Frank Deis wrote:And last night I set up the "mise en place" for the smoky frittata (picture in What's Cooking). Cut a cauliflower into florets and blanched them and drained them. Got out the smoked paprika, measured 2 oz aged cheddar and 5 oz smoked mozzarella. Tried to buy some chives, couldn't find them, so got some scallions. This morning, grated the cheeses, cut up some of our own chives and the scallions, manufactured "creme fraiche" out of sour cream and yoghurt, and put together the frittata.
It was gratifyingly delicious and my son and his wife really enjoyed it. This one is also from "Plenty"
This is a relatively easy and probably fool-proof recipe which people ought to try especially if you like smoky flavors.
Because this was spread over 2 topics -- here and "What's Cooking" -- you don't see the entire story in this thread. But I posted in What's Cooking that my results looked just like the picture in the book and we liked it, and then JoAnn said that she made the same recipe and basically found it too bland and a little boring and in retrospect I had to agree with her. So I have spent some time trying to figure out how to "repair" the original recipe and give it some attention getting flavors. So when my wife brought home what may have been the world's largest head of cauliflower last week, I knew I had my chance. I did make the recipe as written but with these changes:
1) After making the cauliflower into florets I put them on a cookie sheet and sprayed with olive oil and salted a bit, and roasted in a hot oven (380 to 400) for 10 minutes -- then stirred around, sprayed a little more oil, ten more minutes. And cooked just a little longer looking for a bit of color. In the original the cauliflower is boiled and then fried.
2) Added more than 2 oz of aged cheddar, perhaps 3 oz, and got some decent smoked mozzarella instead of the pseudo stuff that was all I could find last time.
3) to the 2 tsp of smoked paprika I added 1 tsp of hot paprika
4) here is the kicker. I fried up 3 strips of bacon until crisp and then cut them up into bacon bits and stirred that into the egg mixture. I also grated a little good parmigiano into the egg mixture and then covered the top with grated parmigiano after the dish was in the cast iron skillet.
5) Last time we were using chives from the garden and just picked a bunch and snipped them up -- did not measure. Looking at this recipe, a lot of the subtle flavor is based on the LARGE quantity of chives specified. So after using up the chives we had in a flower pot I went to the store and got one of those plastic packets of chives and used the entire thing in the dish.
The results were rave reviews. Having the bacon and extra cheese moved the flavor profile over to that of a good quiche, while the roasted cauliflower gave the dish a lightness that a quiche normally lacks. With the modifications, I think this is a keeper.