Have you tried a Corsican omelette with mint?

Scottish Field continues to bring you recipes with a difference this week,  from Scot Jill Colonna in Paris.

We’re sharing recipes this week from Jill, now living outside Paris, and who runs the MadAboutMacarons.com website.

She enjoys creating twists to easy DO-able French and Scottish recipes: from healthy family meals to simple entertaining using easy-to-find yet seasonal, quality ingredients and less sugar.

Today, she provides us with a recipe for a mint omelette. This is a simple omelette dish, popular in Corsica made with mint and often includes Brocciu cheese. If you can’t find fresh Brocciu, a good fresh goat’s cheese or ricotta is excellent.

Jill said: ‘I make it often in summer to help contain our friendly-but-proliferating mint varieties, as it makes a deliciously refreshing dish, served with plenty of fresh, crusty baguette. Well, it’s a change from Mojito Macarons. It’s totally copied from my husband Antoine’s Corsican mum!

‘My mother-in-law always makes it just with mint – but there are two versions to a Corsican Mint Omelette: one is with mint, the other with mint and cheese. However, I didn’t tell you the best part about a Corsican omelette.

‘My husband is Corsican. He’s from l’Ile de Beauté, the beautiful island that sits southeast of France’s hexagone and above the Italian island of Sardinia. While Corsica has officially been part of France since 1768, its culture is still predominantly Italian.

A French mint omelette

‘Two-thirds of the island is dramatic mountains with perched hilltop villages, which influences Corsica’s cuisine. Although fresh fish and seafood are popular in the touristy coastal resorts, inland there’s trout from the rivers – always served simply – but good, rustic food from the land features most.

‘Corsicans love their meat (namely lamb, boar and lots of veal: try this Corsican Veal and Peppers recipe here), their own cheeses (notably brocciu – read more here in my recipe post for Fiadone, Corsican Cheesecake), vegetables and wild herbs from the unique maquis, the most unmistakably Corsican fragrance of the surrounding shrublands.

‘Antoine’s family hilltop village is nearest the mountain town of Corte. Homegrown vegetables and herbs are in nearly all of the villagers’ gardens and, while there are plenty of dishes I could cite here, let’s focus on mint – otherwise I can feel the next book coming on.

‘It’s a powerful, yet subtle ingredient that’s added to many of the most memorable dishes I’ve had in Corsica, including the traditional Cannelloni au Brocciu. Ever since I tasted the mint coming through the cheese in a restaurant in Rogliano (in Corsica’s top finger) I make a lazy version of it (without stuffing cannelloni tubes). Adding mint just gives it that special, extra intriguing taste to this Corscian Brocciu Lasagne and stuffed cheesy courgettes – like, “What is it that I’m tasting?” It’s peppermint.

‘Corsican omelettes are made using olive oil and, instead of being folded or rolled over, they are served flat – cooked more underneath and just a quick minute more on the facing side. As with the regular omelette, it’s still deliciously runny inside; as the French say, it’s an Omelette Baveuse – literally dribbling.’