Sunday, October 21, 2007

Potato Bacon Frittata

As a young professional, starting out on her own, I didn't have much in the way of cookware. My first pot and pan were actually hand me downs from my husband's bachelor kitchen. His bachelor kitchen was comprised of what we call "survival gear." He had exactly one pot, one pan and one bowl. Plus a knife, a fork and a spoon and two plastic plates. No, he didn't cook much. I made him chicken parmigiana on that measly bit of equipment on the first night we actually spent time a good amount of time together.

Over the years, I've accumulated a few pieces of cookware. The first few years were pretty lean and about the best I could afford was whatever non-stick cookware happened to be on sale at our local Target. As they say, you get what you pay for and I must have gone through three or four sets of sub-par cookware in the last few years.

I've always longed for a good set of oven safe, stainless steel cookware but never could afford the All Clad that I salivated over. But serendipity smiled on me this summer. Thanks to a lovely anniversary gift certificate from my parents as well as a massive sale at Macy*s, I was able to get myself a great set of Cuisinart stainless steel cookware. It's my first set of stainless steel cookware and if the reviews are correct, this set is only second to All Clad. Over the few weeks that I've been using them, I've been very satisfied and I predict that my cookware and I shall make many happy meals together.

In the spirit of trying to use up some of the random leftover ingredients I have laying about, I decided to make a frittata for my lunch tomorrow. I'd never made a frittata before, mostly because I never had oven safe cookware. But now that I do have oven safe cookware -- and had a massive need to make some kind of edible lunch for work -- I decided to experiment.

  • 1 large russet potato, baked and diced into 1/2 inch chunks
  • 2 slices thick cut bacon, diced
  • 1 shallot, minced
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • 3 eggs
  • 1/4 c milk
  • 2 tbsp Parmesan cheese

Pre-cook your potato by scrubbing it and either boiling it, baking it or nuking it. Let the potato cool and dice into 1/2 inch chunks. Whether you keep the skin or not is completely up to you.

Preheat the oven to 350F

In an 8" oven safe skillet, fry diced bacon over medium heat until the bacon is crisp. Remove bacon from pan with slotted spoon. Sweat the shallot and garlic clove in the rendered bacon fat until translucent and fragrant. Add the potatoes and bacon back into the pan and stir to coat the potatoes in the bacon fat. Season with salt and fresh ground black pepper.

In a separate container, beat the eggs and milk together. Stir in the parmesan cheese and season the egg mixture with salt and pepper. Add the egg mixture directly to the skillet. Place the skillet in the oven and bake for 20 minutes.

Remove from oven and let cool and set for 15 minutes. Remove to plate and cut into wedges to serve warm.

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Overall, I'm pretty happy with how this little experiment came out. Like most things, it's important to season all elements of the dish well or else it will turn out bland. I was a little concerned that the eggs wouldn't release from the pan easily or would burn but the gratuitous use of bacon fat prevented that. If you're cholesterol conscious, you could pour off the bacon fat and replace it with olive oil or something but I'm a firm believer in the power of bacon to make just about anything better. However the bacon element does make this a little strong so I'll be eating this with rice. (Yeah, double starch. I know, I know. Carbs are the enemy... unless you're me in which case they're your bestest friends in the entire food world. YUMMY.)

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