frittata

It's our busy time of year, when most of us in the department put in a week or two (or three, maybe more) of ten, twelve, and fourteen hour days, plus weekends, all leading up to move in. I'm not saying this as a complaint. I love my job, or else I wouldn't keep doing it. I'm just saying that most nights this week I've gotten home kind of tired and a little late.

And I've eaten pizza rolls for dinner for four nights out of the last five.

I bought a giant, family sized bag knowing that I would be too tired to cook anything, and that they can be microwaved quickly. I'm not alone in this. One of my coworkers bought ten or fifteen Healthy Choice dinners last time they were on sale and stockpiled them in the freezer, and another said that she's been cycling through the McDonald's dollar menu on her way home. (Names have been omitted to protect the innocent and their poor eating habits.)

Yesterday, though, I realized that I would be able to go home reasonably close to five today, so I paged through a couple of cookbooks before bed, decided to give the soup cookbook a rest for a little while, and found a frittata recipe in one of my appetizer books. I've never made a frittata before, but my mom did when I was little, so I was intrigued.

Granted, I'm pretty sure I never ate my mom's frittata, but that's because I didn't eat most foods that weren't made of cheese. It's no reflection on my mom's cooking.

Frittata seems pretty easy, but I blew it a little tiny bit at the end. We'll get to that, but first, there was mis en place with artichoke hearts:



leeks that were smaller than my fist:



and six eggs that needed to be beaten with tarragon, salt, and pepper:



Once that was done I started melting some butter:



and then cooking down the leeks:



Leeks, by the way, get really soft when they cook down, and lose all of that crunchy disgusting onion/celery texture that I hate so much. Anyway, once they were softened, I added the egg mixture and the artichoke hearts, and let it cook away on low:



This is where my frittata went slightly awry. According to the cookbook, I should let it cook until the bottom was set and the top was slightly liquid, then put it under the broiler for a few minutes until the top was done. My 8 inch fry pan (the size the recipe said to use) can't go under the broiler because the handle has a rubber grip, but the cookbook said that if a broiler was not available I could just let it keep cooking on the stovetop until the top was set, too, so that's what I did.

The cookbook did not mention that it takes approximately forever, and that it leaves the bottom right on the edge of burned:



It wasn't inedible or anything:



but there's a little bit of an almost too browned taste, and some of the leeks turned into tiny black flakes. I've since read online that you can also slide the frittata out of the pan when the bottom is done, then flip it over back into the pan so that you can cook the top for a few minutes, too. I'll try that next time.

In the meantime, I have some leftover frittata to eat with my pizza rolls tomorrow.