Cheese and mushroom omelette

Eggs are a superfood

Eggs are the real, original superfood. Forget all the kale, quinoa and blueberries. Eggs are neatly packaged protein bombs, providing good fat, rich in vitamins and iron. In a(n egg)shell, they provide all the nutritional elements we need.

The cholesterol myth has been debunked for good and hopefully we all now know that eggs actually protect your heart and help keep the ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol levels in check.

Even people with heart condition can happily eat them every day and go to work on one, or two.

No baking without eggs

Eggs are an absolutely elementary ingredients in baking. You can make a gorgeous cake without fat, even without flour, but only a limited range of bakes are eggless.

All the vegan hacks in the world won’t ever replace pale and fluffy yolks beaten with sugar or snowy meringues of whisked whites.

How on earth do they make custard? I dread to even imagine the resulting concoction, which as I understand is basically a cooked slurry of plant-based ‘milk’ and corn flour.

Outside the baking world, eggs feed us happily for lunch, even dinner, but first of all for breakfast. Scrambled or fried, poached or soft boiled with soldiers, and only a weird person would order a full English without eggs.

I must admit I usually eat them boringly scrambled for breakfast because it’s super quick, good for weight watching and keeps me going until lunch.

But if I have more time in the morning, I’ll take some more care preparing them and throw in a few things because they are so, so versatile!

So many omelette varieties!

An omelette is such a lovely dish and can take on such different forms that it’s easy to forget it’s just fried egg.

So many varieties: spinach omelette, ham and cheese omelette, just cheese, salami or chorizo, bacon or simply herbs. If you add some chopped, sweated peppers and leftover cooked potatoes, you’ll have a tortilla. If you add tomatoes, aubergines and perhaps even leftover pasta, hey presto – una frittata.

There is also a posh variety that my grandmother used to make for me: a soufflé omelette. It calls for separated eggs, whites beaten stiff and yolks gently folded into them.

Grandma would fry it in butter on both sides, like a pancake, and served it to me with honey or jam. I now realise it was quite similar to American breakfast pancakes but back then, like Paddington bear, I’d eat anything that was served with honey or jam.

How to make a good omelette

Making an omelette is really simple as long as you work reasonably quickly.

Whatever the add-ons to it, there’s actually no point cooking them separately and using up extra pans. The mushroom and cheese is the nicest cooked in one frying pan, the mushroom flavour absorbed into eggs.

Eggs should be beaten quite well, until foamy. It’s also good to add the salt to them a little bit in advance in order to soften the eggs and season them more evenly.

Never, ever add milk or cream to eggs for either omelette or scrambled: it’s an ignorant practice that does not make them creamier but curdled. You can add a teaspoon of water instead, or a few tiny dots of cold butter, to make them fluffier. That applies to both scrammies and an omelette.

Cheese and mushroom one-pan omelette

And then you need to get a not too large frying pan nice and hot and add the mushrooms in with half the amount of required butter.

Fry them until crisp and scorched, while you have all the other ingredients at hand: beaten eggs, a few snips of spring onion or chives, and grated cheese.

The heat needs to be medium; the remaining butter needs to foam up and that’s when the eggs go in. Briskly add the chives and cheese, then turn your full attention to the omelette.

A push with a spatula towards the centre here and there, in order to make the still-liquid egg run off underneath, and then a fold: in half or any old way. A quarter of a minute later, it’s ready.

Don’t hesitate to sprinkle any remaining cheese straight into the pan, to form tiny lacy puddles clinging to the omelette.

I usually have mine with ketchup but it’s optional. What isn’t though, is that an omelette is always, ever, a one-person dish. Share everything else with your near and dear, but an omelette is just for one.

More omelette recipes

The one mentioned above, soufflé omelette with Parmesan is like a fluffy, savoury meringue that you can eat for breakfast. Another way to have your eggs in the morning!

A delicate, fluffy omelette with fresh spinach leaves and grated Cheddar cheese is a perfect lunch or supper for one. And who cares that it won't fold perfectly?

More savoury breakfast recipes

Perfectly fried mushrooms to go with your eggs or bacon in the morning – what a good idea.

Porridge doesn’t have to be sweet: here’s savoury porridge with mixed seed topping and red pepper slices.

Instead of a toast, a breakfast quesadilla stuffed with bacon, mushrooms and avocado. What a way to start the day!