I love to be alone in my kitchen, fridge full of stuff, with time to create. No pressure of time or expectations. This fine morning, I’m listening to my current favorite podcast, Smartless, and thinking about the fact that my vegetable drawer is full of fresh produce and in 24 hours I’m leaving for four days. How do two people eat a full head of broccoli, two bunches of green onions, four jalapeno peppers, and a pound of asparagus in one day?Frittata, that’s how.
Over a cup of coffee, I visualized my path, which is how I do most things: Chop, roast, bake. Then I started mentally adding steps: Chop everything up in medium chunks, roast it to a tender char; toss it all into my wooden chopping bowl and chop some more; throw in some fresh herbs, eggs, and slip it into a savory pie crust and bake. Frittata for dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow, and then we hit the road.
After the chopping, I scanned the spice cupboard….I grabbed dill, something called 21 Seasoning Salute from Trader Joe’s, turmeric, and some smoked paprika.
I slivered and added five cloves of garlic and a small handful of oil-packed sundried tomatoes (large size; they’ll get chopped after roasting). Into the chopped veg it went. I tossed it all with olive oil, salt and pepper, and the spices listed above and roasted at 425 – hot and fast is the rule for roasting green plant matter. Took about 18 minutes.Time to think about that savory pie crust. Ask, and Google will provide. “Savory parmesan pie crust” brought up the usual umpteen choices; turns out, a Keto recipe caught my eye not for the Keto element, but for this reason: four ingredients. That’s one bowl, and no pastry cloth, rolling pin, or headache. Almond flour, butter, parmesan, egg. Basta.
Out of the oven, I chopped the veggies into smaller bits and then added a couple of beaten eggs, a little more salt, fresh basil from my window herb garden, and slid it all into the pie crust I put together while the veggies were roasting. Note: I didn’t bother to pre-cook the pie crust before filling it, which was actually a mistake; when I realized this fact, a bit too late, I kept going, wondering if it would be a critical error. Turns out, it was fine. I left it in a bit longer than the 15 minutes or so noted in the recipe, but it was fully cooked and even perfect on the bottom.
Oh, speaking of the bottom – I laid a few slices of Swiss cheese on the crust before adding the veg. Into the oven at 350 for about 25 minutes. I kept my eye on the crust and when it was fairly browned, I took it out.
And that’s how you clean out the refrigerator before going on vacation.
Buon appetite.
