almost every morning for my son and myself. When I told him I was going to write a cookbook, Kelly immediately said, “You should put in our frittatas! You’re the one who made them up!” I am the only author of the frittata in my son’s mind, but you can be the author of your own version very, very easily. You can make them with almost anything you have on hand. The base ingredients are eggs, milk or cream, and some kind of cheese. Once you get the technique and concept down there is no stopping you from an endless variety of frittatas.
Cook’s note : What is left over from the previous night’s dinner is normally what ends up in the breakfast— asparagus to roast chicken come back alive in this simple baked omelet with a great Italian name.
Serves 4
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 leek stalk (light part only), thinly sliced
½ cup fresh peas, blanched and drained
6 large eggs
1 small bunch fresh mint, stems removed, torn into small pieces
Kosher salt and pepper, to taste
2 ounces goat cheese, crumbled
½ cup half-and-half
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Heat the oil in a large ovenproof sauté pan over medium heat. Add leek and sauté until soft, then add peas and cook for 2–3 minutes more.
Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, beat the eggs with ½ cup of half-and-half.
Add the eggs and half the mint to the pan, season with salt and pepper, and cook, lifting the edges with a spatula to allow the uncooked eggs to flow to the bottom. When the frittata is partly cooked (7–10 minutes), sprinkle on the goat cheese and transfer the pan to the oven.
Bake for 8–10 minutes until puffed and golden. Remove and allow to cool slightly. Garnish with the remaining mint to taste and serve.
What’s Love Got to Do with It?
At home, when you make those favorite cookies (or other special dish) that you meticulously copied down the recipe for while your grandmother (or other special person) whipped them up for you, do they taste the way you remembered?
Whole companies are inspired by grandmothers’ secret recipes, and internationally renowned chefs (even and especially the surly ones who have boastfully elevated food to high art) credit their grandmothers’ humbler hearths as their inspirations; when asked about those original childhood food moments, eyes roll back just a bit and smiles slowly spread across serious faces as food is recalled that was lovingly made for us alone, with results that often can’t be replicated.
One of my best girlfriends tells me often about her childhood spent in her grandparents’ basement kitchen (I never knew why the kitchen was in the basement) watching the preparation of all kinds of masterful Italian dishes. She made meatballs with her grandmother, who schooled her on how the meat should feel as it is kneaded— like a woman’s breast, her grandmother would say. My friend now will spend the better part of a day recreating that recipe. She is proud of the way the meatballs turn out, but she still admits they don’t taste as good as in her grandmother’s basement kitchen. Why is that?
I think about this mystery a lot. In fact, I talk about it a lot in relation to the recipe we use to make our cheese at Belle Chèvre. Ours isn’t a secret recipe, as the making of goat cheese is a relatively simple exercise, but I confidently believe that our cheese tastes the way it does because of how we make it, because of the emotion and the pride we put into it when we are making it, and— please forgive the sentimentality of this— because of the love with which we make it.
I feel silly in a way writing about this because it seems so trite to say.
Kung Fu Panda learns that there is no secret in the secret recipe.
Before I had any ideas of formulating this mystery into a theory I went so far as to say that my grandmother’s chicken and dumplings would be a memory that I wouldn’t muddy. My grandmother was my definition of love, and she tangibly and magically whipped her love into a round fluffy form we all know as a biscuit. But that biscuit wasn’t just a biscuit and even my eight-year-old self recognized that.
I vowed quite some time ago not to try to emulate her chicken and dumplings, nor do I eat anyone else’s. I realize that stance is probably over the top, but it is where I am with protecting that particular memory and that particular kind of love.
Perfect Fried Eggs
Serves 1 or 2
2 teaspoons butter or olive oil (or bacon grease)
2 large eggs
Salt (fine sea salt preferred) and pepper
Place a 7- or 8-inch nonstick frying pan (I like a well-seasoned cast-iron pan) over medium heat and add butter. When the butter has foamed and the foam begins to subside, carefully break and slip the eggs into the pan. Reduce the heat a bit and cook slowly until the whites are firm, about 3 minutes. Use a nonstick spatula to turn the eggs over gently. Let them cook on the second side for about 30 seconds. Carefully lift the eggs out of the pan and place on warmed plates. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Fried Eggs and Learning to Cook to Please
I kind of see fried eggs the same way that Forrest Gump’s friend Bubba saw shrimp. There are so many ways to enjoy them— fried egg sandwich, fried egg on a tortilla, fried egg on sautéed greens with bacon. I have even had a fried egg on a pizza and served on a bowl of steaming soup!
My mother always made the fried eggs when I was growing up. Saturday mornings were filled with sounds of eggs cracking against the side of the skillet and then landing, sizzling, on the hot surface. One morning I wanted to make them— create for myself those splendid sounds and the resultant oozing yellow on the plate— and I received my first fried egg lesson. She told me I did a good job (a wonderful thing for a girl to hear from her mother), and I suppose it was true because from then on it was my job to fry the eggs. I didn’t take this job lightly because my mother liked her fried eggs just so. The yoke had to be runny but the whites absolutely cooked through, and with one flip.
I didn’t find it easy to achieve the perfect fried egg, and sometimes this task would produce no small amount of anxiety. There was so much that could go wrong! The yoke could break just after entering the pan (maddening!) or during the flip. The whites might not be all the way finished when the yoke starts to harden— that is not good. It makes me nervous just to think about it!
I most often use butter or olive oil but my mother always fried eggs in the grease left in the pan after frying bacon. It produces a very obvious smoky flavor for the eggs, and little flecks of bacon are seized in the egg whites that make them very delicious. If you aren’t concerned about the fat, then please use bacon grease for a wonderful treat.
Sweet Potato Hash
I love the idea of a hash for breakfast, even though the corned beef hash seen on most menus tends to scare me a bit. I will often make a hash the morning after I have made a delicious roasted pork loin, and cube several thick leftover slices to put into the hash. If you don’t have a pork loin to use, bacon is a good substitute— or, for that matter, any
