It brings me no great pleasure to relate to you, dear reader, that I have in recent months been reduced to a miserable man.  It is not wear and tear on my aging joints, dairy induced indigestion or an acute case of bovinophobia; instead my troubles lie in the kitchen.  More specifically our new kitchen here in Zurich.  The small space is efficiently equipped; we added a nice butcher block counter space, our knives are sharp, the coffee is excellent, when you open the window on our quiet city street the screech of the street car is distant.  The compact refrigerator serves its purpose well.  There is no ice machine but we make do with the fiddly little ice trays.  

No, the source of my despair is a slab of smooth black ceramic glass.  It features finicky touch buttons unhelpfully labeled with incoherent pictograms.  It is our electric stove.  This infernal contraption of modern cookery has conspired to curse my most ambitious concoctions and humblest chows alike.  Upon meeting, I wanted to love this easy to clean, simple and eco-friendly cooking appliance.  The first sign of trouble began with an errant drop of liquid flung from a wayward spatula.  The appliance’s touch screen-like controls responded to the droplet first with a fusillade of sharp beeps and finally with an automatic turn off of all burners.  Little did I know, this hydrological oddity would be the least of my issues.  Throughout our months here and most pointedly in my efforts at replicating Jaques Pepin’s famous French Omelette, I have, however, become a broken chef.  

It all began in November 2020 when my mother, of Baking Bedlamite fame, sent me a link to this video: link.  The video is 3 hours long; a collection of short tutorials on essential french cooking techniques.  Chopping an onion, sharpening a knife, decapitating a lobster, and most impressionably making a traditional french omelet.  Those around me quickly grew tired of my exaggerated French accent and insistence on pronouncing tender as “taaaannnnnnnnnddderrrrrrrr”.  Months later, in May, my good friend Conor and I were incapacitated in a car accident.  I spent the first weeks of recovery lying on my back, often on the floor dealing with brutal back pain.  My mom had mailed me a copy of Jaques Pepin’s fabulous autobiography The Apprentice and I devoured it.  I spent endless hours lying on the carpet in the living room because of this book, often dreaming about food.  One of my first extended upright adventures after the accident was propped up on a stool in front of the stove.  

I recall chopping the parsley, whipping the three eggs into a tight curd and preparing for the operation from a prone position.  Despite reviewing Pepin’s video countless times, my first french omelet was not only painful and uncomfortable in the making but also not an omelet at all and more like rubbery scrambled eggs suspended in undercooked egg.  The taste of butter was enough to keep me going and over the next few months the egg consumption in our house exploded.  Stick after stick of butter I toiled away over our gas stove furiously agitating and scraping.  The omelets got better.  I gained confidence.  I started stuffing the occasional omelet.  I sought out further inspiration: link (this guy is clearly a legend...) My heat was dialed, the recipe nailed and my technique improved.

In November 2021 we moved to Switzerland.  We decided to start our kitchen over.  Our previous set of cookery was all hand me downs from previous renters and odd bits and bobs from Kathy.  We had recently seen a troubling segment on John Oliver’s show about the dangers of PFOAs and non-stick coatings so Teflon was out of the question.  I settled on carbon steel for the omelet and frying pan.  They are an excellent value, last forever, oven safe, approved by the pros!  See this Cooks Illustrated review of the style.  The deBuyer pans that showed up in the mail were beautiful, simple and professional looking implements.  I imagined my distant descendants marveling at the all natural non-stick properties of old grandpa Fred’s perfectly patinated and seasoned omelet pan.  I had grown well accustomed to guests of our old kitchen complimenting the exemplary seasoning of our Lodge cast iron pan and naively assumed I would be a natural and affectionate custodian of these new pans.

That illusion was quickly pierced by reality as I began the initial seasoning process.  Instead of the whole pan turning a slippery looking golden brown, my attempts turned out blotchy and irregular.  I was failing the fried egg test with sticking and scorching.  After repeatedly hand scouring and reseasoning I, like any good millennial, turned to youtube.  I quickly realized I was adding too much oil and switched to the oven method of seasoning which helped me achieve a beautiful, uniform and effective layer of seasoning.  The fried eggs were gliding around the pan like pucks on an air hockey table and cooked sides achieved that smooth non-stick slipperiness I had long sought.

So then, time to try another omelet!  Or so I thought...  I had been finishing up work in the office and Lisa was in the kitchen making dinner.  I ambled into the kitchen, happy to be done with my meetings where Lisa simmered a tomato sauce in my beloved pan.  We had a lovely pasta dinner and I took my turn at the sink to do the dishes.  When it came to my tenderly handled pan I found it devoid of its golden oily sheen and all seasoning comprehensively removed.  I soon recalled the old “don't cook acids in the cast iron” rule and sighed.  Back to square one but at least I knew what I was doing this time.  On the bright side, maybe the tomato trick would be easier than the tedious hand scrubbing with steel wool routine I’d been using previously to start anew.  I was beginning to understand that these pans do need somewhat extraordinary attention compared to most other kitchen implements.  I haven’t had the audacity to write a user manual for our house guests on how to clean and dry these pans.  Instead, I insist on undertaking pan cleaning and maintenance myself for fear of my charges suffering an overzealous dish soap attack or the pernicious accumulation of rust while idle on the drying rack.  Is it all worth it? For most, perhaps not, but I think you can tell by now that I am committed to making these suckas work.

Anyways, I had spent a considerable amount of oil and elbow grease learning how to properly season these pans and my non-stickiness was ready for the pinnacle of culinary achievement; the French Omelet.  Which of course brings us back to the cursed cooktop.  For the French omelet one needs a steady, consistent heat.  On our stove however, each burner does just that, it burns.  Or it’s off.  It's either Dante’s inferno or cold granite.  Despite the 1 to 9 intensity settings, there is only one intensity: scorching.  A setting of 5 seems to represent that for a given minute of cooking the element is off for 30 seconds and then blisteringly hot for the next 30 seconds.  If a slab of butter is placed in a cold pan and placed on a level 5 burner it will sit passively for a number of seconds before the red glow of the heating element kicks in.  From that moment you have 5-10 seconds to take action before things start sputtering. Soon afterwards, the 1 meter diameter hemisphere above the countertop crematorium is misted with scorching butter globules and a volcano exploration suit is required to approach the perditious pan much less attempt to adjust the stove’s stubborn touch controls.  Unsurprisingly, the pans don't like this treatment either.  They end up being subject to the cruel forces of thermal expansion and contraction when so rapidly heated.  The pans’ bottom flatnesses quickly got out of whack only exacerbating problems on the flat cooktop.

If you are by now guessing that this mischievous maillard-inducing hell-hob makes achieving the perfect French omelet near impossible, you would be correct.  A burner on the same setting behaves very differently if it has just been turned on or if it has been on for a few minutes.  The element has trouble heating the sides of the pan without scorching the bottom and the flatness issue makes for troublesome hotspots and sticky patches.  I’ve adapted parts of my technique to include a splash of water in the egg mixture and a drop of oil in the lubricating butter to some benefit but the omelets are still inconsistent at best and scrambled eggs at worst (not necessarily bad scrambled eggs but certainly not the same plated experience as Pepin).

No one has observed this journey more closely than Lisa who spent more than one night dozing off to the sound of my soft curses and vigorous scrubbing as I seasoned, de-seasoned and re-seasoned my pretty pans late into the night.  She in fact has been bugging me to write this account, perhaps as some form of therapy, for some time.  For months I said “No! I will not write about this experiment until I achieve my grail!  I cannot proceed without documentary evidence of a glistening, smooth and sumptuous lump of a french omelet. Bonus points for video of a tender creamy and perfectly cooked inside, slowly oozing out as a knife is withdrawn.”  But alas, it is now summer in Zurich.  The inconvenient burner preheating method I developed in cooler months is untenable on a hot summer day.  I’m putting my dreams on hold and preparing for the return of omelet season.  I will be back with a vigor that only Jaques Pepin can understand and I will master the perfect french omelet in my carbon steel pan.

PS:  I think my secret weapon might be the addition of a standalone single burner induction cooktop.  This thing might be the ticket and lots of fun for some other cooking fun too! Njori Tempo