Sort of.
I know, I know, a Denver omelet uses a green bell pepper not a California pepper and it's folded in half not in thirds.
I wonder why Colorado doesn't have its own state pepper.
Let's check. [colorado, state pepper].
Aji Colorado. I bet you 1 million dollars it's red.
Let's check. [aji colorado]. It's named after the color, not my state. But I'll take it.
Here's the thing: Colorado means red. So does rojo/a. So does rosa. So does tinto.
"Colorado" is perfect past tense for "to color."
Colorado motto is "colorful Colorado" not "Red."
There is a lot of red, but it really is colorful.
One time I drove the whole state. A friend insisted on this. My vacation, boom, road trip. I did not realize how trippingly colorful the state is and then I did realize I can drive the same thing the next day and I'll get an entirely different set of pictures. If you were an artist then you'd need a very broad palette. As we drove along around a hill a pattern displays of ground and plants and weather, snow. The ground is red rich in iron. The plants are sparse so the ground shows between them, the monoculture shrub dominates the scene with rough dots. Iron deficient. There is something incomplete about the whole scene. Why can't the plants get the iron? Their shadows are another separate pattern. The sky another scape.
Then round the hill and another hill shows on the opposite side, all half pine trees and half snow.
Then around that hill and another hill shows on the opposite side, all Aspen without leaves and dusted with snow punctuated with full dark green fir trees partially covered with snow.
Then around that hill and other hill shows, fully in the sun, there is no trace of snow.
And so on, hill after hill after hill after hill. And I'm sitting there driving and thinking, "Holy shit! This place is a painters dream."
History:
The origin of this story is shaky, a couple stand out. They're plausible but none of them explain green bell pepper that didn't exist in Denver back then. One site insists on green bell pepper for its bitterness to contrast the sweetness of ham and cooked onion. Imagine it, all those peppers growing all over the place and cooks pick the stupidest one, the one with zero Scoville units. Ham, cheese, pepper, onion. How basic can you get?
Then the egg is treated as a tortilla. There is no shaking of the pan or dragging cooked curd to the center to build up layers of lightly cooked egg, no, this is beaten egg treated as paper. It's poured into the pan, with or without filling, and allowed to set. As a tortilla.
A flat stupid disc of egg with plain flat stupid ingredients that everyone always has. It would be harder to come up with an omelet dumber than this. Prepared ineptly as possible with eggs overcooked X5.
Since the history is murky I'll make up my own. My version is good as any. It all went down like this:
Phil Grassley, the cook at Buckhorn Exchange was the only man in Denver who could make an omelet. He was the only person who knew what the word meant. But he worked in a cow town. One associated with mining. The ingredients he had available were crudely basic.
One day Phil got sick.
The owner asked the busboy, "Do you know how to cook?"
The busboy said, "No."
The owner asked the busboy, "Do you learn quickly?"
Sensing an opportunity the busboy said, "Yes."
But that was a lie. This is the busboy at his best when put on the spot as the newest cook in Denver. The busboy winged it and since Denver population didn't know the difference between egg that is way overcooked and with plain Jane ingredients, and with nothing to compare and contrast, the omelet was never corrected. We always had this Boy Scout camp out hack version of an omelet.
The busboy's name was Ricardo Montaldo Estevez Consuelo but everyone called him Ricky.
"So, Ricky, how do you make an omelet?"
"You get all the stuff and you chop it all up then you put it in a pan and turn on the stove then you break open eggs and scramble them all up then pour them in the pan then fold it in half then flip it on a plate."
Did I mention that Ricky is mentally handicapped?
He is a very enthusiastic worker.
Once he gets this cook thing nailed it could suit him the rest of his life.
Ricky did exactly as he said. Phil Grassley died of Sino Moon Moth infection and the knowledge of proper omelets at Buckhorn Exchange died with him. Ricky took his place. Ricky continued producing his unschooled version and people continued to love it.
When you make one of these Denver omelets you automatically think of a million ways to improve it; a sauce, for example, tarragon or any other herb, any other cheese, recombination of vegetables, anything other than ham, say, shrimp, bacon or even hamburger. You think of improving technique. But Ricky did not. He stuck with what he knew. There he was at the Buckhorn Exchange in its beginning in the presence of outrageous wild protein and what does he pick? Ham. When he picks his pepper, what does he pick? Green bell pepper, the stupidest pepper of all.
Oh, I'm so used to eating elk and deer and yak and buffalo with pheasant and grouse and goose and puffins, with ostrich and iguana and boa constrictor and alligator and kangaroo that when I have the taste of boiled ham I just swoon.
It's exotic.
No. Ricky was retarded and this is the best he could do and it worked. Residents liked Ricky and encouraged him. Mine workers made sandwiches out of his omelets and took them into the mines for lunch. The Chinese railroad workers made them into egg foo young. Sheepherders made their own version with lamb, cattle ranchers made their own version with beef. Herpetologists made their own version with lizards. Cowboys wrapped their Denver omelets in a tortilla and ate them as they rode with extras in their saddlebags. The omelets are soft enough to be used as edible pillows to comfort disquieted children and yet abrasive enough to scrub the pots that cooked the beans.
Denver omelet is just one of those things that happened by way of absence of everything needed to do something properly. It was similar to living in Alaska today. Yes there is abundance all around but you have to go out there into it and create a civilization. The elements of Denver omelet exist on a plate by themselves just fine, but to chop them all up and enrobe them in egg is ... fancy. When there is nothing else like brie or lox or tarragon or gyros, bacon or jalapeño, when there are no other choices than onion and green bell pepper, cooked ham and cheese, and when you have no idea how to cook eggs, then a Denver omelet will do.
Denver omelet is among the rude things that people claim a place of origin. They're everywhere. Just this week I read about Detroit pizza. Every region has some weird food-peculiarity; Loco Moco, Hot Brown, chitlins, Hawaiian Haystack (Utah) and so on for endless examples.
This is the first omelet that I made. Back then at age eighteen I thought, "Gee, this is brilliant. The things people think of."
This is the last omelet that I made. The whole time I was thinking, "Man, this is dumb."
Here's the thing: Colorado means red. So does rojo/a. So does rosa. So does tinto.
"Colorado" is perfect past tense for "to color."
Colorado motto is "colorful Colorado" not "Red."
There is a lot of red, but it really is colorful.
One time I drove the whole state. A friend insisted on this. My vacation, boom, road trip. I did not realize how trippingly colorful the state is and then I did realize I can drive the same thing the next day and I'll get an entirely different set of pictures. If you were an artist then you'd need a very broad palette. As we drove along around a hill a pattern displays of ground and plants and weather, snow. The ground is red rich in iron. The plants are sparse so the ground shows between them, the monoculture shrub dominates the scene with rough dots. Iron deficient. There is something incomplete about the whole scene. Why can't the plants get the iron? Their shadows are another separate pattern. The sky another scape.
Then round the hill and another hill shows on the opposite side, all half pine trees and half snow.
Then around that hill and another hill shows on the opposite side, all Aspen without leaves and dusted with snow punctuated with full dark green fir trees partially covered with snow.
Then around that hill and other hill shows, fully in the sun, there is no trace of snow.
And so on, hill after hill after hill after hill. And I'm sitting there driving and thinking, "Holy shit! This place is a painters dream."
History:
The origin of this story is shaky, a couple stand out. They're plausible but none of them explain green bell pepper that didn't exist in Denver back then. One site insists on green bell pepper for its bitterness to contrast the sweetness of ham and cooked onion. Imagine it, all those peppers growing all over the place and cooks pick the stupidest one, the one with zero Scoville units. Ham, cheese, pepper, onion. How basic can you get?
Then the egg is treated as a tortilla. There is no shaking of the pan or dragging cooked curd to the center to build up layers of lightly cooked egg, no, this is beaten egg treated as paper. It's poured into the pan, with or without filling, and allowed to set. As a tortilla.
A flat stupid disc of egg with plain flat stupid ingredients that everyone always has. It would be harder to come up with an omelet dumber than this. Prepared ineptly as possible with eggs overcooked X5.
Since the history is murky I'll make up my own. My version is good as any. It all went down like this:
Phil Grassley, the cook at Buckhorn Exchange was the only man in Denver who could make an omelet. He was the only person who knew what the word meant. But he worked in a cow town. One associated with mining. The ingredients he had available were crudely basic.
One day Phil got sick.
The owner asked the busboy, "Do you know how to cook?"
The busboy said, "No."
The owner asked the busboy, "Do you learn quickly?"
Sensing an opportunity the busboy said, "Yes."
But that was a lie. This is the busboy at his best when put on the spot as the newest cook in Denver. The busboy winged it and since Denver population didn't know the difference between egg that is way overcooked and with plain Jane ingredients, and with nothing to compare and contrast, the omelet was never corrected. We always had this Boy Scout camp out hack version of an omelet.
The busboy's name was Ricardo Montaldo Estevez Consuelo but everyone called him Ricky.
"So, Ricky, how do you make an omelet?"
"You get all the stuff and you chop it all up then you put it in a pan and turn on the stove then you break open eggs and scramble them all up then pour them in the pan then fold it in half then flip it on a plate."
Did I mention that Ricky is mentally handicapped?
He is a very enthusiastic worker.
Once he gets this cook thing nailed it could suit him the rest of his life.
Ricky did exactly as he said. Phil Grassley died of Sino Moon Moth infection and the knowledge of proper omelets at Buckhorn Exchange died with him. Ricky took his place. Ricky continued producing his unschooled version and people continued to love it.
When you make one of these Denver omelets you automatically think of a million ways to improve it; a sauce, for example, tarragon or any other herb, any other cheese, recombination of vegetables, anything other than ham, say, shrimp, bacon or even hamburger. You think of improving technique. But Ricky did not. He stuck with what he knew. There he was at the Buckhorn Exchange in its beginning in the presence of outrageous wild protein and what does he pick? Ham. When he picks his pepper, what does he pick? Green bell pepper, the stupidest pepper of all.
Oh, I'm so used to eating elk and deer and yak and buffalo with pheasant and grouse and goose and puffins, with ostrich and iguana and boa constrictor and alligator and kangaroo that when I have the taste of boiled ham I just swoon.
It's exotic.
No. Ricky was retarded and this is the best he could do and it worked. Residents liked Ricky and encouraged him. Mine workers made sandwiches out of his omelets and took them into the mines for lunch. The Chinese railroad workers made them into egg foo young. Sheepherders made their own version with lamb, cattle ranchers made their own version with beef. Herpetologists made their own version with lizards. Cowboys wrapped their Denver omelets in a tortilla and ate them as they rode with extras in their saddlebags. The omelets are soft enough to be used as edible pillows to comfort disquieted children and yet abrasive enough to scrub the pots that cooked the beans.
Denver omelet is just one of those things that happened by way of absence of everything needed to do something properly. It was similar to living in Alaska today. Yes there is abundance all around but you have to go out there into it and create a civilization. The elements of Denver omelet exist on a plate by themselves just fine, but to chop them all up and enrobe them in egg is ... fancy. When there is nothing else like brie or lox or tarragon or gyros, bacon or jalapeño, when there are no other choices than onion and green bell pepper, cooked ham and cheese, and when you have no idea how to cook eggs, then a Denver omelet will do.
Denver omelet is among the rude things that people claim a place of origin. They're everywhere. Just this week I read about Detroit pizza. Every region has some weird food-peculiarity; Loco Moco, Hot Brown, chitlins, Hawaiian Haystack (Utah) and so on for endless examples.
This is the first omelet that I made. Back then at age eighteen I thought, "Gee, this is brilliant. The things people think of."
This is the last omelet that I made. The whole time I was thinking, "Man, this is dumb."
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