Eiertätsch
Eiertätsch is a bit of a catch-all for a number of slightly varying egg dishes. My mother-in-law uses it as a general term for all things omelette or crepe, and it is very similar to the Bündner Tatsch, where eggs and flour are combined, fried, and cut up into pieces.
It is common here in the Emmental, and even features in Jeremias Gotthelf’s expressively-titled novel: Wie Anne Bäbi Jowäger haushaltet und wie es ihm mit dem Doktern geht, which in English would be something like: How Anne Bäbi Jowäger keeps her house and how she gets along with doctors. (The short of it is that she doesn’t get along with doctors at all. A stubborn farmer’s wife, she refuses to have her son vaccinated against smallpox, preferring “the local quarkery”, as Gotthelf puts it, and the boy ends up much worse off. A relevant tale.)
When Anne Bäbi wants to give her boy something really hearty, something she think will do him good, she puts an Eiertätsch on the table, with half a glass of red wine next to it “auf dem Tisch stand ein Eiertätsch und manchmal noch eine Halbe Roten darneben”.
Fritz Gfeller, chronicler of Emmentaler food and author of Rezepte aus dem Emmental, includes a recipe for Anne Bäbi’s Eiertätsch, though eggier (she mentions using cream and flour in the novel, but his version is pure egg and sugar).
I’ve stuck to the Gfeller version, using just eggs and sugar in this recipe.
There are many recipes for Eiertätsch online, most leading you to flat omelettes. What I love about this version is that it’s one big fluffy, slightly sticky, sweet eggy extravaganza, prime for a topping of fruit or cream.
6 eggs, separated
3 tbsp sugar
1 tsp vanilla paste or extract
1 tsp lemon zest
1–2 tbsp butter for frying
To serve
seasonal fruits or fruit compote, yogurt or custard
Whisk together the yolks, sugar, vanilla and lemon.
Using a separate bowl and an electric mixer, whip the egg whites until they are stiff.
Fold the egg whites into the yolk mixture.
Heat a large frying pan with a lid (about 28 cm / 11-inch) over medium and add the butter. Once it has melted, add the egg mixture. Cover and let cook for about six minutes. Carefully flip the omelette, then cook for about four minutes more.
Serve with fruit, compote, yogurt, custard etc.
As a dessert, this serves four, for dinner, it’s enough for two.
Now the Bündner version
Tatsch
