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L’omelette Geante, the giant omelette, Bessières In her delicious new book, Amuse Bouche, a journey through France by its culinary treasures, Carolyn Boyd describes the extraordinary giant omelette event. Only in France! France’s love and skill in making the humble omelette has been elevated to legendary status thanks to such figures as Mère Poulard on the Mont Saint-Michel, whose nineteenthcentury recipe is kept secret but involves much whisking and butter. More recently Julia Child shared the revered Cordon Bleu technique in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Here, she explained in great detail how the correct pan and a deft wrist action is key; she recommends using just two or three eggs. Imagine then, trying to make an equally delicious omelette with 15,000 eggs. Who could possibly take on such a challenge other than the Global Brotherhood of the Knights of the Giant Omelette? Every Easter Monday since 1973, the town of Bessières just outside Toulouse has cooked up giant omelette to share with everyone in town. What started as thirty-five eggs grew over the years to be more than 15,000, cooked in a pan that measures 4.2 metres in diameter and has a telephone pole for a handle. The story that gets quoted as its origin is that Napoleon Bonaparte once stopped off at an auberge nearby, where he was so enamoured with the delicious omelette he was served that he insisted he would return the next day with his army and that the innkeeper would cook one large enough to feed them all. When you go to the festival, though, it becomes clear that this is a yarn that has been spun over the years, inflated in its importance by the internet. The real and more heartfelt reason is that it brings people together from the town and from all over the world, like a kind of giant omelette twinning association. There are brotherhoods of the omelette in six other places around the world: Fréjus in Provence; Malmedy in Belgium; Dumbea in New Caledonia; Granby in Quebec, Canada; Pigué in Argentina; Abbeville in Louisiana, USA. When I visited, around 1000 volunteers - dressed head to toe in yellow and white - were cracking the 15,000 eggs on a long row of trestle tables, while the Chevaliers themselves in their tall toque hats wheeled the giant frying pan over a bonfire to begin melting 70 litres of duck fat. The aroma was intoxicating. Soon, the eggs were transferred into huge aluminium pots and whisked with hand-held paddle mixers (usually used for concrete mixing), into which chopped chives, the mild chilli pepper 86 | The Good Life France The Good Life France | 87
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