Frittata: First Draft

Cooking is a lot like writing/reading a novel. The ingredients are like the characters and the steps are the story lines. When you don’t have a recipe you are writing your own stories. When you have a recipe to follow you are reading someone else’s finished product.

I think one of the reasons that people don’t cook something new is perhaps they think that the recipes that they have used sprouted fully formed from some master chef’s imagination. Well, somehow I doubt that that is the case. It takes many drafts before the recipe is ready to be published.

I didn’t want to put any recipes on this blog for people to read that I myself had not put through a stringent drafting process, and had several very tasty and consistent final drafts. However I realize that this is the wrong way to think about this. I would be habitualizing the same problem that I am railing against if I did that.

Since I’ve decided that you all deserve to see the whole processes I will walk through the steps I took last night to make a frittata. The end resulting dinner was fine tasting but not nothing special and the visual appearance was less wonderful than I was hoping for.

So without further ado…Spring Vegetable Frittata – Take One:

Frittata is kind of like a quiche, kind of like an omelet, and kind of like a German pancake. It is also one of the easier foods to make...in my opinion. It is certainly easier than all of the afore mentioned food items that it is similar to.

One of the great things about frittatas is that you don’t really need to plan them into your week. As long as you have eggs you have everything you need to make a frittata…guaranteed. This is true because you can put basically anything into a frittata. Some good combinations are: Bacon pieces-green onions-Swiss cheese, Pees-cooked chicken-cheddar, spaghetti noodles-cooked hamburger-peppers-mozzarella, Feta-Black Olives-Capers-Diced cooked potatoes. Just open your fridge and look to see what you have available. Any starch veggie and cooked meat will work fine. All cheeses are good, though some are better than others.

For this frittata I decided to use some angel hair noodles, Asparagus spears, diced ham, chopped onion, artichoke hearts, mozzarella, feta cheese, garlic, oil, and some spices. And of course, eggs.

I turned my oven on to 250 degrees because I figured that eggs are pretty easy to cook and didn’t need to have a high temp.

I did not have any leftover noodles in my fridge, so I made some to start off. While I was waiting for the noodle water to boil in my large pasta pot, I chopped up an Onion and then sautéed it in a small frying pan/sauté pan with some Garlic in Olive Oil.

Then I added the Noodles to the boiling water and cooked them until they were fully cooked. And then I drained them fully and added some Olive Oil to the drained noodles to keep them from caking together.

Then I cracked 6 Eggs and scrambled them in a bowl. To the eggs I added some leftover Artichoke Hearts, some leftover Diced Ham, some fresh Asparagus Spears snapped into 2 inch pieces, and the sautéed onion/garlic mixture. I also added some spices and herbs to the egg mixture: Marjoram, Paprika, Salt, Pepper, Oregano.

Note: You don’t need a knife to prepare asparagus for the dinner pot. If you hold the asparagus in both hands near the cut –off end you can break off the woody end and the remaining spear should be fairly tender. For this meal I just snapped the remaining stalks into bite sized pieces using the same technique all the way up the spears.

The oven is ready and now so are all of the ingredients. I took out my cast iron skillet and placed the noodles in the bottom of it to act as a kind of base. Then I poured the egg mix over the noodles and finally I added the Cheeses to the top. At this point I realized that there was not enough egg as the whole thing looked fairly dry so I quickly scrambled 2 more Eggs and poured those on top and placed the whole thing in the oven.

After 25 minutes I checked the frittata and it really wasn’t cooking to I turned up the oven to 350. After an additional 20 minutes the frittata still wasn’t done so I put the oven put to 400. Then it cooked. It was done about 10 minutes later.

The result was stuck in the pan, when it should be easily plated as you turn the pan upside down with a plate on the top like a lid. It did eventually come out with only a little that stuck into my skillet – this may have only been because my skillet is not well seasoned.

Joe and I ate the frittata. It was good but as I said earlier not great and required some condiments. Joe added hot sauce and I used mayo – my favorite condiment.

I will work on this until I think it is just how I would serve it to the people on the Food Network's: Nest Food network Star.

The frittata servings have:

P.S. Food journal for yesterday: Breakfast-Banana and Red Bull. Lunch-Chicken Pot Pie from Pinkus and Pepsi. After work Snack- BLT from the Library. Dinner-1 Serving for Frittata and Red Bull.

Exercise: Nope-missed my workout time and had to get to the grocery store. I promise to go today.