On my walk to work in the morning I considered what was in my kitchen. Maybe that’s a bit odd, but there you go. I had eggs that I knew needed to get used and I’d decided it would be a meatless Tuesday, which is less trendy sounding than Meatless Monday but I prefer the idea of Hamburger Monday to Meatless Monday therefore, a non-trendy name for not consuming meat on Tuesday. Anyway, I considered what to make with the need to use them eggs in my fridge and I decided on a frittata. Fate must have agreed with me as I arrived at work to a president, from my co-worker who has chickens, of 6 VERY fresh eggs! I figured if I didn’t eat eggs today God might smite me down.
On the walk home from work I re-considered my options and solidified my frittata plan. Frittatas are typically cooked in a saucepan and then transferred to the oven but I decided to go with a different method. I’m lucky enough to have inheritated these two amazing small, single serving casserole dishes from my Teta. They also have tops and thus can become a simple storage device. I decided that I’d make enough for two frittatas to bring one for lunch tomorrow.
Kale and Fennel Walnut Frittata – from my brain via what fate intended when six eggs arrived on my desk this morning.
Ingredients:
- 3 eggs - check
- ½ tsp chili powder - check
- ½ tsp paprika - check
- 2 cloves garlic, minced - check
- 1/3 cup minced fennel - check
- 1/3 cup grated parm - check
- Salt and pepper -check
- 1/8 cup heavy cream - check
- ½ tsp lemon juice - check
- ¼ cup minced kale – check
- 1/3 cup walnut pieces - check
Step 1: Read my nerdy science book (Cooking for Geeks by Jeff Potter) and learn that the “order of operations” is important. So you know that 2 cloves garlic, minced means mince the cloves after you measure out the portion while 1/3 cup minced fennel means mince the fennel and THEN measure out the portion. WOAH! SCIENCE!
Step 2: Preheat the oven to 350F. Take all refrigerated ingredients out of the fridge. Cooking with ingredients at room temperature makes all of the reactions and bonding better so your food tastes better (this is usually the case but not always).
Step 3: Put the garlic and fennel into your Cuisinart grinder/mincer thing and mince. Then use the mincer to mince the kale. Grate your parm. Generally prep all of your ingredients. During the prep stage, toast the walnut pieces and allow to cool before using them (about 2 min in the oven and one or two minutes cooling). Also toast (I’m not sure I’d call it toasting but I can’t think of a better term) the fennel and garlic in the oven about a minute.
Step 4: Crack the eggs (on a flat surface, not on the edge of the bowl) and whisk together all of the ingredients. Pour half the mixture into one casserole dish and the other half in the second casserole dish. Top with some freshly grated parm.
Step 5: Bake 15ish minutes, until just crispy on top, while you clean up the kitchen. While you were mincing, you probably considered “why don’t I always use this handy dandy machine thing” and while you cleaning you remember why.
Step 6: Consume, feel free to have a little bit of hot sauce on the side.
This was good. I tried really hard to taste everything separately and maybe that’s why I couldn’t. I couldn’t really taste the chili powder or paprika and my untrained palette knows that I liked it best with the hot sauce (don’t worry, I mostly resisted using too much hot sauce). I did notice subtle flavors now and again and it was very filling and delicious. Maybe I needed to not focus so hard, and increase the amount of spices. I think I’d also make it without the walnuts. To be fair, I wanted them to be pine nuts but I don’t have any pine nuts. Turns out that while in a soup a little spice goes a LONG way, in an egg a little spice goes significantly smaller of a way.
Overall I give this foodsperiment a +5 for taste, +5 for ease, +5 for freshness, +5 for final cleanup, and +5 for tomorrow’s lunch! Happy Sperimenting!
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