Goat’s cheese & herb omelette with guacamole salsa
When it comes to food, I’m a simple soul – give me an omelette made with good eggs, a salad, and glass of wine and I’m absolutely content. These particular omelettes have become one of our favourite quick meals, as they taste so very delicious, and yet they’re ever-so easy to make. The salsa is a bit like a deconstructed guacamole, but rather than mashing the avocado, it’s very finely diced and mixed with the other ingredients. It’s so colourful and cheery-looking, and with eggs as golden as the ones in the photo (from our friendly neighbourhood hens!) it looks beautiful sprinkled over the top. I must admit, that I don’t usually measure the ingredients for the salsa; I tend to just add what seems about right, then taste it and adjust the flavour as I go. The same goes with the omelette, so please don’t feel as though you have to stick to hard and fast rules for this.
Serves 2
6 eggs
2 tablespoons finely chopped chives
1 tablespoon finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
A small nugget of butter (about 15g), for cooking
80 – 100 g goat’s cheese marinated in olive oil and herbs
tiny coriander or mint leaves, to garnish
Guacamole salsa:
1 large ripe red tomato
¼ small red onion, very finely diced
¼ – ½ small red chilli, very finely chopped
½ – 1 teaspoon sea salt, or more to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 teaspoons freshly-squeezed lime juice
3 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
1 just-ripe avocado
2 teaspoons finely slivered coriander leaves (mint works well too)
Firstly, prepare the guacamole salsa. To do this, halve the tomato crosswise, and either gently squeeze each half to force out the seeds, or hook them out with your fingers or a narrow teaspoon, then discard them. Cut each half in two, and sit these pieces, flesh-side down, on a couple of sheets of paper towel, and leave them to drain for 5 – 10 minutes (or longer if you like). What you’re doing by draining the tomatoes is removing some of their moisture, which can make the salsa a bit too wet.
In the meantime, put the diced onion, chilli, salt, pepper, lime juice and olive oil into a small bowl and mix them all together. Just before you start to make the omelettes, cut the tomato pieces into small chunks, a similar size to the onion, and add them to the mixture. Now halve the avocado, remove the stone and skin, then cut the flesh into tiny chunks too. Gently stir them into the tomato mixture along with the slivered coriander leaves. Taste the salsa, and adjust the flavour to suit you, then set the bowl aside.
Sit a small non-stick frying pan over high heat (I use a 24cm pan which I just keep for cooking omelettes – I never wash it as such, I just wipe it out and rinse it under warm water. It’s built up a terrific non-stick patina over the years, and omelettes just slip out of it. One of the few taboos in my kitchen is to use this pan for anything else!). While the pan is heating, quickly break three of the eggs into a bowl – I usually break each one into a cup first, then tip it into the bowl, just in case I get a bad egg. Add half the herbs, and salt and pepper to taste, then use a fork to mix everything together. I don’t beat the eggs all that much, just enough to break them up and thoroughly mix in the herbs.
Your pan should be nice and hot by now, so add half the butter, and swizzle it about to coat the base and sides. Tip in the egg mixture and cook it, swirling the mixture around constantly with the back of a fork so that you’re scooping up the cooked bits and allowing the more liquid mixture to fill the gaps and run underneath. Stop stirring once the omelette is well on the way to being set (it will still be a little wet in patches on top), crush half the goat’s cheese in your fingers and dot it over the surface. Leave it for a moment, so the cheese starts to soften, then slide the omelette out onto a warm plate. The whole process should be all over in less than a minute. Scatter some of the salsa over the top, then finish off with a sprinkle of tiny coriander leaves. Make another omelette in the same way with the remaining ingredients. Serve them immediately, and scoop any remaining salsa into a little dish to go alongside.