Sunday brunch of eggs with salmon and caramelized onions. My cooking experiments continue....

Ok. first i am mad (at myself). I just typed the whole blog, added the pics and then in some moment of carelessness quit my firefox thinking i was quitting another unwanted application just as the blog was being saved. So all the hard work gone in a second (a tough lesson oft not learnt. always save your work! In terms of blogs, copy them in some text editor.... will save you the pain that i am experiencing at 1 am. But i am determined .. .perhaps this version will be better!)

I was home the whole day today (which if you know me, is very very rare. I am never home except to sleep, shower and get out). Well, the reason being that the weather has been really dull in the city (except that sat was gorgeous) and it was cloudy the whole day (read after 1 pm since i only got up then). So i got up late because i danced till 4am sat night at this really cool place. Have been exploring east village (where i am living these days. Yes, i keep moving around every 3-4 mths) and came across this restaurant/bar (very funny name - Sun burnt cow on east 9th street at av C, New York) and they had some awesome live music last night. Well when the music hits me (it does if you close your eyes and let your ears really listen) it does get me into over drive. So after the night long shaking, i was in at home , re-energizing.. . Which also means i got time to experiment in the kitchen.

It so happened that my roomie (lets call him M) had gotten up just the same time i got into the kitchen and was making some stuff. Now just 3-4 days back i had bought some smoked salmon but it turned out it was too moist and soft to be just chewed and eaten as is (really good smoked dry salmon is awesome, specially the copper rive salmon smoked and shipped from the Alaskan fisheries). So I was asking M how to best eat this salmon and he said one it was good to be eaten with cream cheese on a bagel or in an omelette! So today was chance to ask him to show me how to make it with eggs. See full recipe here. So lets begin

Step 1. Slice and Dice. That means do the preparation
As M says, preparation is key if you want to make cooking easy (on your self), enjoyable and delicious. Get your stuff ready and done. So that means slicing our onion and salmon and dicing (see this great video on how to slice and dice an onion by lauren groveman). We cut ( one whole onion and maybe 50 gms of smoked salmon and diced them.
Next you take 3 eggs and beat them with some (1-2 tablespoons of ) milk. beat till the egg white and yolk are well mixed. Keep it on the side

Step 2. Caramelizing the onions
Take an iron cast pan (there is some science to cooking, as M says. iron cast pans heats to higher temperatures than an aluminum or other metal pan. This temperature range is good for caramelizing onions and heating the salmon quickly). Add some butter (1 tbl spn) and let the butter heat upto a brown tinge. Add the diced onions (hmm sounds so good, the simmering onions). Let cook - you dont need to use a stirrer to turn the onions around. Just shake the pan gently.

Step 3. Adding the Salmon
After the onions turn brown time to add the salmon. M tells me that salmon is added later because it doesnt have to be cooked for long. It should be a heated intensely but for little time- thats all. That way the flavor is not "burnt out" . By now the caramelized onions are deep dark brown and are smelling , oh, so good. After 2-3 minutes, time to add the eggs.

Step 4. Cooking the eggs
Add the onions and salmon mix to the egg beat and pour it in the pan (you can cook in butter/oil). Let the egg cook till the base is hardening. Now here is a trick (having a chef as a roomie and showing you things, is just priceless. Master card are you there - this sounds like an idea for your ads). As the egg is cooking, tilt the pan to let the uncooked beat trickle to the tilted part. But using a frying stick, hold the salmon from trickling down. This helps retain the chunky salmon and onions form staying in the middle so that you can have the extra chunky bite!

Step 5. Turning and Tossing. Some jugglery
when the base of the omelette is done, time to have some fun. Now one learns how to turn the omlette without breaking it. So take a plate in one hand and the pan with the egg in the other. Turn the pan so that the uncooked part goes down (bottom facing) on the plate. Now slide the plate so that uncooked part goes facing into the hot pan. There you go - some tossing and turning and the omelette has been turned over, gently and without cracks!

Step 6. Heat some more and you are done
Heat some more till the omelette is done. You will smell the goodness fill the kitchen air. So thats it. Its done. M says he used to eat this a lot during family breakfasts on sundays. I dug up some bread slices and i am ready to have an awesome sunday brunch (yeah its 1 pm, ok not that bad. i have gotten up later on sundays). As for M he goes on to get some yogurt and banana for his brunch.

All i will say .. it was wonderful. Looks like i will be staying home more often on weekends.