As far as I’m concerned, frittata translates to “dump old leftovers hiding in the back of the refrigerator into a bunch of eggs and pretend it’s a fancy new dish” but in Italian, so it’s fancy-schmancy!

The trick is to make sure you use a heavy skillet (cast iron is perfect) that can go from stove to oven.  Pull whatever leftovers you’re using out of the fridge or open up some canned veggies.   Get your eggs out early enough to warm up before beating them and preheat your oven to 400º.  Pour a little oil into the skillet after it’s warmed.  You’ll need a starch of some sort to suck up the eggs – use leftover rice or potatoes.

Into the skillet toss the more solid items like onions and/or meat to give them enough time to warm up.  Then gopher broke with other ingredients!  This frittata has rice, canned corn, Rotel tomatoes, some of that chicken Buddig lunchmeat along with lorraine swiss.  You whisk the eggs together and then carefully pour, making sure to cover everything.  Now, here’s the frittata trick:  Let it cook for a couple of minutes on the stove, pulling the cooked eggs away from the sides and allowing the liquid to drain to the edge.  Do this a few minutes until it’s not so runny and then carefully place in the oven for about 10-20 minutes.  I check after 15 minutes because I use a huge skillet filled to the top, but if you’re using a smaller skillet you’ll need less baking.  Insert a knife into the center to see if the mixture has set; if so, take out of the oven and let rest for about five minutes.  Enjoy!

This is just after the eggs have been added; I’m using the fork to pull the eggs away from the edge.

The finished product, hot out of the oven.

Plated and ready for PITA to dig in – this was a wonderful concoction. Frittatas are even better as leftovers…although it’s not likely they’ll hang around for very long!