Category: Sustainability

Lockdown Omelette: a vague recipe

My mother’s Crap Pie is the stuff of legend. In fact, it’s so legendary that I’ve started to doubt whether it actually existed.

The idea was that, since small children leave a lot of their food, it would be economical – these days, perhaps, zero waste – to save the scraps and do something with them. Thus the scraps were gathered and when sufficient were to hand – so the legend goes – they were tipped into a dish, coated with a pie crust and served up to those who hadn’t deigned to finish them first time round.

Photo by Hello I’m Nik on Unsplash

The evidence for this phenomenon is weak: composite, procedural memories of pies and pie dishes on the table at home; a vague sense that mince and baked beans go really well together; and occasional, snarky mentions during Christmas dinner.

The Lockdown Omelette arose out of some unusually large vegetables and a new egg buying procedure, during the first lockdown in 2020. We and a neighbour had found catering suppliers who only offered eggs in very large trays. We’d also scored some truly magnificent veg boxes diverted from closed restaurants, from New Covent Garden Market. The boxes were incredible – the veg was perfect, and I’ve never seen onions that big – but each selection was huge and I struggled to use them up. I created the Lockdown Omelette.

Photo by Erol Ahmed on Unsplash

It’s great for me, since I’m dreadful at following recipes and don’t like making anything apart from tea the same way twice, so the only consistent ingredient is the eggs.

1. Fry up your veg in a sauté pan. I usually start with onions and cook them slowly, with the lid on, and if I’m using peppers I cook them at the same time for sweetness. Then I add other veg.

2. While that’s happening, beat six or more eggs. Sometimes I add stuff like harissa to the eggs. Cream is also a nice touch.

3. Add the eggs and stir in a vague and unfocussed way to ensure relatively even distribution.

4. Allow to cook on a low heat, until it looks like the bottom half has solidified sufficiently. While this is happening, grate some cheese (optional: sometimes it really isn’t a cheese day) and switch on the grill.

5. Pop the pan under the grill (I’ve left it until now to tell you a pan with a plastic handle isn’t a good plan).

6. When it’s looking sort-of ungooey on top, take the pan out and sprinkle the cheese on top.

7. Return the pan to the grill and wait until the cheese reaches your preferred meltiness.

Lockdown Omelette is probably nice with things like pepperoni, ham and chorizo but I don’t eat those. Maybe it should be called a tortilla, but isn’t that to do with potatoes? Ask a serious chef; I don’t know stuff like that.

Some Nice Combinations

I’m not very good at remembering what I put in, but I think these were quite good.

  • Onions, capers, olives and tomatoes.
  • Onions, sweet red pepper, grated courgette, cheese.
  • Onions, capers, peas and courgettes (The Wife made this one).
  • Onions, harissa, red and yellow peppers, spinach.

Actually, these all have onions. Maybe I should have specified onions more specifically above. Created your own? I’d love to hear about your Nice Combinations.

Having a Brew

Today is an in between day. Drizzling, but half-heartedly. Not actually cold, but you’ll need a coat. It isn’t the kind of weather that requires the kind of dark, thick, muscular brew that gets an army marching, but nor is it a pale Earl Grey day. Brew Tea’s 1940s-style packaging suggests marching tea, but then hints at more complexity, with florid descriptions of flavour and even suggestions for food pairings. Intriguing.

Brew Tea package

The tea arrives stylishly in a slogan-decorated box which, when dismantled, yields a lovely stripy present: gift wrapped Assam and English Breakfast. It’s a lovely idea for an actual gift, but perhaps more packaging than I’d like for our standard consumption, which could probably keep said army hydrated, if not necessarily marching.

There were two cards inside the box: a recycling guide and a ‘What to do while you brew’ card, with a game on it. The recycling guide is handy: it says that though the bag is compostable, it can ‘take a while to compost at home’. I’ve used compostable plastic-look packaging before – and found that it wasn’t. The Wife ended up having to fish it out of the compost bin while trying not to get a handful of worms or slimy peelings. I had an incident with a slug.

I brew the English Breakfast in my favourite teapot. The leaves obligingly expand on application of the water and the smell is just what we’re looking for – somewhere between warm oven and autumn walk. I pour it out – mine with oat milk, and The Wife’s with standard full-fat dairy. It looks a bit pale to me, maybe even a bit watery. Did I put enough leaves in the pot? Never mind; we can always brew a stronger one later. Here goes.

‘Quite a sturdy colour,’ The Wife says, on receiving her cup (a bone china number with a Quentin Blake illustration). There’s a pause while she spills some and dabs at her jeans. ‘Quite a welcoming tea smell,’ she continues. ‘Slightly overmilked’ (she can do her second cup herself, then). I’m quite impressed with mine. It doesn’t look as strong as our usual stuff, but it’s actually nicely malty, quite flavourful and has a pleasant astringency.

The Wife sips again. ‘Very subtle taste.’ Another sip, more dabbing, a quick trip into the kitchen for a cloth. ‘It’s the kind of tea you can drink gallons of without feeling over tea’d.’ She heads off to assemble her second cup, avoiding ‘overmilking’. ‘It’s one of those teas you feel like if you have a quick cuppa, you’ve had some light refreshment – rather than a strong brew where you feel like you need a biscuit with it.’

My father is quite specific on the subject of tea and biscuits, opining that a ‘naked drink’ is a horror on a par with ‘insubstantial marmalade’ (the stuff with thin peel, he explains, that you get in environmental time bomb containers, in hotels). He reliably produces Tunnock’s Teacakes, Abernethy biscuits or similar on all tea occasions.

On that note, I draw The Wife’s attention to the box, which suggests pairing this drink with food. It tells us that ‘A really good milk chocolate brings out the sweeter caramel notes.’ I rifle through the cupboards. The only milk chocolate I can find is St Petersburg souvenir chocolate, a fetching purple box of pieces individually wrapped in jolly illustrations of the city. We have to abandon this quite quickly, since the chocolate had, in The Wife’s words, ‘had its chips’ and we had perhaps carelessly allowed it to melt and reform on our journey home from the friend who supplied it. ‘Was there really no other chocolate in the cupboard?’ she says, with a furrowed brow. She finishes her cup and heads to the shops.