Tried & Tasted #1

Week: ONE, Recipe: Coconut and turmeric omelette feast, By: Ottolenghi.

Every time pancake day comes around, it catches me by surprise. Like most people (I imagine), it’s not something I plan for or get particularly excited by, but when it comes, I love the novelty of eating and making pancakes for dinner.

This year, I was away for pancake day and vowed to recreate it when I returned. But after a week of mass catered conference meals and plane food, I was craving something fresher.

That’s when I found Ottolenghi’s recipe for my inaugural Tried & Tasted dish. In his 2020 book, Flavour, the dish is called a ‘coconut and turmeric omelette feast’, but in a previous Guardian article it’s featured among other global variations on the humble pancake.

Find the recipe on p.145 of FLAVOUR or for free at The Guardian link above.

Omelettes

As Ottolenghi writes in the recipe’s intro, they are much thinner than your average omelette - more like crepes. While he says they should be eaten like bánh xèo (Vietnamese pancakes), mine didn’t turn out quite thin enough for that. Luckily, the herb salad was just as delicious eaten on the side as it would’ve been stuffed within the omelette/pancake.

The recipe warns that you should use a coconut milk with a high percentage of coconut extract – 70% or more. This had me rifling through Morrisons’ shelves and the highest I could find was 56%. As I was halving the recipe, I figured if I scooped up most of the coconut cream that collects at the top can with just a splash of the coconut water to make 200ml, it would have the same effect. This seemed to work, but if you’re using the whole can I’d recommend getting the 70% coconut milk (and please tell me where you find it!) to avoid the batter being too watery.

As for the remaining omelette ingredients, I was pretty generous with my ginger and chilli quantities, which countered the sweet coconut milk nicely without overpowering the turmeric.

Grapefruit dipping sauce

The splash of colour from the grapefruit dipping sauce on the plate makes it so appealing, and the taste was just as vibrant. Not overly zingy or too sharp as you might expect.

I didn’t have any mirin so I made a rather strange concoction of white wine and brown sugar (didn’t have any caster sugar either), but it surprised me and worked a treat!

Salad

I’ve never been to Vietnam, but I absolutely love the way Vietnamese cuisine treats herbs as much more than a garnish and puts them front and centre in a salad –especially when paired with more subtle flavours like radishes and beansprouts (which are really only there for their texture). On top of the mint, coriander, spring onions, radishes and beansprouts, I added a handful of chopped peanuts for a bit of crunch, alongside some extra fried ginger because who needs half a thumb of it hanging around in the fruit bowl?

Triumph or tribulation?

I absolutely love the flavours in this recipe and will definitely be making the grapefruit dipping sauce again to pair with coconut/ egg dishes. Eating the omelettes as pancakes also added the fun and ritualistic element I was after (even if they did fall apart after a few bites).

As with most Ottolenghi recipes, they always seem to take longer than I plan for, no matter how much chopping I do in advance. Luckily, I was just cooking for two, but I’d advise against making this one if you’re entertaining friends, as you’re likely to be slaving over a hot frying pan for most of the evening.

That being said, the cooking experience and overall result was definitely more triumph than tribulation!

Stay tuned for some Mediterranean flavours in next week’s T&T, and do send requests for future recipes or feedback from your own kitchen creations…!