Free Under the Table by Katherine Darling Page A

frustration than anything else, as Tucker slipped his omelet seamlessly onto the waiting plate. My omelet wasn’t going anywhere. Worse, it was starting to brown around the edges. Real French omelets have no marbled brown bits of color, only pale perfection and are still even slightly runny— baveuse, a word for which there is no real English equivalent. I pulled my pan off the burner and got out my spatula. It was cheating, but I was desperate to get the sucker out of my pan and try it again. Gently I eased the tip of the spatula under the obstinate egg. Ever so carefully I levered the spatula underneath, tipped the panforward over the plate, and shoved. The omelet came out, at last. In three pieces. Crap. Quickly, I stuffed the pieces in my mouth and chewed. Definitely too done. It tasted more like an old tire than an egg. Yuck. I swallowed with difficulty and turned around to find Chef Jean staring at me, his eyes twinkling as he took in the traces of egg in the pan, on the plate, and on my chin.
    â€œTry more butter,” he said, before moving away to help the next failed omelet maker, as wails of “Chef! Help!” went up like air-raid sirens throughout the classroom.
    I put a great whack of butter in my pan and off we went again, this time to try the rolled omelet.
    â€œGo!” shouted Chef Jean.
    And again: Crack the eggs, beat, season, taste, pour, scramble, bang, and now grab the handle, tip the pan, add the filling, fold over, and—this time things were going well for me, it was all coming together, literally. All I had to do now was get it out of the pan and onto the plate—position plate and flip. This is when my omelet fell on the floor, smearing filling all over the burner, the cutting board, and my shoes. How could I have missed the plate entirely? I stared down at the mess in disbelief. I scooped everything back up and buried the failure in the garbage. Perhaps there was a bit more Penny in me than I would ever care to admit.
    I returned to my workstation, where Chef Jean was once again hovering, with a smile at the corners of his mouth.
    â€œTry it again, but maybe not so hard this time, eh? Be gentle. It isn’t going to leap out of the pan and bite you. Bon, allez! ” Easy for him to say.
    Tucker had once again produced a gorgeous specimen, and was out of the classroom, his apron streaming behind him. Traitor, I thought. Partners are supposed to help each other. Again, I prepped my pan, beat the eggs, and churned out another omelet. Somehow this one got cut in half as I was flipping it onto the plate. I crammed half into my mouth and forced Ben, Junior’s partner and the fourthmember of our little kitchen island, to wolf down the other half, before Chef could see the carnage. The third rolled omelet came out of the pan and made it to the plate before oozing filling out of the bottom. I ate this one, too. The fourth omelet was too brown. I made Junior, who was still laboring over his own omelet attempts, eat this one. The fifth omelet stuck to the pan again. By now I was the only one left in the classroom, and had no one to pawn off the wrecked omelet on. I closed my eyes and ate this one, too. The sixth omelet, I forgot to put filling in. The seventh omelet looked more like a flattened basketball than a plump oval. The eighth omelet was not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it was definitely an omelet, not an egg-themed train wreck. I stood, the total chaos and destruction of my efforts piled around me like snow drifts: my shoes, pants, and apron were splattered with bright red tomato and pepper filling; eggshells littered my cutting board and the stove, and some were even hidden in my pants pockets. Chef Jean had returned from lunch, looked at my last effort, and smiled.
    â€œGood,” he said. “Now go home this evening and do it again.”
    That evening, Michael and the cat had omelets for dinner. I had had my fill of eggs for quite a