“Frtalja” a traditional spring herbal omelette 🥚🌿🌸

I think that everyone has his favourite food or at least a food that you can eat “every day” but you never get enough of it. For me this is “frtalja” or the herbal omelette that I would like to present with this post.

This herbal omelette is a traditional Slovenian dish, that originates from Friuli region (region in northern Italy). As a traditional dish, it is mostly present in the gastronomy of western Slovenia (which also borders on Italy).

There are different variations of this dish (I will present you my favourite one). The base of the dish are of course the eggs, combined with a little bit of milk, salt, bread crumbles, a little flour and a lot of fresh herbs. Each one can select his own herbs (at his own taste). Most popular ones are: fresh chives, lemon balm, feverfew, fennel herb, parsley, chard, sage, even nettle and more,…. Herbs are finely chopped and mixed with all other ingredients and then packed in a pan with little oil (like thick pancakes).

My mother-in-law makes a variant, where she substitutes the bread crumbs with flour and makes a quite dense mixture, that she then bakes in the oil. Here omelette is higher, very crunchy on the outside and tender from the inside. It is also very good, but since it is grassier, I eat it only on special occasions. 😊
Some add pieces of ham or prosciutto, and cheese, to the herbal omelets , but I do prefer it with herbs only.

For my version of the “frtalja” I’ve used:

4 eggs
milk (as needed)
a cup of bread crumbles
a tablespoon of flour
salt
olive oil
Feverfew: very specific taste, bitter, that is why I’m using it in smaller quantities. I’ve read that this plant was well known already in antiquity, when a story circulated that a Greek man miraculously healed himself with it after falling from the roof of the Parthenon.