Vegan Omelettes: not just in your daydreams anymore

I love breakfast and brunch.  I mean, seriously, it's like the most awesome thing ever.  I especially love when I have a morning with nothing to do so I can relax and make something awesome for brunch.  It's great to just sit with a cup of tea and fool around on the computer or with Netflix for an hour or two before I have to actually be awake enough to feed myself.  Mornings like this are made for Vegan Brunch!

For reals, y'all.  If you don't already have this cookbook, run, do not walk and get it.  There are a few recipes in here that have changed my life.  And by changed my life, I mean turned me into some kind of crazy-excited to make brunch kind of person.  Some of the recipes in this book are even great as side dishes for dinners or even as a light lunch.  Dang, I just got all excited just now thinking of all the things I need to remake and photograph so I can blog about them.  I'll try not to do it all on the same day so I don't gain like a bajillion pounds stuffing brunch in my face over one weekend.

One of the first things I tried after I got this book was the recipe for vegan omelettes.  Say what?!  Yeah.  Mostly I was intrigued.  I had never even considered such a thing.  It's been years and years and years since I've eaten an egg, but I remember not liking them as a kid.  Thankfully these are flipping awesome, not yucky like the real thing that I remember.  You do need a non-stick pan for this, though.  You can always just use your cast iron pan like I do and that'll work just fine since they get worked in to being non-stick anyway.  Don't be intimidated.  I am completely incapable of making pancakes that actually resemble pancakes, but these look awesome every time.  The batter is fairly thick so maybe that helps them keep their shape a bit more.

The omelette itself is nice and light and fluffy and so full of flavor.  I don't know what I was expecting, but I didn't know these would taste so amazing.  The main ingredients are tofu, chickpea flour and nutritional yeast with a few other things added.  I think you definitely need to make sure you're using chickpea flour and not a different type of flour because that is where a large part of the flavor is coming from.  Don't cheat, go out and get some from Whole Foods or Trader Joe's or where ever you can find that sort of thing in your area.  Chickpea flour is kind of awesome, actually.  You can use it instead of regular flour for a thickener when you're making gravy and sauces.  I've started using that in my gravies instead of wheat flour and it's really bumped the flavor up a notch.

But back to talking about omelettes. Isa gives you some options for fillings if you're stuck for what to put inside.  Try one or all of them and then start mixing and matching.  It really doesn't matter what you use, just get some veggies and saute or steam them a bit and you're good to go.  Heck, you could even make a Daiya cheese omelette.  Oh yeah, I'm totally doing that.  I typically go for the same thing every time.  I'm always happy to find a reason to eat asparagus so I saute some of that with some onions or shallots, garlic and tomatoes.  Add some freshly ground pepper and Himalayan sea salt and you're golden.

The recipe says to use black salt.  That can be very hard to find.  Even in Vancouver where I can usually find things like that with little problem, it took a bit of looking.  I finally found some, but honestly, I'm not sure if it's the real deal like what Isa means because it tastes just like regular salt to me, only... black.  My point is not to stress about it if you don't have it.  You can just use regular salt and everything will still be delicious.  You really should make some roasted potatoes to go with this.  It's like the perfect pairing.  Though I would probably say that about roasted potatoes with anything at brunch.

I find that this recipe usually makes 4 omelettes.  The cool thing is that they reheat well, so you can have one on your leisurely Sunday morning and then when Monday rolls around and you're grumpy and getting ready to go to work, you can just reheat one of these bad boys and your day has suddenly gotten better.  I haven't tried freezing them, so I'm not sure if that would affect the texture or not.  If anyone does that, would you mind letting me know how it went?