Tampopo Omelette

I need to geek out for a second.

Today I was reading this entry on the Tampopo Omelette on Just Hungry, the sister blog of Just Bento, one of my favorite Bento blogs. The Tampopo omelette is a dish that was invented for the movie Tampopo, which is one of my favorite movies. It's a Japanese satire about food, and if you haven't seen it, you should. It explores our emotional connection with food through a series of vignettes about various odd and humerus characters and THEIR strange and surprising relationships with food. The main story line is about a woman named Tampopo who owns a ramen stand, and wants to improve her business.

So. The omelette. There's a video in the Just Hungry article showing the scene of the movie where it appears, but for the moment I want to just talk about the recipe itself. The omelette consists of lightly fried, lightly seasoned rice, a plain french omelette laid over top and ketchup. That's it.

I know, it sounds boring, but hear me out, because when everything is done correctly it's absolutely delicious.

Firstly, the rice. It's a Japanese film, so the rice has to be nishiki, or sticky rice. Because this rice holds more moisture than Chinese rice, it makes a very different kind of fried rice. In the film it's fried very lightly - not browned, and not dry. Then the ketchup is added and mixed in while it's still over the heat, giving the rice an orange color throughout.

Next, the egg. The cool thing about this recipe is that it requires that you make an honest-to-goodness omelette. Like, true French, Julia-Child style omelette. It's not a simple task, and it's not something many people have done. It only takes about 30 seconds, but it's extremely delicate and tricky.

In any case, the character in the movie does it expertly. He taps the handle on the frying pan, turning it lightly until it closes entirely with no seams at all, and he pulls it off the heat before the center has a chance to cook through. Then, he slices it open lengthwise to show that the center is still slightly wet. The edges are fluffy, but not brown.

So, this dish is a simple and clean celebration of the plain flavor and texture of properly cooked rice and properly cooked eggs and - oddly enough, ketchup! When was the last time you really stopped to taste ketchup on its own? This dish is plain enough to let that occur. Now, when I first saw the movie, I thought it was seasoned with tabasco sauce, not ketchup. So I decided to add a pinch of cayenne to my rice in order to give the dish a slight kick. I also seasoned it with pepper and garlic powder.

Oh - did I forget to mention that? I MADE IT. I was so excited I came right home and made it. We didn't have any day-old rice in the fridge (as you're technically supposed to use for fried rice) so I made my nishiki with slightly less water than it requires, and let it cook off a little more moisture after it had finished.

I also have never made a proper French omelette before, so it wasn't perfect. But it's closer than I've ever gotten, and I intend to keep trying. Here's a photo:

The egg-to-rice ratio is off in this photo because we later moved half the omelette to Brandon's plate, which had more rice on it.

Now, we put a few too many eggs for the size of pan I was using, so we had to cook it longer before it would turn, which means the bottom got a bit browned. But the inside was almost as gooey as I had hoped! And ohhh it was delicious.

Please, give it a try some time. It's a delightful, quirky little dish that sits directly at the intersection of Japanese, American and French fusion.