A long time ago, before I was born, an Easter Monday tradition began in Bessières, France. They prepare a giant omelette and share it with the town and visitors.
As the children were off school, we made the trek to Bessières to experience this excellent tradition. (See how I didn't use the obvious egg-pun there... the children have enacted a restriction on egg-puns.) Like many outings to the surrounding towns and villages of France, our trek involved me driving with the kids and Dan cycling.
We arrived around 9:30, with omelette starting time at 11:00. So we found parking near a bakery and consumed some pastries to keep us happy until omelette-time. We walked toward the center of town, through a market and festival area and found THE GIANT FRYING PAN.
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| GIANT FRYING PAN and a fire |
I know it looks like the pan is actually on the fire, but the fire is behind the pan. It's a perspective thing. The frying pan weighed about a ton. And, no, it's not lifted by using the giant log handle, that's really for appearances. It is moved with a forklift. The legs on the frying pan are attached. So when the forklift moves the pan, it doesn't put it directly on the fire, but the legs cause it to be a non-buring distance above the fire. This is French Cooking, not me-burning-eggs-in-my-home-kitchen-cooking.
On one side of the park were the omelette ingredients. There are 15,000 eggs, a bunch of chives, some chili pepper, and other spices. The pots on the ground were for holding the eggs after they get cracked. Then the chefs beat the eggs with a whisk attached to a large drill.
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| It's going to be necessary to break a few eggs! |
Obviously, if you have a giant omelette, it must be accompanied by giant bread.
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| Alex near the bread, waiting for the cooking to get started |
The fire was already being prepared when we arrived. The guy on the left was the official fire tender. I'm not sure what the guy on the right with the hat's title was, but his role was important. One of his tasks was to drive the fort lift.
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| Fire Preparation |
After hanging out, just watching the fire for a while, the time finally came for the event to start! It started with some guys dressed as chickens who handed out chocolate eggs, a parade of officials and, of course, a bunch of drummers. Because French Chefs need inspirational music.
After a long procession, everyone was assembled. This included the guys dressed as strawberries in red and green. They handed out flyers promoting La Tarte Geante aux Fraises coming in June.
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| Strawberry Guys next to Country Western Guys (Country = USA) |
Finally, it was time to cook.
The official chefs of the day, ordained by the knightly order of the giant omelette, started with 25 liters of duck fat. Because it's the local, probably artisanal, grease. And it's delicious.
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| Giant Pan of Duck Fat |
During this whole time, people had been preparing all of the ingredients. This includes cracking all of the eggs, slicing the giant bread, and cutting all of the scallions. It took a long time. I think from the time we started watching the fire preparation to the time when the eggs actually went into the pan, it was about 2-3 hours. That's practically longer than a visit to the Louvre. Or most museums in our travels. The kids were prepared to wait with books and stuff to do but they were getting kind of antsy. And hungry. The eggs went in...
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| How Many Chefs does it Take? |
... we heard the officials announce that cooking would take half an hour. So, we left our excellent omelette cooking viewing vantage point and let the kids explore the rest of the festival a little. We found snacks. Will got fries which he declared, "The best fries ever!" (They were probably cooked in duck fat.) Alex had a Nutella crêpe. After about a half hour, we noticed people walking around with plates of omelette.
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| Empty Plates, Waiting to be Filled with Omelette |
We sent the kids to get some omelette, but they couldn't find where and how to acquire it. Plus, they didn't really want any, so they weren't particularly motivated. I ran into some friends who already had plates of omelette and they told me to hurry and get some of my own. So, I went to the crowd where the plates were being distributed. It was kind of a process. People in the front got omelette, they left the crowd, everyone moved up a bit, until you were in the front and could get your own omelette. I was involved in this process when I saw the kids walking back to where we had been standing (without any plates of omelette). They are pretty independent, so I let them go. Besides, I had omelette priorities! I got my omelette and went back to the general area where I had last been with the kids.
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| Successful Omelette Acquisition! |
While I was busy taking this selfie of my successful omelette acquisition, the kids found me. They were mildly annoyed, which is their general state of being when we force-them-to-experience-things. But, since we were done, we headed back to the car to return home. As an important last stop, and to bring things full circle, we once again went to the bakery, grabbed some bread and croissants so that the kids could consume non-omelette based sandwiches on the way home, and found a route out of Bessières that didn't go directly through the festival.
Will we go to the Giant Strawbery Tarte? Perhaps. Wait and see...
