Potato Chip Frittata: Healthy, But Not!

I just returned from an awesome vacation out west. Spent time in Vancouver, and a handful of glorious days in Ucluelet. Go to Ucluelet. Don't hesitate. Serious. Vancouver was wonderful and beautiful...you walk, you bike, you look at mountains and ocean. And then you come back to Toronto, if you live here like me, and you're happy to be back in the edginess. No one in Vancouver seems to do anything bad (I mean, except for rioting). No one even stays up late! Anyway, I ate a lot of potato chips while I was away, just 'cause I could. Whatevs, I went for like 18 bike rides and 20 hikes.

My first day back to Toronto I had a couple of lovely people over for dinner, and I had eggs, and I wanted to do a frittata. Getting comfortable with the frittata is key for dinner parties, in my humble opinion. It's pure dead brilliant, as the Scots say. Eggs are key, so stop here if you hate them. But hating eggs is crazy talk. You make the frittata ahead of time, throw in a salad and some bread, and blammo, dinner.

FYI, this is a photo of sea lions off Ucluelet, not a frittata.
But look how cute they are.

The recipe, involving predominantly the aforementioned potato chips and eggs, is from a glorious, luscious cookbook called Around My French Table, by Dorie Greenspan. She rules. And so does this cookbook. She calls this a 'wink' recipe, something developed by those saucy French to get a bit playful with the traditional Spanish recipe for potato tortilla. Try serving it to your health nut friends who never eat potato chips, and then tell them after they've eaten it.

Are people getting tired of these cutting board shots?

Potato Chip Frittata
From Around My French Table, by Dorie Greenspan


4 eggs
3 green onions, sliced finely, or a small onion, treated the same
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/4 cup of herbs of your choosing     (I used cilantro and parsley, but other delicious choices would be chives, or basil, or dill might even be nice)
1 tbsp of oil, canola or olive
1/3 of a big bag of potato chips    (I used kettle chips, salt and pepper flavoured - but here's where you can get crazy: why not try making it with dill pickle, hmmm? Or sour cream and onion? Just don't use all-dressed - they're gross)

So here's what you do. Set your oven to broil, and move your oven rack up so it's pretty close to the actual broiler, but not crazy close. Dorie gives you an actual amount of inches the pan should be from the broiler but I found that too much work. Just make sure your rack is pretty close, but not as close as it can get, you feel me?

Crush the shit out of those potato chips with your hands, in a bowl big enough to fit the eggs after. Really crush the chips up, so that they're in little bits. In another bowl, crack in your four eggs, and then add the garlic, herbs, and onion. Then whisk that all up. Add the whisked egg action into the potato chip bowl, and mix it all up well. Heat up the oil over medium heat in a smallish frying pan (I was a bit concerned about using my small frying pan but it totally worked, it's only four eggs after all). The pan needs to be able to go into the oven, so cast iron is ideal. If you have a pan whose handle won't go in the oven, you can wrap that handle in foil and proceed.

Once the oil gets a bit hot, pour in your egg/potato chip mixture, then turn the heat to minimum. Let it set for a couple of minutes. Don't do what I did and get nervous and leave it too long thinking it wasn't set yet. Just wait a little bit (about three minutes or so), and run a spatula around the edge. If the edge keeps together in your spatula go-around, pop your pan in the oven, and broil for another few minutes. Keep a good eye on this puppy, as it won't take long for everything to set up good. Take her out of the oven, slide it out of the pan, and place on a cutting board or similar to serve.

The frittata tastes best at room temperature, which is why it's so ideal for the dinner parties. You could make it even the day before and be all easy breezy re your main course when your friends arrive. You've got this covered, yeah?

"It tastes healthy, but it's not!"
- dinner party guest

Cheddar and Apple Omelette: O-me-lette You Finish.

I stole the omelette you finish thing from Drunk in the Kitchen, which is a pretty damn hilarious series of videos by this woman who cooks things like grilled cheese while getting drunk (she forgets the cheese). Here's the link to the omelette video – watch it, it'll make you laugh. But only if you have a good sense of humour. Favourite quote:  "Some people like to have only egg whites in their omelettes, and that's a good way to make your omelette shitty". Here's the link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glwkK7turPY.

Okay, on to the omelette that I actually made. It wasn't that pretty. But it was delicious. Going out for brunch is kind of nice (minus the line-ups, and the having to pay for it), but I feel like one of the best parts of the week is Saturday or Sunday morning (slash early afternoon, who am I kidding). You get the paper, you make some tea, you have some delicious toast with ricotta cheese, and you make this omelette. Apple and cheddar might sound strange, but it's such a dynamite combo. I first saw these two hot ingredients in an omelette on an excellent website a few years ago called Everybody Likes Sandwiches, www.everybodylikessandwiches.com. They also used to have a sandwich at Common Ground, this student-run cafe at Queen's, with ham, apple, and cheddar, and it was kind of a big deal at the time. So you could also add ham to this omelette, if that blows your skirt.

Ooooh, ingredients shot.

I wish I could tell you that I have some sort of no-fail method for omelettes. I don't. Case in point? I kind of mucked mine up this morning. You'll see it in the shot below. Frankly, it wasn't my best. And I wasn't going to put it on the blog because I thought it didn't look that nice. Then I thought to myself:  isn't the whole point of this to try and help people be less intimidated about cooking? And not to have to strive for perfection? Isn't the message meant to be, for home cooks across the land, that they too can make a shitty-looking omelette and it's okay? I looked at myself in the mirror, hard, and said:  'you put that omelette recipe up, Carly Dunster'.*

Apple and Cheddar Omelette

2 eggs, beaten (if you can, bring your eggs to room temperature before you introduce them to the heat; I also usually add either a wee splash of milk or water to the eggs before beating)

1 green onion, sliced and added to the beaten eggs before going into the pan

salt and pepper, added to the beaten eggs, again before pan entry

1/2 an apple, cut into matchsticks (don't worry about peeling)

as much cheese as you would like in your omelette (I think it's judgmental to enter a precise amount)

1 tsp butter for frying (or olive oil - but really, butter is tastier)

2 tbsp of fresh parsley (or chives, or thyme would be nice)

You ain't a beauty but hey, you're all right.
Actually, you are delicious.

Beat up your eggs, incorporating a bit of milk or water, the sliced green onion, and your salt and pepper. Make sure you beat them well – the fluffier the better. Get your non-stick frying pan nice and hot – not max heat, but medium-high at least. Once it's hot, add your butter or olive oil, and as soon as it's melted, pour in the beaten eggs. The pan should have been hot enough that you hear a pretty significant sizzle when your eggs hit the pan. Using a spatula, lift up the edges of the omelette, which should already be cooking and keeping together, and let the uncooked middle seep under them to the edges. Do that all around the pan until there is no more liquid running in the middle of the pan. It will still look moist though, and it should. Turn your heat down, to medium-low. Place your cheese and apples onto one side of the omelette. Shimmy your spatula under the side without the filling, and flip it over. Just go for it. You may screw it up. Big whoop. Onward and upward. Keep the folded omelette on low-ish heat, to ensure that the apples get a little bit of heat and all of the cheese melts. Remove from heat when those two things have happened.  

Serve this with a lovely Saturday morning/late Saturday afternoon. It's also a great quick dinner idea. Makes enough for one serving.

*I didn't really look at myself in the mirror, hard. Can you imagine if I did? That would be an embarrassing overreaction. But I did think twice about posting, so...