The Mid-Atlantic Innkeepers Convention was held this year at Natural Bridge, Virginia. It’s an absolutely beautiful place near Roanoke, but remote enough so that its beauty is unspoiled by the modern world (except that there’s absolutely no cell phone service and that’s too unspoiled for me).

Although I’d given my omelet program to this group of innkeepers and bed and breakfast operators several years ago, I was asked to return because it had been so popular then, plus my program had changed over the years and I had new things to offer.

These folks are in the hospitality business so there’s a “niceness” about them that’s built-in. I learned to love them all. They had me in their face through two meal events yet they remained ever so gracious. Must be in the DNA.

My breakfast program had 125 of them cooking their own omelets. I set up 10 tabletop burners with pans. The resort/hotel furnished ham, cheese, sautéed fresh mushrooms, red and green bell peppers, the butter and the pre-beaten eggs which were spread in bowls across the row of tables that had the burners on them. After I gave my demonstration of the 40-second omelet technique, everyone was invited to help themselves to a frypan and the ingredient wherewithal for them to prepare their own breakfasts. And they did. Most took under 60-seconds. And I suppose that’s because they’re predisposed to cooking eggs simply because “breakfast” is a word in the title of their profession!

My lunchtime program was given to the entire 300 convention registrants. I briefly went over the 40-second technique then burst into my repertoire of omelet filling and technique possibilities that took a full 35-minutes to cover.

Best of all, when I was walking around the booths on the convention floor I came upon the Turkish Towel Company of Peabody, Mass. In addition to an array of towels they had to sell to the innkeepers, they had a rack of boring white bathrobes PLUS one so conspicuous it really caught my eye. A thick terrycloth robe in a quirky leopard skin pattern. I paused to consider my masculinity confidence should I be caught actually wearing this leopard skin robe, but then the salesperson whipped out and showed me a picture of Jack Nicholson wearing it. I bought the robe.

…Because at WGN TV in Chicago last Wednesday I made an omelet in, like, 32-seconds flat! And that included taking the time to fill it with cheese and mushrooms and peppers and ham. Plus, because WGN airs to cable networks all across the country, a whole population saw the feat.I was cooking on a segment of the noon news called “Lunch Break” with the host, Deena. She was so pretty I wonder if anyone cared about my omelet. Nevertheless, she put a timer to me to keep me and my “40-secound omelet” honest and bingo, I performed like on steroids.Then it was Deena’s turn. She agreed to try her hand at an omelet following my technique. Off she went. Though she wasn’t timed, she made a terrific omelet in what seemed to me like lightning time. She would have done even better had she not been so afraid of turning the pan upside down and letting the finished omelet fall onto the plate bottoms-up. The reason for doing that is because the prettiest part of the omelet is the underside. That’s because the cook doesn’t mess with it during the cooking process.

Best of all, we talked about the goodness of eggs, their highest quality protein, their versatility, their economy and, of course, their speed. Thanks, Deena. They even posted my omelet recipe! Check it out: http://wgntv.trb.com/news/local/noonnews/wgntv-011608lunchbreak,0,5185735.story

…sixty four of them in a contest to determine the tallest, lightest, tastiest and most creative one of all, and I was asked to be one of 5 judges to do the determining. It was at the Pennsylvania Farm Show, that state’s equivalent of a State Fair all under one huge roof. I was there earlier this month to do my omelet demonstrations. It seemed appropriate for the “incredible egg man” to get involved in the contest, so I did. I’m not sure I’ll do it again. The sugar load was more than any one person can handle.All of the judges (two men and three women) were involved in Pennsylvania agriculture. Except for myself and the woman sitting next to me at the event, none of the judges had ever baked an angel food cake. Happily, we’d all eaten them. That day I would eat enough angel food cake to last me forever.Of the 64 entries, only 6 cakes were plain (without icing or other embellishment). Many of the other cakes seemed to be all about the decoration. And many were definitely not your everyday cake, creatively shaped into hearts (3 of them), used as a planter with flowers coming out of the cake center (3 of them) or baby orchids on top (1 of them). Many were cut in half horizontally and iced like a regular cake in 2 layers. Some were 3 layers tall. And one was baked in a flat pan, then rolled with jam like a jelly roll. Many, many others were awash in Marshmallow Fluff.One of the cakes had what looked like an “explosion” of chocolate leaves bursting out of the center hole in the cake. One was marbled on the inside with pink and turquoise food coloring and iced in pink, and one of them was topped with pineapple and a Hawaiian lei! There were some that looked like wedding cakes and one overwhelmed by lemon curd.But, wait a minute. All of them were definitely angel food cakes and that’s just plain delicious going in.Each judge initially sampled 13 cakes and selected the top 5 from their batch. We were instructed to use a clean fork for each cake so as not to have flavor residue from the previous slice. We were also encouraged to drink water between each slice for the same reason. Then, all 5 judges sampled all of the 5 cakes each judge had selected. That’s 25 cakes to sample after just having sampled 13 of them. In all, each judge sampled 38 cakes! Each judge selected the top 5 from the 25 they tasted, then we consulted to decide the 3 winners.Believe it or not, selecting the winners was easy. Believe it or not, all of the judges had the same 5 cakes on their list of finalists!!! What’re the odds??? We selected the winners by the placing of the finalists’ cakes on our respective lists.Incredible!

Ingredients

• 4 eggs, separated
• 6 slices Canadian bacon, sliced in half
• 2 pieces buttered toast
• ½-cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 1 cup shredded fresh spinach leaves
• 1 teaspoon dried mustard
• Butter for greasing bowls
• ¼ teaspoon cream of tarter

To prepare

• Preheat oven to 400 F.
• Butter two round-bottom cereal or soup bowls.
• Press buttered toast into the bottom of the bowls.
• Stand the six half-slices of Canadian bacon around the sides of the bowls to form a scalloped edge.
• Add half of the cheese and half of the spinach into each bowl.
• Separate eggs. Place two yolks each into two new bowls.
• Beat the egg whites until foamy. Add cream of tartar and mustard. Beat until stiff.
• Spoon the egg whites into the bowls with the toast and fillings, piling them high and covering the stuff already in there.
• Spoon out an indentation hole on top to hold the egg yolks. Slide two yolks into each indentation.
• Bake for 20-25-minutes.

  

TO SERVE: Loosen the ingredients from the bowl. Carefully slide the whole thing out of the bowl and onto a plate. The thing may stay in tact and look like a bowl with the bacon being the sides. Or, the bacon may fall but that’s okay because then the bacon forms like flower petals.

Serve immediately.

In the food press business, Tina Ujlaki, the Food Editor of Food & Wine magazine, is more than a colleague and a contact. She’s my good friend. From our first meeting at a luncheon I held for magazine food editors years ago at a then-new restaurant called Vong (named for its founder, Super-Chef Jean-George Vongerichten), we knew our chemistry was terrific. There aren’t many people I’d rather sit down to a fine lunch with than Tina, and that’s what we did recently.

Because Tina knows that I keep track of all of the eggs that appear in all of the recipes in her magazine – which, by the way, I do with 32 national women’s and culinary publications each month – we talked about favorite egg dishes. Tina mentioned that her readers often respond to recipes she publishes as favorites, and Tina herself has her own favorites. When it comes to eggs, here are the egg recipes from Food & Wine magazine that proved to be favorites of both Tina’s and her readers:
Baked Eggs with Chorizo and Potatoes
Double-Baked Three-Cheese Soufflés
Le Cirque’s Crème Brûlée
Spicy Indian-Style Scrambled Eggs
Shirred Eggs with Sorrel

Lunch was at BLT Market, the newest pricy Bistro from Chef Laurent Tourondel (that’s the “BLT” part of the name). The just-opened restaurant specializes in dishes made exclusively from fresh ingredients indigenous to the NY/NJ/Conn. area, though we figured the truffles on our risotto weren’t too local.