An omelette Arnold Bennett is a flat omelette served in a dish.
I'm going to add a little bit of a twist.
I'm going to take away the smoked haddock
that normally goes with this dish and I'm going to ask our chefs
to use crab meat instead. It's got gruyere cheese.
It's served with a hollandaise sauce over the top,
and gratinated under the grill.
Right, OK. Let's see how it's done.
So, for the hollandaise, the first thing I need to do
is get the white wine vinegar reduction.
It's just basic white wine vinegar,
a couple of bay leaves and some white peppercorns.
So, I'm going to use three egg yolks.
Just going to start whipping them up.
As you start to whisk the eggs, you have to be very careful.
Too hot and it will start to cook the egg yolks.
We're looking for the ribbon stage,
which is when you lift it up, you see the ribbons in the bowl.
My white wine vinegar is now reduced by half.
I'm going to pour that into there.
Now we need to start adding our clarified butter.
Got to keep whisking.
What you need to do now is a little spoon of vinegar,
and that automatically just lets that sauce right down.
That allows me now to incorporate some more butter.
Do you know the history?
Did Arnold Bennett, the author, order it in the Savoy?
That's it. And it's become famous.
So, this is where a chef's intuition
is going to have to come into the equation.
So, now it's just about getting it to the right consistency and taste.
Yeah. So, there is the hollandaise.
And what we've also got on the bench here
is some lightly whipped double cream.
Believe it or not, it actually takes the richness of the hollandaise down a little bit.
Right, I'm going to make the omelette now.
So, I'm going to use four eggs, give the eggs a good whisk.
Butter's foaming, just nicely coming up to temperature.
It's not too hot.
Put that into there. Now you can't stop.
You've got to keep the process going.
So, you're making almost like a half-scrambled,
half-omelette type mixture in the pan here.
Transfer it into this serving dish.
Now we add the crab meat...
..some gruyere cheese,
and then what we do is you just pour on our hollandaise.
Oh!
It's layered up. It's ready to go. Now I've just got to glaze it.
So, that just takes a couple of seconds to brown it, then?
That's why you can't walk away from it.
And there you have it - omelette Arnold Bennett with crab meat.
Whoa! Isn't it beautiful?