"cybercat" > wrote in message ...
| Just saw her classic omelet segment. Regarding the browned/not browned
| debate, she says there are two kinds, regular and puffy. Regular is not
| browned and in fact looks barely cooked. This is the one where she beats
| plain eggs lightly, gets an 8-inch nonstick fry pan hot, puts in a
| tablespoon of butter, waits until it foams and dies down, then puts the 2-3
| eggs in and after 2 seconds or so shakes the pan in a circular motion to get
| more of the egg heated, then jerks the pan toward her until the eggs kind of
| roll onto themselves, then turns it over on a plate and sprinkles some
| parsley on.
|
| Filled rendition that looked the best was bacon bits and fried diced
| potatoes, added just after the circular shaking.
|
| The puffy omelet she made in one of those hinged things.

Wonderful nostalgia. My two early cooking inspirations were Julia and
Craig Claiborne. I was using Craig's method of shaking the pan and
stirring with a fork, then turning the hand upside down to turn out the
omelet and had just gotten pretty good at it (in NYTimes Cookbook, p. 305,
nicely illustrated with photos) when Julia's show came on and I tried to
switch to her shaking/jerking technique. I never got it, but the stovetop
and floor got a lot from my attempts.

As I recall Julia's omelet thing was very instrumental in the "acceptance" of
the nonstick pans in gourmet cooking circles of that day. People had just
started spending real money on expensive cookwares, snubbing such cheap
junk as the Teflon pans, when Julia was asked what she used and answered
that she preferred the light, inexpensive pans...or maybe she said this on the
show you referenced. Anyhow, great fun and Thanks For The Memories.

pavane