First: Do you have any idea how it feels to enter a food into the search bar at The Pit AND GET NO RESULTS?
Answer: It feels very satisfying. But it also creates an obligation… an obligation to make this new food and see what it is, and what it tastes like.
My Italian parsley freakin’ TOOK OVER my planter box. I realized that I never, ever use that much Italian parsley, and in frustration I took my herb scissors and harvested it all. So now I have a huge bag of flat leaf parsley, and no idea what to make with it.
And of course, I wonder. Is there such a thing as a parsley omelet?
Well, sorta yes, and sorta no, and some people call it an omelet, and some people call it a fritter, and some people make it this way and others that way, and it isn’t really very well defined, except that it had eggs, and parsley, and it’s called ejjeh.
I looked a lot deeper than that, of course. And there is no ur-recipe for this. If you walked in to a hundred different households where ejjeh was being made, you would get a hundred different looking and tasting meals. I read about baked quiches, scrambled eggs with herbs and spices, omelets, fritters, and things that were some of all of those. The only thing that is constant among all of them is that they use an ASTONISHING amount of fresh herbs. Most commonly mentioned are mint, parsley, and cilantro. Many use zaatar seasoning, or a seven-spice Middle Eastern blend. I was constricted by 1) it was 10PM, 2) I wasn’t going to the grocery store for anything I might use once (although I could get mint from the garden), and 3) in any case I also wasn’t going to the grocery store at 6AM.
I found a recipe with a list of ingredients that I mostly had, at Sarelleplays.com. She starts her description, “Here is a simple and healthy recipe that I learned from my mother, who learned from her mother, and so on. We call it Ejjeh, or Egeh (I have no idea how to spell it) in the old country. To be honest, I’m not sure which “old country” this comes from. I think it’s made in a few different Middle-Eastern countries. So about parsley in an omelet……I know, it’s not a conventional omelet ingredient, but trust me, it’s good.”
Yeah, I’ll buy that. I’m in. Here we go.
[For the Paprika app users, you can just load this page into Paprika and it will strip out the recipe for you.]
Parsley Omelet Fritters – Ejjeh
Ingredients:
1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp. salt and couple rounds of black pepper
pinch of Aleppo pepper
pinch of allspice
6 eggs
2 cups chopped parsley
1 tomato, seeded and chopped
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1 cup olive-oil
Directions:
In a large bowl, add flour, salt, black pepper, Aleppo pepper, and allspice. Crack the eggs into the bowl and whisk together until the lumps of flour are gone. Don’t worry, the lumps will disappear after about 2-3 minutes of whisking. Next, add the parsley, tomato and onion. Mix well.
Add olive-oil to a large shallow frying pan and heat on medium-high heat. Once you see tiny bubbles in the oil, using a ladle, pour in about 1/4 cup’s worth of omelet into the pan. You can make 3-4 fritters at the same time depending on how large your frying pan is. Cook each side for about three minutes, or until light-brown. Once the oil starts bubbling vigorously, turn down the heat to medium.
Source: https://sarelleplays.com/parsley-omelet-fritters-ejjeh/
I scaled this back to 2 eggs, and guessed at things like 1/12 cup of flour, 1/6 of an onion, etc. I didn’t have any Aleppo pepper, but I did have Texas Dave’s!
From there, we all know how to mix and whisk.
Holy moly, that’s a lot of parsley! At this point I’m thinking, is this going to be another canned peas sitccheashun? Read on!
Into the skillet,
flip.
The second one looks a little different. I’ve never made these, and I left it in a little longer before flipping.
Plated, with some harissa paste and sour cream. When I flipped the second one back over, it looked the same as the first one. In my research, I saw these cooked to about this color, but also I saw them done to a dark brown. I used my best judgement: were the onions cooked? They seemed so, and I didn’t see any point in leaving them further.
You know how you’re in the break room at work, and your Middle Eastern coworker just reheated something in the microwave, and it smells really weird but you’re thinking, “Man, that’s probably delicious!”? That’s where I was right before forking into this. And man, this is really, really good. REALLY good.
I doused the sh—… heck out of it with piri piri sauce in addition to the harissa. I love the heat. The piri piri sauce wasn’t all that hot, though, the harissa was hotter.
This is worthy. It’s easy, I have most of the stuff already, there’s no special technique involved, and there are as many variations as there are people holding spatulas. And it’s going to be interesting: Will these new flavors pull me in a different direction? If so, for how long? I guess I’ll find out.
Answer: It feels very satisfying. But it also creates an obligation… an obligation to make this new food and see what it is, and what it tastes like.
My Italian parsley freakin’ TOOK OVER my planter box. I realized that I never, ever use that much Italian parsley, and in frustration I took my herb scissors and harvested it all. So now I have a huge bag of flat leaf parsley, and no idea what to make with it.
And of course, I wonder. Is there such a thing as a parsley omelet?
Well, sorta yes, and sorta no, and some people call it an omelet, and some people call it a fritter, and some people make it this way and others that way, and it isn’t really very well defined, except that it had eggs, and parsley, and it’s called ejjeh.
I looked a lot deeper than that, of course. And there is no ur-recipe for this. If you walked in to a hundred different households where ejjeh was being made, you would get a hundred different looking and tasting meals. I read about baked quiches, scrambled eggs with herbs and spices, omelets, fritters, and things that were some of all of those. The only thing that is constant among all of them is that they use an ASTONISHING amount of fresh herbs. Most commonly mentioned are mint, parsley, and cilantro. Many use zaatar seasoning, or a seven-spice Middle Eastern blend. I was constricted by 1) it was 10PM, 2) I wasn’t going to the grocery store for anything I might use once (although I could get mint from the garden), and 3) in any case I also wasn’t going to the grocery store at 6AM.
I found a recipe with a list of ingredients that I mostly had, at Sarelleplays.com. She starts her description, “Here is a simple and healthy recipe that I learned from my mother, who learned from her mother, and so on. We call it Ejjeh, or Egeh (I have no idea how to spell it) in the old country. To be honest, I’m not sure which “old country” this comes from. I think it’s made in a few different Middle-Eastern countries. So about parsley in an omelet……I know, it’s not a conventional omelet ingredient, but trust me, it’s good.”
Yeah, I’ll buy that. I’m in. Here we go.
[For the Paprika app users, you can just load this page into Paprika and it will strip out the recipe for you.]
Parsley Omelet Fritters – Ejjeh
Ingredients:
1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp. salt and couple rounds of black pepper
pinch of Aleppo pepper
pinch of allspice
6 eggs
2 cups chopped parsley
1 tomato, seeded and chopped
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1 cup olive-oil
Directions:
In a large bowl, add flour, salt, black pepper, Aleppo pepper, and allspice. Crack the eggs into the bowl and whisk together until the lumps of flour are gone. Don’t worry, the lumps will disappear after about 2-3 minutes of whisking. Next, add the parsley, tomato and onion. Mix well.
Add olive-oil to a large shallow frying pan and heat on medium-high heat. Once you see tiny bubbles in the oil, using a ladle, pour in about 1/4 cup’s worth of omelet into the pan. You can make 3-4 fritters at the same time depending on how large your frying pan is. Cook each side for about three minutes, or until light-brown. Once the oil starts bubbling vigorously, turn down the heat to medium.
Source: https://sarelleplays.com/parsley-omelet-fritters-ejjeh/
I scaled this back to 2 eggs, and guessed at things like 1/12 cup of flour, 1/6 of an onion, etc. I didn’t have any Aleppo pepper, but I did have Texas Dave’s!
From there, we all know how to mix and whisk.
Holy moly, that’s a lot of parsley! At this point I’m thinking, is this going to be another canned peas sitccheashun? Read on!
Into the skillet,
flip.
The second one looks a little different. I’ve never made these, and I left it in a little longer before flipping.
Plated, with some harissa paste and sour cream. When I flipped the second one back over, it looked the same as the first one. In my research, I saw these cooked to about this color, but also I saw them done to a dark brown. I used my best judgement: were the onions cooked? They seemed so, and I didn’t see any point in leaving them further.
You know how you’re in the break room at work, and your Middle Eastern coworker just reheated something in the microwave, and it smells really weird but you’re thinking, “Man, that’s probably delicious!”? That’s where I was right before forking into this. And man, this is really, really good. REALLY good.
I doused the sh—… heck out of it with piri piri sauce in addition to the harissa. I love the heat. The piri piri sauce wasn’t all that hot, though, the harissa was hotter.
This is worthy. It’s easy, I have most of the stuff already, there’s no special technique involved, and there are as many variations as there are people holding spatulas. And it’s going to be interesting: Will these new flavors pull me in a different direction? If so, for how long? I guess I’ll find out.
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