Giant Omelette Celebration, Abbeyville, USA November / Bessiers, France Easter
Posted by Jill Bowen on Fri 31st August 2007 at 03:46 AM, Filed in November
You can’t make an omelette without cracking eggs!!
According to legend when Napoleon and his army were travelling through the south of France they decided to rest for the night near the town of Bresseires. Whilst there Napoleon feasted on an omelette prepared by a local innkeeper that was such a culinary delight he ordered the townspeople to gather all the eggs they could find in the village and to prepare a huge omelette for his army the next day.
From this humble beginning it became a tradition to offer omelettes to the poor at Easter in France. In 1984 three members of the American chamber of commerce visited the omelette Festival in Bessieres, France and returned with a determination to bring the tradition to Abbeville USA and thereby join the other 7 cities who celebrate the omelette (Bessiers and Frejus in France; Dumbea, New Caledonia and Granby in Canada; Malmedy in Belgium and Pigue in Argentina. The cities all invite each other to their own celebrations which have now become a cultural exchange known as Confrerie.
I’ll give you the recipe for the giant omelette.
First take 5,000 eggs, 50 pounds of onions, 75 bell peppers, 6 and half gallons of milk, 52 pounds of butter, 3 boxes of salt and 2 boxes of black pepper! Having said that – the Abbeville omelette started with 5,000 eggs, but each year one extra is added – so in 2008 it will comprise 5024 eggs!
This family event is held over two days in the towns Magdalen Square and is devoted to Abbeville’s Cajun heritage. Highlights include, art shows, live entertainment – music and dance, kids world, antique implement show, street stalls selling local art and craft. The actual making of the omelette takes two days, and the omelette is cooked at 2p.m on the second day. The omelette is cooked on a real wood fire contained in a sand ‘saucer’.
Sunday has an official ceremonial mass held at the Magdalen Catholic Church. This is followed by a procession carrying the eggs. The omelette is made in a giant frying pan using huge 6 ft. paddles. Not surprisingly it takes quite a while to cook, and after all the stirring actually is more like scrambled eggs than an omelette. But no one cares, it’s utterly delicious…and everyone around gets a free taste. Makes my two-egg omelette vary tame by comparison!
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