Eating Local for Urban Families. Gluten-free and Dairy-free, too!

Tuesday, August 7

She *would* hate potatoes

Last Tuesday night’s frittata was hearty and delicious, though Clara boycotted the potatoes. I believe she does this to spite me. And I don’t care because potatoes are a neutral, like tofu, they’re gluten-free AND they’re easy to find locally year-round so I will continue to cook them. I believe frittata will become a regular in my repertoire and will up our weekly egg intake from three dozen to four. (This is not an exaggeration.) And it’s good for getting rid of vegetables.

(This seems to be a theme with me lately—getting rid of food, rather than cooking with it and enjoying it. But I am enjoying this food. Perhaps I'm just suprised by this fact.)


The prep.

Except for the zucchini, I'm still doing this all by hand. Can't get into the food processor.


The sauté

The food photography session at Blogher was exceptional, though it's only made me see how bad my photos are. I have a great digital SLR, I just haven't read the manual. How lame.

Does it look yummy? It was, depsite the moody photo.


It doesn't help that I have filtered daylight as well as all sorts of halogen light sources in my kitchen.


Again, really bad white balance. But I'd been at this for about an hour and was starved so I just snapped this and was happy that this one was eating, and eating happily. The other one didn't get her picture in this post, just to spite her.

Zucchini Potato Frittata

Serves 2 adults, 1 hungry toddler and a picky 3 year-old. Goes great with a sturdy green salad (think fresh Romaine and beefy tomatoes).

2 tablespoons olive oil
4-5 baby red potatoes, cut into thin slices
1 medium onion, cut into thin slices
1 clove garlic, minced or pressed
1.5 cups shredded zucchini
4 large eggs, beaten
7 – 10 fresh basil leaves, chopped
1/2 cup shredded goat mozzarella (or swiss or feta, or skip cheese to make this dairy-free)

1. Heat the oil in a small oven-safe skillet. Add potatoes and onions and sauté until softened, about 8 minutes.
2. Add zucchini, garlic and basil leaves and sauté about 2 minutes, until zucchini is soft.
3. Pour eggs over vegetables and tilt pan to evenly distribute. Add salt and pepper to taste then sprinkle cheese over the top.
4. Cover the pan and set heat to low and cook for 10 minutes. Check it often!
5. When the eggs are set remove the pan from the stove and place the pan in a preheated broiler for about 2 minutes, until the cheese is just golden.
6. Cut frittata into wedges and serve.

adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home


6 comments:

LeLo said...

This sounds great: do you have chickens or do you get your eggs from a local farm? I need to find a good local supplier if you have any leads. Our neighbors 2 houses down have chickens: talk about a local supply if all you have to do is go outside. Sweet!

I've been making salsa with everything that's fresh and in season right now: it's perfect on a saute of potatoes and onions like you did here.

P.S. Love your blog.

Katherine Gray said...

Hello my mysterious Twitter friend! ;) We don't have chickens yet though we are getting some from our preschool. We just have to build the freakin' coop. I've not started writing about this because it will surely devolve in to a series of bitchy complaints about how slow my husband is at house projects and the dynamics between us with said projects. It's not pretty.

But yes, we're getting chickens! They still won't be able to keep up with our demand, I'm sure, but there is nothing more delectable than fresh eggs from chickens fed on real food.

Anonymous said...

I'm not a scrambled egg fan but thought "veggies, yum!" when I saw the pics and the recipes. Thanks for the inspiration.

Good luck with the potato-persistence. My little one (also 3) isn't a potato fan either. I offer them and she eats them or not - usually she wants them on the nights I've prepared fewer than normal. Kids have a great sense of that, don't they ;+?

Anonymous said...

Hi Kat! I just wondered if you had a mandolin (sp?) If the food processor is too rough, maybe the mandolin would do the same thing but more quickly? I mean if time is an issue... (I know chopping can be therapeutic, too). Looks lovely but NO ONE in my family (besides me) will eat eggs!

Katherine Gray said...

Hello, Shetha, my fellow UrbanMama! That's a great idea. A mandolin has been on my radar. I'm still getting used to my fancy chef's knife I got for my birthday, and, like I said, the food processor and I are still circling each other. I need to move out of my comfort zone, don't I?

Kathleen Bauer said...

Eggs are a staple here at our house. We love carbonara for its combination of pasta, eggs and bacon (yum!)...though some people don't like the raw-eggs-cooked-by-hot-pasta idea. There's a recipe on my blog, just type "carbonara" into the "Search Blog" box. BTW, great blog!