Cooking For Dating: Recipe Ideas to Impress Your Partner
One of popular themes throughout dating-related blogs will be using cooking as a tool for dating. If you check the leaders of a dating niche such as Eharmony, Okcupid or Loveawake you will find plenty of cookery singles event such as wine tasting, cooking classes and quiz nights.
They are fun because you have a topic of conversation with the other singles. Cooking can show your ability to express yourself artistically, and it can take your passion for your partner and transform it into the culinary realm. Or, if you, say, cook them for your co-workers in the office using a tabletop grill as a heat source, it might solidify their view that you are quite crazy.
I’ve always found that there is a simple, elegant dish which gets great reactions from friends and lovers alike – The omelet. But let me clarify, I’m not talking about that thing that you get at some diners and restaurants where they pour a ton of egg onto a flat-top grill, cook it until it looks like a 27-inch amoeba, rubbery enough to stop a bullet, then roll it into a burrito shape.
That’s an egg abomination. I’m talking about French-style pan omelets which are thicker and not cooked into oblivion. While it may be odd for a male to admit, my indoctrination into the omelet lover’s world came via Julia Child, and the copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking which I received back in high school.
Her instructions have stayed with me to this day, although she’d be horrified for a number of reasons if she saw the video below (editing in process, to be added later), and I’ve altered them based on my own preferences and style.
What do you need to cook an omelet? A seven-inch nonstick pan is ideal, although I have to admit that mine is 9-inches.
You will also want a plastic spatula so you don’t ruin your pan’s non-stick finish if you have one. That’s it for equipment, other than a heat source, which I will always recommend be gas, but you can manage most anything with a little ingenuity, as you will hopefully see when we finish the video edits.
After that, it’s all about the ingredients. Eggs of course, in a seven-inch pan, a 3-egg omelet is ideal, while you probably want 4 for a 9-inch pan to avoid it being too thin.
Then it is all about the fillings, which could be anything your heart desires quite honesty. Meats, vegetables, fruits I suppose but I’ve never used them personally (unless we get into the tomato: fruit or vegetable argument), and cheese always makes a great filler or topper. Use your ingenuity.
If this had bacon in it I would never leave the house.
So if you really want to know how to do this right, grab MTAoFC right now. You won’t regret it. Or, I found an excellent excerpt from the publisher here.
If you can live with a dumbed-down version, I’m your guy:
Whip 3 eggs rapidly, and for a slightly fluffy texture you can add cream, milk or water. I suggest you experiment with each over time to see what suits your tastes. Heat the pan and add your oil of choice, with my suggestions in order of preference being: clarified butter, non-stick spray, butter. I also suggest pre-sautéing the appropriate vegetables, i.e. onions, mushrooms, garlic etc. You can certainly use them in their raw state and just cook them slightly in the omelet, that’s your call.
Once the oil source is heated, you can either add the eggs with the fillers already mixed in, or mix them in the pan itself, either way. The eggs will immediately begin to set. Using your spatula, lift up the edges of the set eggs and tilt the pan, allowing the uncooked eggs on the top to spill under unto the surface of the pan. This is a simplified way handle the technique described by Child. The goal is to quickly work around the edges so all of the runny egg on top is transferred to the bottom and is cooked.
Once there is no more egg which naturally runs to the side, do a quick flip of the omelet to cook the current top side. If you have a good seven-inch pan and are practiced, you can use a jerking motion and flip the eggs in the pan. If you use a larger pan or are worried about the flip technique, you can use a plate to flip the eggs manually, and I show that in the video below at the X: XX time mark. It’s not a wonderful presentation technique, but it gets the job done, and I’m assuming if you’ve read this far that you’re not a master chef, as this all will be quite laughably over-simplified if you are.
Once it is flipped, throw any cheese onto the now-exposed, cooked side facing you. You can also add any fillers which you didn’t want to cook, i.e. tomato, nuts, fresh herbs, whatever tickles your fancy. Within 15 seconds, longer if you prefer your eggs more well-done, use your spatula to fold the circular egg along the diameter into a half-moon. If the half you see now looks cooked enough for you, tilt it onto the plate for serving. If not, give it a few more seconds, flip it to the other side and repeat, then serve. You’ll have to practice since each pan/heat source combo will cook at a different speed.
Garnish if you like, serve with your homemade home fries and cheddar cheese sauce, and a glass of juice or coffee, and viola, breakfast is served. After a few practices runs this will honestly be second nature to you, and the best thing is that omelets are great for any meal, so you always have an excuse to practice.
