Baked Vegetable Omelet

On Friday I had a Baked Vegetable Omelet. Since I had the oven going it seemed like a good idea to bake lunch, instead of using the stove top.

It's one of those things I couldn't even imagine doing before having my kitchen redone/renovated. I had spent the previous year without a functioning oven. Now, thank Gd, I have two turbo ovens, one for meat and the other parve, in which I can bake more than one thing at a time. Having two ovens makes a kosher kitchen very easy to cook in. We hardly eat anything dairy, so the second oven has remained parve, meaning neither meat nor dairy. I make lots of side dishes, fish, cakes and challot in it.

While vegetables for Shabbat were baking in the oven I took a smaller oven pan, covered it with baking paper, and then cut onion, squash, pumpkin, cabbage, tomato and two eggs. I topped it with a bit of vegetable oil, and then into the oven it went. Once I could see that the eggs looked cooked, I checked the vegetables with a fork, to see if they were soft. I don't pretime my cooking, since there are too many variables.

My lunch, Baked Vegetable Omelet, was delicious, and the pan didn't even get dirty.

Anything Everything Omelets

When I was growing up, we weren't all that creative with our omelets. About the only things I remember being added were onions, tomatoes and cheese. And rarely were they all in the same omelet.

I have an omelet almost every day for breakfast, and my omelet making is getting more and more creative. I'm always trying different vegetables, but davka cheese isn't included. There's a simple reason for the lack of cheese. It's fatty, processed and unnecessary. I get sufficient protein from my two eggs, which are much healthier.

As you may know from previous posts, I've been adding fresh ginger to my omelets recently. Here are some of my latest.

Celery, tomato, onion, garlic, ginger...

Tomato, squash, onion, garlic and ginger.

Onion and carrots. I wasn't home.

Pepper Mushroom Omelet

Most every vegetable can be added to an omelet. In this omelet, I had:

• onion
• orange pepper
• garlic
• ginger

As usual I sauteed the vegetables with some oil in a covered frying pan, and when they were almost fully cooked I added my eggs. And when the eggs were almost hard, I turned off the flame. That way they finish on their own "steam." Yes, literally.

Add your usual/favorite seasonings and enjoy!

Fresh Ginger in a "Spanish Omelet"

Way back when, in the days when I was a student in Stern College, my parents gave me a relatively generous food budget to buy all of my meals in the cafeteria with instructions not to skimp. The truth is that I'm one of those people who must eat or I don't function.

I had a breakfast routine. On an ordinary day, I would order two eggs sunnyside up. But if I was having a test that day/morning, I'd have a special breakfast, a Spanish Omelet. Recently I've been making a rather eccentric version of it. Besides the standard, onion, tomato, garlic and eggs, I add some fresh ginger.

cut and cooked in a bit of oil, covered pan

I add the eggs after the vegetables begin to cook.

I season with some coarse salt, coarse pepper and some tumeric.

Baked Onion Omelet and the Story Of Course

The other day in the middle of cooking I realized that the time had come to change gas canisters.  In Israel most of us  have individual arrangements with gas companies.  The gas company hooks up each home to a pair (or more if water and heating are done by gas) of canisters aka "balloons."  You're supposed to keep only one open at a time and then close it when it's empty, open the waiting full one and quickly call the gas company to order a new one. 

Of course there are periodic foul-ups, usually planned by "Murphy's Law," just when there's about to be a holiday and the gas can't be ordered.  It has happened to me that either we forgot to order or somehow both were open and then empty out simultaneously.  When that happens I have to get immediate help from neighbors.

Well this time when I went to change balloons, yes, the canisters, I noticed that the "full" one seemed a bit on the light or empty side.  I also smelled gas and discovered that the nob attaching it wasn't fully closed.  I closed it and then called the gas company to order more gas and complain.  I was told that I'd have to wait as few days, and he'd send an inspector to check that all the connections were good.

But in the meantime I was afraid that I'd run out of gas, so any cooking that could be done in the oven was done in the oven, including my morning eggs.

I placed a sheet of parchment paper for baking on our handleless frying pan.  As you can see above, I put the cut onion and eggs on it and dripped a bit of oil to mimic "frying."

I placed the frying pan in the oven on high with the fan going to speed things up.  It almost looks "fried."  Doesn't it?  And of course I added the usual seasonings.

My Baked Onion Omelet really tasted good!

PS the gas canister did arrive on the day promised, and so far the "almost empty canister" is still cooking...