Thursday, July 10, 2008

Frittata with Pasta

Adapted from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan

4 Servngs

I haven't been around here for a long time. For those of you who don't already know, I have started cooking my way through The Zuni Cafe Cookbook and blogging about it, and it's been happily occupying a lot of my time. But I don't want this blog to become an orphan; I'm too attached to it for that, so I'm going to try and post at least once a week here - for as long as I have anything to say.A few weeks ago I had occasion to be in the City on a Saturday and found myself in the position of wanting to make lunch for two of us using what I already had hanging around. The rest of the day was going to be spent running errands - including food shopping - and I didn't want to make a fast run to the market before that. So I poked around and decided I would try a frittata with pasta. I guess you usually use leftover pasta for this dish, but I didn't have any of that so I made some specifically for this purpose.

It turned out great, proving once again that it's hard to beat Marcella for something simple and delicious that you're going to want to eat again. I served it with halved cherry tomatoes sauteed in olive oil and sprinkled with Maldon Salt and chopped parsley. I know I will make this dish often.

1/2 pound spaghetti
Salt
3 tablespoons of butter
1/3 cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
3 eggs, beaten with a little salt and put in a bowl large enough to hold the cooked spaghetti

Preheat the broiler.

Cook the spaghetti a little less than al dente. Drain, and toss with 2 tablespoons of butter; then add the grated cheese, and toss again. Set aside to cool a little (so it won't cook the eggs in the next step).

Add the cooked spaghetti to the bowl of beaten eggs, and mix thoroughly, distributing the eggs evenly through the pasta.

Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a skillet over medium heat. Before the butter starts to color, add the pasta/egg mixture to the skillet. Cook until the underside of the frittata has turned golden; then run the pan under the broiler until the top is the same color.

Alternatively, you can flip the frittata in the pan to color the other side, but I find this more difficult to do unless I'm making a small individual frittata.

Slide the frittata onto a platter, and cut it into wedges like a pie.

This is delicious served immediately or at room temperature.
Print recipe.

3 comments:

  1. It's Marcella Hazan! How could it go wrong? Never! I love the 'print recipe' feature. Genius.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have made this recipe for years and substituted salami for the ham in Marcella's version.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I will have to try salami the next time I make this. It sounds delicious! Thanks for the suggestion.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.