Month: September 2009

When you have a refrigerator full of vegetables, a few eggs and some cheese, be nice to yourself and make a frittata. Or be even nicer and invites some friends for brunch.

Frittata is essentially an egg & cheese custard filled with sauteed vegetables, and, if you like, sausage, chicken or meat.  Think of it as a quiche without the crust. And, because it lacks the crust, you don’t have to make one, or (heaven forfend), use a packaged pie crust.

Here’s what you do. Heat the oven to 450 and assemble all your ingredients. Sunday morning, I used two medium onions, three garlic cloves, one red and one green bell pepper, one zucchini, three small yellow squash, and a handfull of cherry tomatoes, all chopped into quarter-inch dice – except for the tomatoes which were halved and the garlic – finely chopped.

Using an iron skillet over a medium high flame, I heated two tbs olive oil and added the onion and garlic, sweating them until soft. Then the bell peppers, stirring for a few minutes and finally the squash. When the squash was slightly soft, I added two tbs of my house rub (a combination of salt, paprika, cayenne, garlic powder, oregano and thyme) and 3 tbs finely chopped basil.

While this was simmering, I whipped seven eggs with about 1/4 cup heavy cream and grated some Emmentaler Swiss and some parmigiana cheese. Use the cheese you have on hand, including cheddar, colby, provolone, muenster – cheeses with character but not too strong. If you use gorgonzola or blue cheese, be ready for the frittata to be overpowered. Good, but overpowered.

Now, stirring the eggs into the vegetable mixture, I folded in the Emmentaler , letting the mixture set for a minute while topping with the cut cherry tomatoes. Then into the hot oven for a 10 – 15 minutes until the center firms up and start to set. Turning on the broiler, I added the grated parmigiana, cooking until the cheese bubbled and started to brown. Removing the frittata, it should cool for a few minutes on the stove top. The sides will shrink a bit and you can cut the frittata like a pie in wedges and serve.

Frittata is lovely and filling as a main dish accompanied by some fruit, maybe cantaloupe or honeydew with blueberries.

It feeds eight brunch guests easily, or two for a couple of days.

Though in most cases a blog about what someone is eating day after day might be tedious, for a cook, a caterer and a food-obsessive, it may be of some interest. In my case, I have a reasonably low tolerance for eating the same thing over and over, so I can guarantee some variety. Dishes I prepare for others will also figure in this, so there will be food that is more complex. I like to experiment with interesting combinations of ingredients, so there’s a chance this could interest more than just me. And, Cooking Light did something similar in a six-week exploration of locally-grown food from Grow Alabama.

So please indulge me, at least for a few entries.

This morning, for example, I made a simple omelet for breakfast. I sliced four regular white mushrooms and sauteed them in olive oil with some thin slivers of hard, smoked chorizo. I get fresh eggs from Grow Alabama, a Birmingham-based CSA, and I whipped two with a fork, seasoning with ground pepper and a pinch of kosher salt. Heating olive oil in an iron skillet to almost smoking, I poured in the eggs, let them fill the skillet, then used the fork to pull some of the cooked eggs to the center.  Two thin slices of a Double Gloucester cheddar, a nice English cheese that’s sharp enough for the strength of the chorizo, finished the innards of the omelet. I folded it into a triangle, transferred to a small plate and browned two thin slices of french bread in the skillet to soak up all the remaining goodness in the olive oil.

Not a low-cal way to start the day, to be sure, but satisfying, fast and really good. It’s also incentive to work harder at the gym in the afternoon. And, it’s cooking from scratch, more or less. No mixes, egg beaters, fake cheese, fake butter, reduced-fat anything. The chorizo, cheese and bread were made elsewhere, of course, but the eggs, mushrooms, olive oil, ground peppercorns, salt without iodine, etc. make this a fresh meal – at least in the U.S.

If you’re considering having me cook for you, I think it’s reasonable to tell you something about my life with food, what foods I enjoy, how I try to prepare food and similar food-related issues. That’s one purpose of this blog.

Malcolm Gladwell in his “Outliers: The Story of Success” says it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to be really good at something. There’s more to it, of course, but the hours-in-the-kitchen seems about right when I think about my life with food and food preparation.

I’ve been cooking since assuming the family food production job shortly after marrying. I come from a family of good Southern cooks and my wife from a family of good Southern people, not cooks. I enjoyed the task and took over with gusto, beginning with a reasonably simple premise – use as little prepared food and mixes as possible and make virtually everything from basic ingredients.  This was not a philosophical, ethical, or health-food decision, but just a way to duplicate the food I ate daily growing up.

So, for example, to make pimento cheese I roast red bell peppers, shred a good aged cheddar, make the mayonnaise, add some spices, a touch of cayenne. It’s delicious. The product that passes for pimento cheese in most grocery dairy counters has no cheese, no mayonnaise but substitutes whey and a protein concentrate, sugar, dried pimentos, gelatin, preservatives and other ingredients better suited for a New Jersey chemical factory than a sandwich. The homemade product is enjoyed, the other fills your stomach.

With a commitment to no-factory-food as a foundation, I experimented, beginning with a wok and a great beginners cookbook – “Madame Wong’s Long-Life Chinese Cooking.” I spent a few years practicing Chinese and have since done the same with vegetarian food, French bistro cooking, Cajun, Mediterranean, Italian and Southwestern, all while continuing to explore traditional and fancier Southern cooking.

What this means for catering is that I have a reasonably extensive repertoire, and can satisfy most people’s tastes, preferences and budgets.

I’ll have more to say about these cuisines and other food talk in coming entries.

Thanks for reading and welcome to the What’s for Supper Catering blog.