Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Vegetable omelettes, and thoughts on culinary failures

My friend Alice asked me recently whether I recorded cooking disasters on this blog. I guess the short answer is no, but many of the recipes that appear here are the result of trial and error. Tonight's dinner was a case in point.

I decided to make wok-fried Asian vegetable omelettes, based on a recipe card kindly provided by Sydney Markets. As usual, I freelanced a bit, based on which ingredients seemed good, fresh and local. So ... I stir-fried some snow peas, chestnut mushrooms, garlic and home-grown tomatoes in a little peanut oil, then threw in a heap of fresh bean sprouts, poured four beaten eggs over the top, and cooked slowly. It wasn't entirely successful! There were too many bean sprouts and the tomatoes were quite juicy, so the whole mixture was too damp for the eggs to set properly. Therefore it turned into more of a giant vegetable-y scrambled eggs dish than an omelette. It tasted fine and was undoubtedly nutritious, but was very unphotogenic. Next time I'll cut down on the quantity of sprouts, and maybe give the tomatoes a miss too.

Still, some would say all this experimentation is a sign I'm becoming a better cook. One of my favourite food blogs, Cheap Healthy Good, had a fun article yesterday detailing the top ten signs you're becoming a better cook. Enjoy ;-)

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