Summer Vegetable Frittata

Wow, that was quite a long blogging break I took. I felt guilty every day for not blogging. (I was on vacation in North Carolina with my family. It was fun. I was too busy boogie-boarding to blog.)   I know a frittata isn’t the most super exciting foodstuff I could trot out after a bit of time away, but they are quite easy to make once you’ve got the technique down, and they are quite useful in using up extra summer vegetables. They keep well and can be served hot, at room temperature, or cold, so they make great next-day leftovers. (Frittata sandwiches are good.) Frittatas are just open-faced omelettes – or maybe I should say that omelettes are just folded frittatas? (Although I went to a French culinary school, I tend to side with the Italians on most food-related historical matters.) Like omelettes, frittatas are lovely because you can put all sorts of things in them – stuff you have on hand, interesting stuff you find at the farmer’s market, leftover stuff. In this recipe, I use beet tops – don’t throw them away! They are delicious! (You can cook them like spinach or swiss chard, drizzle with a little extra virgin olive oil and a few drops of red wine vinegar, and eat hot or at room temperature.)

A (long) note about frying pans: I have my own method of making frittatas that may or may not be Italian-approved. I use a non-stick frying pan – I realize that a lot of people are wary of using non-stick because of the chemicals involved in making the pans, so if you’re one of those people, you can use a non-non-stick frying pan. Just note that you’ll have to use extra oil or cooking spray to keep the frittata from sticking to the bottom of your pan. (I have it in my mind that as long as I don’t cook food in non-stick pans over super-high heat or in a super-high oven, I’ll be OK. This may or may not be scientifically accurate, but it’s what I tell myself.)  You also must make sure that you pan is oven-proof – that is, that the handles are metal with no plastic whatsoever. Otherwise you’ll destroy both your pan and your oven, probably. And the smell of burning plastic is not yummy, not at all. You don’t need a special $90 frittata pan with hinges, or any other special equipment. In fact, I don’t even turn my frittatas, but you can if you like. (This will all become clear in a moment.) I prefer a thinner frittata, but if you like your frittatas a bit thicker, you can use a smaller-sized frying pan. You’ll have to cook your frittata a bit longer.

Last little note. Get yourself some good eggs. See in the picture how yellow the frittata is? That’s not photoshopped, my friends! It’s just the fine quality of the eggs, which I bought from a New Jersey farmer at my local farmer’s market. You will notice a huge difference in taste, color, and texture. I swear. Also – you don’t have to use the vegetables I did. Use whatever you want – spinach or chard instead of beet greens, heirloom tomatoes instead of cherry, any herb mix that tickles your fancy, peas…pretty much anything in season is good in a frittata. I used baby patty-pan squash that I sauteed first with a bit of oil and Thai chili-garlic sauce – I’ve shared the method with you below. Zucchini or yellow squash would be an excellent substitute.

Ingredients:
(For one 10-inch diameter frittata – serves 4 for breakfast, lunch, or dinner)

For the sauteed patty-pan squash:
1/2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil or coconut oil
2-3 baby patty-pan squash, sliced thinly
1 teaspoon (or more) Thai chili-garlic sauce (you can use smooth Sriracha, but I prefer the thicker chili-garlic sauce) or other hot sauce with 1/2 clove of finely chopped garlic

For the frittata:
6 fresh eggs
1 tablespoon milk (skim milk is OK)
3-4 large beet green leaves, tough stems discarded, washed and chopped
3/4 cup cherry or grape tomatoes
1-2 tablespoons mixed chopped herbs – I used a combination of basil, mint, parsley, and chives
Sauteed patty-pan squash (see above)
Other vegetables or greens, as desired (I threw in some arugula flowers from my garden) (optional)
1 tablespoon Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (optional)
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil (or more, see note above about pans)
Kosher salt and freshly-ground pepper

Special Equipment: 10-inch diameter non-stick oven-proof frying pan (see note about pans above), a rubber spatula

Procedure:

For the sauteed patty-pan squash:

1. Heat the oil in a small, heavy sauté pan over very high heat until hot, but not smoking.
2. Add the patty-pan squash and sauté over high heat until the squash is browned in spots, but still a bit firm – 1-2 minutes.
3. Turn the heat down to medium and stir in the chili-garlic sauce (or add the garlic clove and the hot sauce), stir for 30 seconds, then immediately remove from heat.
4. Cool before adding to the frittata “batter”.

For the frittata:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
2. In a large bowl, beat the eggs with the milk and a generous pinch of salt until the eggs are uniform (i.e., you can’t distinguish between the yolks and the whites).
3. Stir in the beet greens, tomatoes, herbs, cooled squash, any other vegetable your heart desires, and the optional cheese. Add a few grindings of black pepper. Stir gently to combine evenly. (Some of the heavier vege like the tomatoes will sink to the bottom. This is OK.)
4. Heat the olive oil over medium heat in your skillet. When hot (but not smoking – never smoking) add the egg mixture.
5. Stir the mixture with a rubber spatula until the mixture starts to set, taking care to distribute the vegetables evenly if they’ve migrated to one side of the pan or another. Stop stirring when you see the edges of the eggs start to set. This will take a varying amount of time depending on your pan and your heat source.
6. When the eggs have set 3-4 inches in from the edge of the pan (i.e., the eggs are set around the outside, but there is still a round jiggly bit in the middle), remove from the stovetop and stick in the oven. At this point, if you’re using a smaller pan, you might want to consider flipping the frittata. (I never do because it’s a pain and the egg mixture sets up just fine without flipping, but it’s up to you.)
7. Cook the frittata in the oven until the center is set. This will also take a varying amount of time – start checking after 5 minutes. When you shake the pan, you should see absolutely no jiggle action in the center of the egg mixture.
8. Carefully remove the pan from the oven (remember the handle will be super hot) and immediately slide the frittata from the pan onto a cutting board or plate. (This is where using a non-stick pan is useful.) If not using non-stick, you may need to loosen the edges of the frittata with your rubber spatula.
9. Cut the frittata into wedges and serve hot or at room temperature. Extra hot sauce on the side is nice.

Bacon Muffins

The Bacon Muffin is brought to you as part of a series on Brooklyn Farmhouse that showcases ye olde recipes from antique cookbooks. Sometimes recipes in old cookbooks can be a bit tricky, with unclear measurements (“a teacup”) or instructions. I have solved that problem for you by culling through my soon-to-be-vast collection of antique cookbooks, testing the interesting recipes I find, and sharing those recipes with you.

I found The Bacon Muffin in Meta Given’s The Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking, first published in 1947.  This cookbook was once my grandmother’s. It’s such an interesting book – one can see the “better living through chemistry” mindset beginning to form, with lots of information about vitamins and minerals (“When you think of Thiamin…”) and lots of recipes for molded salads. But the book still has its feet firmly planted in an older way of eating, with an entire chapter devoted to game (“Muskrat Fricassee”) and a chapter called “Homemaker’s Handbook for Stretching the Food Dollar”, with sections like: Make it Yourself, Choose a Dependable Market, Use Cash-and-Carry Service (i.e., don’t rely on credit), Have Your Own Garden, and Make Use of Leftovers. And Ms. Given is clearly a bacon lover. What’s not to love about this book?

The Bacon Muffin is really more like a cross between a biscuit and a muffin. With bacon in it. The texture is a bit courser than what I normally think of as a muffin, but the batter isn’t thick enough to roll out; it’s rather like a drop biscuit that you bake in a muffin tin. The only ingredient substitution I made (aside from my Note, below), is light brown sugar for white sugar. Feel free to use either.

Note: The two slices of bacon the recipe calls for only made one tablespoon of bacon fat for me, although the recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of bacon fat. I simply added 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil to the 1 tablespoon of warm bacon fat, although you could certainly add melted butter or another type of oil, or just cook up another couple of slices of bacon, eat the bacon, and use the fat. The amount of bacon fat you get from a given slice of bacon will vary depending on the type of bacon you use.  Basically, you want 2 tablespoons of some kind of liquid fat.

Ingredients:
2 slices bacon, chopped finely
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons light brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup whole milk
2 tablespoons melted bacon drippings (see Note, above)

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 425ºF. Grease (or spray with cooking spray) a 12-cup muffin tin, or line with paper liners.
2. Pan fry the chopped bacon in a small, heavy saucepan until crispy. Remove with a slotted spoon and let cool slightly.
3. In a large bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, salt, and light brown sugar together until well-combined. Add bacon pieces and stir until they are well distributed and coated in the flour mixture.
4. Lightly beat the egg in a medium bowl. Add the milk and the bacon drippings and stir to combine.
5. Add the milk mixture to the dry ingredients all at once, stir quickly until just combined, then stir 5-6 more times until well blended. Do not stir until smooth.
6. Drop batter by spoonfuls into the greased muffin tin, filling each cup 2/3 full.
7. Bake for 20 minutes, or until lightly browned.
8. Serve hot. Maybe with some maple butter?

Makes 12 biscuit-y muffins.

A pile of whole wheat blueberry-oat scones

This is a recipe that comes out of an effort to eat less white flour, combined with a craving for scones. Although they contain quite a bit of butter, the scones are still fairly healthy with the addition of whole wheat flour, oats, blueberries, and yogurt. A bit of powdered ginger doesn’t overwhelm the flavor of the butter and the blueberries, but adds a little je ne sais quoi to the baked scones. I confess that I ate more than one right after they came out of the oven. (I guess if you eat too many scones it kind of negates the point of making a “healthier” scone, but what can I say? They are good.)

This recipe is adapted from the fantastic Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour (I used King Arthur white whole wheat flour), whole wheat pastry flour, or all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons brown sugar (dark or light)
1 teaspoon powdered ginger root
7 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup milk (lowfat is OK)
1 egg
2 tablespoons yogurt or milk
1 teaspoon high-quality vanilla extract
1 cup frozen blueberries tossed in 1 teaspoon flour
1/2 cup rolled oats

Whole wheat blueberry-oat scones cooling on a rack

Procedure:

1. Preheat your oven to 425ºF. Line a baking sheet with a Silpat, with parchment, or spray with cooking spray. Set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, brown sugar, and ginger root.
3. Cut the butter into the flour mixture using a pastry blender, two knives, or your fingers.
4. In a small bowl, whisk together the milk, the egg, the yogurt (or additional milk), and the vanilla extract.
5. Add the liquid mixture to the flour-butter mixture, and stir until just combined. Stir in the blueberries.
6. Spread the oats on your work surface. Gather the dough mixture together into a disk an place on top of the oats. Pat the disk out to about 1/2 inch thickness (you can make the dough disk thicker if you prefer your scones thicker) and press down into the oats. Flip the disk over and press down into remaining oats. (You want a light coating of oats on both the top and bottom of the disk.)
7. Cut the dough disk into 8 wedges and transfer to the prepared baking sheet.
8. Bake the scones for 12-15 minutes, or until they are light golden brown. Serve warm.

This recipe for Sally Lunn (yes, that’s the name of the recipe!) is from the Francis Parkinson Keyes Cookbook, dated 1955. Who was Francis Parkinson Keyes? Well, apparently she was a novelist and a senator’s wife and had political leanings that left a little something to be desired – which is why her novels haven’t really stood the test of time. Aside from this, her cookbook has some odd little gems and so I’m going to stick with her recipes and not so much her politics or her novels.

Sally Lunn is a sort of white bread, sort of brioche-y, sort of savory, and sort of sweet. It apparently dates from the 1680s. It’s a bit of an oddity, really. Hard to classify. But so delicious. It’s a really easy yeast bread to make and only requires one rise, right in the pan. I used a 12-cup Bundt pan, but you could use a tube pan or even two loaf pans. I also used cardamom sugar to top the cake-bread-brioche, but feel free to use regular sugar (or vanilla sugar would be nice, too).

Sally Lunn

Crunchy, sugar-y top of Sally Lunn

Ingredients:

One 1/4-ounce (7 gram) package instant yeast
2 cups whole milk, heated to almost boiling, then cooled to lukewarm (about 110ºF)
4 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled slightly
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon cardamom sugar (or regular sugar)
Cooking spray

Special Equipment: 12-cup Bundt pan (or tube pan of equivalent size)

Procedure:

1. Spray the Bundt pan with cooking spray and set aside.
2. Dissolve the yeast in the milk. Add the butter, flour, eggs, and salt, and beat with a wooden spoon until the batter is smooth.
3. Pour the batter into the greased Bundt pan and cover with plastic wrap. Set in a warm, draft free place for about 1 1/2 hours, or until the batter has doubled in bulk.
4. Preheat the oven to 450ºF.
5. Sprinkle the Sally Lunn with the sugar and bake for 20 minutes, or until the top is golden brown.
6. Cool in pan for 5 minutes, give a the pan a good rap on the counter, and invert onto a cooling wrack.
7. Serve warm with jam, honey, cheese, or any number of delicious savory or sweet accompaniments.

Cut Sally Lunn

I use White Lily flour, which is flour made from soft winter wheat, specially formulated for biscuit-making. It’s a little hard to find outside of the South (I always pick up lots of bags of it when I’m down South), so you can substitute all-purpose flour. The real secret to good biscuits is not handling them too much – you don’t want gluten to form, so only knead the dough as long as it takes to just combine the ingredients.

Ingredients:
2 cups White Lily flour (or all-purpose)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon rubbed sage
1/4 cup (2 oz.) homemade butter (or store-bought), very cold and cut into small pieces
1/2 cup white cheddar cheese, grated
3/4 cup (or more) homemade buttermilk (or store-bought)

Special equipment: a 2-inch biscuit cutter, a 9-inch cake pan or cookie sheet
Makes 8-9 biscuits

Procedure:

1. Preheat the oven to 500°.
2. Lightly grease (or spray with cooking spray) a 9-inch cake pan.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sage.
4. Cut in the butter using a pastry cutter or two knives. The butter pieces should range in size from a large pea to a little lentil.
5. Stir in the cheese.
6. Add the buttermilk, gently stirring until the dough starts to come together. You will have a fairly wet dough.
7. Turn the dough out on a lightly floured surface, and knead gently for one to two turns. Roll or pat out to about 3/4-inch thickness.
8. Using a floured 2-inch biscuit cutter, stamp out as many biscuits as you can, taking care not to twist the biscuit cutter into the dough. Re-roll the scraps as necessary.
9. Place the biscuits into the cake pan, letting the sides touch.
10. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until biscuits are golden brown.

You can substitute raisins for the dried apricots, or substitute any other dried fruit you like. Just cut them up into small pieces.You could also add a bit of cinnamon or nutmeg to the mixture if that appeals to you.

Makes about 4 cups.

Ingredients:
3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1/2 cup sliced almonds
6-8 whole pitted dates, finely chopped (about 1/4 cup chopped)
6-8 whole dried apricots, finely chopped (about 1/4 cup chopped)
1/2 cup walnuts, pounded (with a meat mallet or the back of a frying pan) to a course powder
1/4 cup flax seeds
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup wheat germ
Pinch sea salt

Procedure:

Mix all ingredients with your hands until the dried fruit is evenly coated and the mixture is evenly distributed. Seal in an airtight container.

For Sven.

Special Equipment: a 12-muffin tin, muffin tin liners
Makes 12 muffins.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup walnut oil
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup pure pumpkin purée
1/2 cup old-fashioned rolled oats

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 400°. Line a 12 cup muffin pan with paper muffin liners.
2. Whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.
3. In a large bowl, whisk together the brown sugar and eggs until sugar is fully incorporated. Slowly add oil and vanilla and continue whisking until blended.
4. Whisk in pumpkin and combine until mostly smooth (a few small lumps will remain).
5. Gently fold in flour in two batches until just combined. Fold in oats.
6. Fill muffin cups three-quarters full. Bake 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
7. Cool 5 minutes in muffin pan, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.