The Egg Dish of Lunch
Porcini Omelette from the Underwood
EverydayReconstruction🍄 🧂facile20 min
A runny omelette, golden in butter, where sautéed porcini bring their damp forest perfume. Quick, rustic, and deeply comforting: the lunch of a man in a hurry to capture the light.
Why this dish? Monet loved mushrooms and the scent of the Norman underwoods; eggs were the mainstay of his half-past-eleven lunches before heading back out to paint. A buttery porcini omelette is exactly the kind of simple, fragrant dish that his Giverny kitchen served in autumn.
Sit down, I'll make this in a quarter of an hour because the eleven o'clock light won't wait for me. My cèpes, I want them firm, picked this morning, tossed in Norman butter until they sing in the pan. I beat my eggs simply, I pepper generously — no bland food at my table — and I leave the heart runny, definitely not dry, you see. An omelette is like a canvas: if you work it too much, you kill what was alive in it.
Ingredients
- •Fresh eggs from the henhouse — half a dozen (base)
- •Porcini mushrooms gathered in the woods — two good handfuls (fragrant garnish)
- •Farm butter from Normandy — a good knob (cooking and binding)
- •Parsley from the kitchen garden — a sprig (herb)
- •Salt, pepper from the mill — generously (seasoning)
How it was made : At Giverny, the omelette was made over a wood fire in a black iron pan. Mushrooms came from the surrounding woods or, failing that, dried morels and chanterelles hung in the kitchen for winter. They relied on eggs from the henhouse, more orange and richer than today's.