Recipe: Very Veggie Frittata

I like the simplicity of Mark Bittman's recipes. They're more suggestions than instructions to adhere to. I have How To Cook Everything Vegetarian, and it's great because it gives me all sorts of inspiration for cooking meatless meals. That said, I could easily add some meat to the recipe and make something else. The genius in his recipes is that he allows you to find your own way.

Case in point, the More-Vegetable-Than-Egg Frittata, or as I like to call it, the very veggie frittata. I've never been that interested in frittatas, primarily because they seem fussy to make. That said, despite liking eggs, I don't really care for omelettes and other egg dishes, so I've never been motivated to try. But his spin intrigued me. In experimenting with his "less animal-product-centric diet," he tried changing the proportion of eggs and vegetables and such in the frittata.

"I call it, for want of a better term, the more-vegetable-less-egg frittata, one in which the proportions of eggs and vegetables are reversed, and the veggies take center stage.

Instead of six eggs and a cup or two of vegetables, I use two or three eggs with three or four cups of vegetables. Think of it as a big vegetable pancake bound with just enough creamy-cooked eggs to hold the thing together."

It's genius.

It's quick, easy, healthy, and I can put anything in it. That last bit is important because it means that I can use up all the lovely vegetables that won't last much longer. That extra bell pepper, the unused string beans, the leftover boiled potatoes...SAVED!!

While cooking times vary depending on your ingredients, I've averaged about 20 minutes (8-10 minutes sauteing and cooking the vegetables and 12 cooking the frittata untouched). Dinner done in 20 minutes? Yup. Feel free to add a salad with all of that extra time you have on your hands ;-)