try the shaking one. It's a thing where you hold the pan at about a 45 degree angle and you go back and forth that way, and it's... (clears throat) the eggs hit the back of the pan and sort of shoot themselves back. It just takes a bit of practice. But it's great fun to do. Next time, we're gonna do scallops. Coquilles St. Jacques in a wonderful sauce parisienne. It's one of the most delicious dishes you can imagine. That's all for this time. This is Julia Child. Bon apptit and good omelettes.

ANNOUNCER

Julia Child is coauthor of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Accessories and furniture courtesy of Design Research Inc. This has been a WGBH videotape production. Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org The preceding program was made possible with the assistance of a grant from S&H Green Stamps.