Spanish Omelette Primavera

Spanish Omelette Primavera
[For any linguists out there, this could sound a bit confusing, but I can’t think what the word for ‘Spring’ is in Spanish, so Italian will have to do!]

You can probably guess the ingredients – eggs, potatoes, onions, peas, green beans, that sort of Springy thing.

I had been down at the village school creating raised vegetable beds all morning which required much digging and lugging heavy things around. I then went to the supermarket as my cupboard was bare after the Easter holidays, and by the time I came home I felt sick and faint from hunger with a headache building. I had a house full of plumbers putting a new boiler in and I was dreading one of them accosting me with some problem or other before I’d had a chance to put any food down my throat. So I snuck in the back way, grabbed the first thing I could find out of the shopping bags (smoked mackerel pate), ripped open a packet of breadsticks which were lurking handily by the breadbin, and dug into it in the sort of fevered and uncouth manner that you see in films when people who haven’t eaten for weeks - having endured some horror or other - are finally presented with sustenance.

After I’d devoured half the tub and spluttered a mouthfully sort of apology to one of the plumbers who’d emerged from the cellar to check for intruders (having heard a bit of clattering about above), I suddenly remembered (brain reacting to food) that I was meant to be having omelette for lunch: I had some potatoes, dwarf green beans, peas and sugar snaps left over from the Sunday roast – add sliced onion and egg and you had a healthy, filling meal and got rid of the bowl of dog-ends cluttering up the place too. So, regarding my mackerel gobbling activity simply as a little hors d’oeuvre, I set to work:-

I took a half used red onion out of the fridge and sliced a chunk off it which I then chopped and put in a non-stick sauté pan (frying pan would be fine too) with about a teaspoon (= small slug) of olive oil. While they were softening I took the three roast potatoes and cut them into chunks, and also chopped up the sugar snaps and beans and chucked them in the pan (a large handful of each, to give you an idea), together with the leftover peas.


You could either slice some garlic at this point and add it with a knob of butter, or use garlic butter if you have some in the fridge (Lurpak do ready made garlic butter which I always keep by me for those lazy moments). Meanwhile I cracked three small eggs (or two large/medium) into a bowl and whisked them up with a fork. When the veg were warmed through and the onions soft (after a few minutes), I poured in the beaten eggs and added a good twist of salt and pepper from the grinders. I let it cook a little on the hob and then transferred it to the middle shelf in the Aga roasting oven to cook it from the top for a few minutes. (You could try putting it in a conventional oven, but if the oven’s not already on and heated, it is probably quickest and easiest just to cook it on the hob.)


When it was looking nice and golden, and gently firm but not too spongy, I took it out and put it on a plate with some rocket slopped over with good quality extra-virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Of course, dressing for the salad, if you choose to have that with it, is au choix. A French dressing would be just as nice. Also, entirely up to you whether you leave the omelette open, or choose to fold it over.


And when you’ve finished you’ll be bouncing around like a Spring lamb. Promise! (well, depending on how much wine you drink with it of course, in which case you might be feeling a bit snoozy!)