FrankenOmelette

This is not your traditional omelette. It's uglier, it's cooked in the wrong pan, it requires more hardware and the only other time I've seen it made even remotely like this was in Africa. And then, the man beat the egg whites frothy with only the giant muscles of his arm! And yet, despite all of those caveats, this is the way I like to make omelettes because they are incredibly filling and because I like fluffy things.

Start off with a pan and oil. And, in this case, "Psych". (Why don't they put more episodes on? The five most recent just isn't doing it for me. Same thing for "Bones" and all the other shows I'm really not dedicated enough to watch on their own, but will happily stream while cooking. C'mon, Hulu! Target your audience!)

First: veg. Find whatever veg you've got on hand and brown it in a pan with oil (note my awesome new oil drizzler, which is much easier than manhandling an oily plastic bottle over an open flame). A skillet's a good idea for this, but I think I took this series of pictures while stubbornly refusing to do a mountain of dishes just offscreen, so like I said: wrong pan, wrong everything. Regardless! Here, I am sauteeing onions and half a diced bell pepper. (I was actually reusing onions abandoned from a misread recipe, so diced isn't the optimal condition for omelette onions -- I prefer to just slice them for omelettes, because the longer strips help bind a pretty loose concoction together.) Once cooked, tip pan so oil runs to one side and finished veg drain on the other.

While the veg is chilling, grate some cheese. I like swiss. I also like that grating never grates swiss cheese perfectly, so you get to nibble on all the remaining crubs. Nom nom nom.

On the far right, Orangina. If you've never tried Orangina, I highly recommend it. If you haven't and never will, then have you ever tried diluted orange juice? Sounds weird, I know, and I hated it all growing up; I'd accidentally grab my dad's glass and then go into choking histrionics, but maybe my ability to take in enormous sugary substances is coming to an end, because I can find orange juice really overpowering these days. Often, I'll just throw a couple of ice cubes in a glass, fill it half with orange juice, then the rest of the way with water. Yes, I'm turning into my parents, thank you.

Separate eggs. Whip whites into a frenzy, just to that point where they stay pointy when you pull the whisk out. Add pepper, salt, a good dash of fines herbes and the egg yolks again. Start folding (don't go nuts, or you'll pop all the air bubbles the egg whites just got). Now fold the veg and MOST of the cheese in, but hold a little bit of cheese back for later.

Hopefully enough oil stayed in the pan for you to give it a good swirl round the base before putting the egg mixture in. This is where there's a real difference between the conventional, prettier omelette and the gorgeous mess I'm making here: the genuine omelette article basically lays down a sort of egg crepe, waits for it to be mostly cooked, then loads it up with filling. So most of the time, you're just cooking a layer of egg, which is nice and light and crisps up at the edge and is pretty hard to scorch.

By comparison, this is totally easy to scorch. I have possibly just gotten used to the slightly charcoaly taste of this style of omelette, but hey. If you know you like that more ladylike omelette, there are plenty of recipes out there. This one, in my book, uses less ingredients and fills you up faster. So there will be ripping and scorching and if you're serving it to someone who doesn't love you unconditionally you might want to think again, but otherwise, it's delicious.

Sprinkle the rest of the grated cheese across the surface of the omelette. Keep running a silicone spatula round the edge of the omelette, to keep it from sticking to the pan. When the bubbles popping in the omelette's centre don't fill in as quickly, and when the sides of the omelette seem pretty firm, fold the omelette in half.

Yep, it'll get squishy and oozy and likely tear. Patch it up as much as you can, then press the entire thing into a D shape. For the next few minutes, flip the D-shaped packet from side to side, to even out the cooking without burning everything.

And there you go, you're done! I've tarted up this photo a fair bit, what with the sun and the flowers, and that red splotch you see is sundried tomato marinade (MILES better than ketchup, and very little goes a long way), but this is a delicious thing to eat when you've missed breakfast and you're just not in the mood for lunch but you want something filling. This is filling. And really, really good.