You say Lasagna, I say Lasagne!: This Cook's Story

THE RECIPE

Lasagne

Courtesy of The Joy of Cooking (edition pictured here)

Ingredients

5 cups tomato sauce

15 ounces ricotta

1 pound mozzarella, thinly sliced or shredded

½ cup plus 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan (4 ounces)

1 lb lasagna

Note: I used ready to bake noodles (which Joy of Cooking said I could do)

THIS COOK’S STORY

Did you know lasagne can be spelled two ways? Me either! Blogging about cooking is teaching me many things, but this is my first spelling lesson. My computer’s spell check spells it with an A, but since The Joy of Cooking goes with the E version, that’s what I’m sticking with.

Why lasagne…

Having just whipped up a batch of Mario Batali’s tomato sauce in my first round of Iron Recipe, I figured that making a lasagne would be a perfect way to put the giant tub of it in my fridge to good use. If only I knew that giant tub wasn’t quite so giant…but more on that later.

Shop ‘til you drop…

First up, I needed a pan. If there’s one thing I love, it’s shopping, so off to Sur La Table it was. I had done some online research ahead of time and knew that it was important to get a dish that was deep enough to have a good number of layers. One site had even recommended Mario Batali’s lasagne dish for this very reason. Mario, you just keep popping up everywhere! Well, Sur La Table had his dish…along with many others, so the narrowing down process began. Mario’s was definitely deep but it was also about 50 pounds. Plus, I wasn’t in love with the color and I really wanted something I could serve on the table once it came out of the oven.

So, I kept looking. Le Creuset had some nice ones, but I wasn’t sold. And then I saw the extensive selection of Emile Henry baking dishes in varying colors and the real dilemma emerged.

White or this pretty plum/eggplant color they had? While the motif of the new dishes for my new kitchen (yes, I’m moving in 4 weeks to a new apt with an amazing new kitchen!!!) is off white and light blue, I couldn’t help loving the shade of the plum pieces. But, in the name of not compromising the look of my first dinner party table setting, I chose white.

Now, it was down to size. It seemed as though the larger dish was a tad too large (measured slightly bigger than the 13x9x2 that Joy (aka The Joy of Cooking) had instructed me to use. But, the smaller one was really a bit too small. After speaking with a really nice sales person, I decided on the larger plate because as he so sagely advised me: “You can always cook less food in a large dish, but you can’t make more food in a small dish.” I bought it just as easily as I bought the Prada salesman’s pitch for a ‘four season bag.’ When it comes to shopping, I don’t need too much persuading on the up-sell.

Now that I had a dish and my sauce, I was only a few ingredients away from the kitchen. First up, noodles. I opted for the ‘ready to bake’ kind because let’s face it, I’m just that lazy. Although, I do plan on learning how to make my own pasta in my new kitchen...but for now, let’s keep it simple. Next up, cheese. In an effort to eat less processed foods and more organic, local, fresh, I decided to head over to Barbarini Alimentari, an amazing Italian grocery/restaurant in my neighborhood. It was a good call. They had fresh Ricotta and Mozzarella and were kind enough to grate the Mozzarella for me.

While this was definitely a more expensive route, I think it was worth it. And, according to my internal shopping rules, its always ok to spend money on books and food—because they nourish your body and soul! Although, the same argument could be made for shoes, but that’s a separate blog. Having Parmesan already at home, I was set and back to the kitchen I headed!

Preparing the dish…

I must say, Joy, was doing right by me. Her recipe was pretty simple and I didn’t even have to mix the cheeses with egg and spices to form a special mixture like some other recipes I’d seen online. In fact, because I was using ready to bake noodles, I didn’t have to prepare any ingredients. All I had to do was prepare the dish---and surely, that wouldn’t take long…

Dear Emile Henry, why did you GLUE the cardboard tag to the INSIDE of my dish with glue that does not wash away with soap and water? This gaffe on your part, resulted in me spending 5 minutes scrubbing and scraping. I will never get those 5 minutes back. You owe me.

As far as ‘greasing’ the dish, I have a method. It’s called: Butter Scrapping. I slice the end of a stick of butter, peel the paper away and butter down my dish. I then fold the paper back over the now messed up end and if it’s not too messy, I store it for more greasing use later. I normally get 2 uses per scrap. Do other cooks do that? I have no idea. But it works for me!

Let the layering begin…

As soon as I spooned the first ‘thin layer of sauce’ on the bottom of the pan I realized I was going to quickly run out of sauce. Crap. And as I spread the cheese on the first layer of noodles, I realized that my cheese reserves were a bit weak as well. Crap again. How had this happened? I definitely bought the right amounts of cheese. I mean, yes, my dish was slightly bigger than Joy told me to use, but to be fair, the amount of noodles Joy called for fit nicely in my dish, so it clearly wasn’t THAT far off size wise. But the sauce, that was definitely my fault. I had assumed the giant Tupperware tub in my fridge had more than 5 cups, but I never actually measured. Plus, my sauce was somewhat thick so it took a bit more to cover over the noodles. Lessons learned: you can never have too much cheese and never assume what looks like a lot of something is actually a lot of something.

Tip: An experienced chef that I know, whom for blog purposes I shall dub “The Food Whisperer,” advised me that when cooking with ready to bake noodles you should always use extra sauce because the ready to bake noodles tend to pull a lot of moisture in to them when cooking which can dry out your lasagne. Excellent advice. Too bad I didn’t have it before I cooked my lasagne.

Now, what I should have done when I realized all of these things at layer 1 was to say, hey, I probably don’t have enough ingredients for 4 layers of noodles, why don’t I just make 3? But, that would be logical. Instead I trudged on to layer 2 and when that was done, I knew for sure I didn’t have enough sauce or cheese for all 4. But on I pressed, like Thelma and Louise--straight off the cliff with my foot on the gas.

So, here we are at the end of layer 4. I have about 2 tablespoons of sauce, not the 2 cups Joy has told me to put on top. Cheese? I have about half a teaspoon of Parmesan. So, I dump my meager remains on top and figure, if the top burns (which no doubt it will) I can just peel it off. After all, lasagne is basically just a noodle, cheese and sauce pie that can’t really ever taste bad despite how it might look. Right?

Here is the progression of layers from 1 - 4 in pictures:

Into the oven it goes. And 45 minutes later, out it comes.

You can see by my pics that it was slightly burned and dried out on top, but no biggie---when you peeled off that layer, it tasted pretty good!

Way to go Joy!

P.S.

I was going to be serving it to guests the next night, so to further combat my dryness on the top layer issue, I whipped up (look at me!) a quick batch of marinara sauce:

This Cook's 'Quick Whip' Recipe for Marinara Sauce

-3 cloves garlic

-olive oil

-2 cans crushed tomatoes

-1 tablespoon sugar (another Food Whisperer tip)

I kept this pot of sauce on the stove so guests could apply as they wished to their personal portions. This made my first official dinner service as This Cook a success!

Truly Gifted: This Cook's Story

A gift from a very chic chef...

Last night I was surprised with a gracious gift from a lovely lady. She’s a great friend, excellent cook and avid reader who I shall call, Chic Chef.

As you can see she is exceptionally stylish--hence her moniker. Although, please forgive the unfashionable lightning bolt sunglasses I gave her to maintain anonymity here at A Cook's Book.

Chic Chef’s thoughtful package included a device for cutting garlic, so I will never be bogged down with nubs again and two very special kinds of salt---including the sea species! I can't wait to put all of these to good use!

I wanted to take this post to thank you, Chic Chef, for your generous and thoughtful gift and to everyone who has been reading my posts! Especially, those who have reached out with recipes and stories, please keep them coming: acooksbook@gmail.com

XXOO,

This Cook

Iron Recipe: Tomato Sauce Round #1: This Cook's Story

THE RECIPE

Basic Tomato Sauce

Mario Batali courtesy of The Food Network

Ingredients

¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil

¼ Spanish onion, ¼ inch dice

arlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced

3 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme leaves, or 1 tablespoon dried

½ medium carrot, finely grated

2 (28 ounce) cans peeled whole tomatoes, crushed by hand and juices reserved

Salt

Spaghetti, cooked al dente

Whole basil leaves, for garnish

Grated Parmesan, (optional)

THIS COOK’S STORY

Celery, and Carrots, and Sugar! Oh, My!

Yes, I have made tomato sauce before. No, I have never used celery, carrots or sugar in my recipe despite being advised I should include one or more of these in varying combinations. I’ve also never really enjoyed my tomato sauce. My problem is definitely a lack of seasoning and I now accept that adding copious amounts of hot pepper flakes (yes, I’ve done this and pretended I was making fra-diavolo) is not the solution. So, I decided to set out on a mission to find a recipe that is easy to follow and tastes good.

And thus was established: IRON RECIPE

In IRON RECIPE I will take a staple dish and try 3 different celebrity chef recipes to find the best one. Each chef’s recipe will be its own post and once I have tried all 3 I will blog a Results Post that outlines the winner of that edition of IRON RECIPE. Recipes will be judged on three main criteria:

· Ingredients (ease of understanding, buying & preparing)

· Instructions (can I understand and easily follow)

· Does it taste good? (I think you get this one)

As you can see, the first edition of IRON RECIPE will be tomato sauce and the three contenders for the title are: Mario Batali, Giada De Laurentiis and Emeril Lagasse. Each of their recipes incorporates one or more of the 3 ingredients I’ve been told about but never used: celery, carrots & sugar. First up, it’s Mario---let’s see whatya got!

This recipe, like all others, began with a trip to the grocery store. Luckily, these ingredients were easy to find and some I even had at home. As I quickly identified the Spanish onions (bonus points to Mario for listing the species in his recipe) I did have some concerns that they were all VERY large. But, he’s the boss, so I picked up a not so big, big one and plopped it in my basket.

I headed to the register, fairly confident I had thyme at home, but decided at the last minute that I better get it just to be safe. Bear in mind, this happens to me often, which is why I have two bottles of several very un-useful spices. I arrive at the spice section and….well, let’s just say, what I thought would be a quick pit stop, turned into a mini debacle. There are multiple brands of spices and each brand has not only different spices but different versions of different spices. Case & point:

The Spice Hunter brand had French Thyme. What is French Thyme? Is it from France? Does it matter where thyme is grown? Is France synonymous with thyme? Did Italian Mario want me to buy French Thyme? Doesn’t matter, because they’re out of it.

Simply Organic brand seemed to run out of spices after the ‘P’s’ (at least spices are in alphabetical order). This was a double bummer since I liked the little mini size containers they have because really, how am I going to ever use a giant bottle of thyme?

McCormick’s Gourmet Collection had Ground Thyme. This, I could tell was different than the others because it was ground up into a powder. Hmmm…the recipe does talk about fresh thyme vs. dried. I assumed fresh was leaves in the produce section, but what does thyme look like in its natural, plucked from the earth state? Is it a leaf? Are the not ground versions of thyme, dried and just not ground? Or are they fresh?

Lots of questions, not so sure about the answers so I go with the giant bottle of Simply Organic, plain, old ‘Thyme.’ But hey, wait a minute Simply Organic, why did you stop making little bottles of things after the ‘P’s’ and then decide to have a whole other section with giant bottles of spices that could clearly have been alphabetized in the short bottle section? An enigma wrapped in a puzzle, shrouded in mystery. And so shall it remain.

By the way, you’re welcome for the pics. And yes, it is extremely awkward to take photos of SPICE RACKS at the grocery store on my iphone---I look like a crazy lady. But I aim to please…

I’m back at home, I’ve poured myself a glass of wine, Sole Beech 2009 Sauvignon Blanc, and now it’s time to prep the ingredients.

(Note: Moving forward, I’ll be listing the wines I drink while cooking since it’s only fitting I credit the culinary assistants that get me safely through every dish I attempt.)

I knew the onion would be the most difficult (hello, knife skills) so I tackled that first. OK, wow, this onion is HUGE. I am meant to dice it into ¼ inch pieces and put them and 4 cloves of garlic into my 3-quart saucepan. Crap, I smell a quantity and volume problem rearing its ugly head again. But, I’m not too concerned with the size of the onion precisely because of my lack of culinary knowledge and knife skills. You see, I don’t know the proper procedures for peeling or cutting ANYTHING. So, I employ, what I call the ‘hack and peel’ method (an epicurean cousin of the slash and burn technique). This consists of me hacking off both ends of something and then peeling off as many layers as I can with the help of my knife tip and my bare hands. Since I never know how much to hack or how much to peel I overdo both to err on the side of having too little of something good instead of too much of something bad. This results in me reducing the quantity of a raw ingredient by at least a quarter. I thought this would finally prove helpful in the giant Spanish onion quandary.

But, from the pics, you can see it wasn’t. The onion was so big that I actually didn’t even cut the whole thing as it appeared I was cutting up enough onion to make onion stew as opposed to tomato sauce. The actual dicing…I’m not even going to speak of that. You can see for yourself.

Garlic next. Again, I employ the hack and peel technique, which I’m almost certain is not correct since it takes about 5 to 7 minutes for me to peel 4 cloves (not slice them, just peel them). Slicing is an easier concept for me than dicing, so this worked out fairly well. Except for one thing. I get to the end and I can’t hold what’s left of the clove and slice without cutting myself…let’s call it the garlic nub…so I just cut that nub into little pieces. But I trudge on, slicing 4 cloves and chopping 4 nubs. Mission accomplished.

The tomatoes are next & then its time to cook--wahoo! Oops wait, gotta do the carrot. How could I forget the carrot?! Ok, Mario is asking for half of a medium sized carrot. While I was pleasantly surprised that you can buy loose carrots at the grocery store (which enabled me to buy 1 instead of a bag of 1000) AND that these said, loose carrots come in sizes where I could pretty easily delineate a ‘medium’ member of the pack, I was at a standstill by the ‘half.’ A carrot isn’t an even shaped vegetable. The top half is way fatter than the bottom. Which half to use? This decision will affect the quantity of carrot—something I don’t want to mess up. So what do I do? The only logical thing---I slice that baby down the middle. I don’t know if this is the right thing to do, but I suspect it’s not. Oh well, I go with it and am quite proud of myself for thinking of it.

I’m also not exactly sure what finely grated is, so I just shred it on my big cheese grater. I picked the medium size grater side since the last time I tried to do the tiny one with a lemon, it was impossible to get the rind out of the metal. This seems ok, although I don’t ever remember eating tomato sauce with shredded carrot in it---and is shredded carrot different than grated carrot? Most decidedly it is, but unable to deal with that at the moment, I simply move on.

Tomatoes!!! Yay, the main ingredient of my sauce, finally! I’ve never hand crushed whole peeled tomatoes. And even though Mario does not tell me HOW to hand crush my tomatoes, I will overlook his lack of detail because the idea of hand crushing anything sounds kind of fun. I decide on using a potato masher (which I have to take out of the packaging because I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d never peeled a potato before the frittata). It seems to work really well and I’m feeling good about my main ingredient. Nice.

Time to get the pot, hot. Sounds like a cute little rhyming phrase, right? Wrong. I think this is also a big issue I have…lack of patience. I throw the pot on the stove, turn it on and pour the oil in. Here’s where I need 2 things: patience and more guidance from my recipe authors. Mario, you say to heat the oil over medium heat and then put in the first ingredients. But how long do I heat it? How LONG?

I wait about t-minus :45 and throw in the onions and garlic. Wow, that’s a lot of onions. I don’t even put all of them in. Mistake? Remains to be seen.

I cook those for a while, a little longer than Mario suggested (I think, it always takes me longer because of my lack of patience and insistence of throwing things in before the pot is heated) but not too wildly off clock. I then put in the thyme & carrots and keep on trucking. This recipe is pretty simple and it’s going well. Although, I do wonder why it’s taking so long to come to a boil. Well, genius, maybe it’s because in order for it to actually boil, you have to turn the temperature up on the stove. Even if Mario doesn’t say ‘raise heat & bring to a boil’? Yes, dummy. So, I bring it to a boil by turning it up and then lower it to a simmer. Seems fine, but wait, why is it not even that hot about 20 minutes in to the simmer? Maybe its because the stove unlit (I have no idea how) at some point. Great, this has been sitting on a mildly hot burner with no heat for god knows how long. So, I cook it 20 minutes longer than 30 and call it a day. It looks sort of the consistency of hot cereal when I’m done…if by hot cereal Mario means oatmeal, which I think he does.

To complete my meal, I employ his technique for putting the sauce & spaghetti into a pan, toss it & serve it up in a bowl. Now for the taste test…OMG, this actually tastes good! I did it, I made a sauce that tastes seasoned and GOOD!

Success is mine! But will it be Mario’s? Only IRON RECIPE will tell. Stay tuned for Emeril’s tomato sauce, which is up next. But don’t hold your breath, it could be a while. I have a lot of Mario’s in my fridge/freezer….

Cheese, Please: A Cook's Story

THE RECIPE

Greens with Gorgonzola Dressing

Giada De Laurentiis, Everyday Pasta

Ingredients

¼ cup creamy Gorgonzola cheese (about 2 ounces)

¼ cup milk

2 tablespoons sour cream

½ garlic clove minced

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper

10 ounces bibb, iceberg, or Romaine lettuce in bite-size pieces (about 6 cups)

A COOK’S STORY

Note to readers: I’d like to thank This Cook for allowing me to share my story on her site. I hope to cure my cheese-obsession by writing it out loud. And please forgive me if I’m not as entertaining as her…I apologize in advance.

Giada’s Gorgonzola dressing is my husband’s favorite. I first made it back in June as part of his birthday dinner. I haven’t had it since then. Once I found out I was pregnant, it was no longer an option for me. But still, I make it once a week for him. He always smiles. He thinks it’s a sign of how much I care about him, how much I love him that I still cook things I can’t eat myself for him. Just yesterday as we sat down to dinner, he took my hand and said, don’t worry honey, only another month and you can eat anything you want. That’s when I knew I had to get this out. I can no longer keep this forbidden cheese-mance a secret.

I remember his birthday so well. I had spent the morning cleaning the house and preparing for dinner. I was not looking forward to a trip to the grocery store, but I went.

And that’s where all this trouble began. In the cheese department. I just had to make that Gorgonzola recipe. I don’t even really like Gorgonzola. But I knew he did. So of course I was going to make it for his birthday. I’m browsing the wedges, looking for the smallest one, when I hear his voice, “Can I help you with something ma’am.”

No one calls me Ma’am. I looked up to protest but before I could get the words out of my mouth it was all over. I had fallen in love with the cheese man.

Of course we haven’t acted on our shared impulses. And believe you, me, they are shared. I can tell by the way he carefully wraps my selections every week. From the way he sometimes let’s his hand graze mine as he passes me my cheese. The world moves in slow motion when I push my cart over to his cheese counter and we make eye contact over the blocks of Cheddar and Manchego. The Taleggio and Brie.

Oh cheese man, I don’t even know your name. I’m too shy to ask you yours or share mine. I know I’m fat and pregnant now. But I still lust after you. And I use my husband and his love of Giada’s dressing to be in your presence every week. To feed my uncontrollable need to be around you. I feel like a teacher in a scandalous love affair with her under age student—the Mary Kay Letourneau of the cheese section. After all you must be no more than 20…maybe 21? And I am a ripe old 36. The shame!

My baby is due in just a few short weeks. My time in your cheese menagerie is limited. I know once I give birth, I can no longer indulge in this cheese obsession. I must cut you out of my life. You and your wheels of Gorgonzola. If you are reading this cheese man---I bid you farewell!

And Giada, damn you, for creating this dairy sized monster of desire inside of me.

Oh and for you, readers, this recipe is quick, easy and delicious. But, let this, my story of dairy-woe be a cautionary tale about the dangers that can befall you anywhere---even the cheese department.

The Failed Frittata: This Cook's Story

THE RECIPE

Potato-Onion Frittata

Martha Stewart Living, February 2010

Ingredients

1 pound (about 8) small new potatoes

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 small onions (about 1 pound), thinly sliced

Coarse salt & freshly ground pepper

1 ounce sharp white cheddar cheese, grated (1/2 cup)

10 large eggs, whisked

½ cup sour cream

THIS COOK’S STORY

Dear Martha Stewart, Why do you deceive me with your trickery? When I tore this recipe from your magazine's pages, I thought….well, this doesn’t really seem too hard. Yeah, try again.

I should’ve known when I arrived at Whole Foods and began to inspect my ingredient list more closely that I was going to be in for it. Let’s begin with the ingredients I had to google. While I’d normally just call my Mom or another expert for help, I figured that I should try to really figure it all out on my own---that it would help me learn and expand my culinary horizons…again, not so much.

First up, 1 pound (about 8) small new potatoes

I had assumed these were a variety of potato (like russet, or fingerling, or whatever). A quick tour of the Whole Foods potato section told me that either A: it was not the name of a potato species or B: it was and they just didn’t have it. Since I shop based on the assumption that Whole Foods has all species of produce, I decided to go with A and google ‘new potatoes.’ Sure enough, they aren’t a species of potato, they are just baby potatoes…young potatoes as the interweb told me. Which brings me to huge problem #1: How the hell do I know how old a potato is? Is a baby potato small in size? Who knows, maybe that’s true, but I sure couldn’t tell because in each potato bin, the potatoes were all relatively the same size. Great. And since logic tells me that every species of potato can have ‘baby’ potatoes, which species was I meant to pick? This was quickly becoming a huge problem and I immediately began to feel like an idiot. I mean, really, this cannot possibly be so complicated. For a hot second I contemplated asking someone who worked in the vegetable section but I decided against actually giving voice to my stupidity---asking where the baby potatoes were just seemed impossible. I chose instead to select a smaller size species (yellow potatoes) and try to pick the smallest ones in that bin. I thought the whole 1 pound or ‘about 8’ would help me figure out if I’d made the right potato selection since if I weighed 8 of my choices and they were in the vicinity of a pound, I’d be on course. Not so much. I ended up with 5 potatoes. They weighed around a pound and were somewhat small…hopefully ‘new’. Was this the right decision? I will never know. If only potatoes could talk…

Next up on the googled ingredients list: Coarse Salt

I suspected this might be something like sea salt…since sea salt always looked bigger and ‘rougher’ to me which I figured was what they meant by ‘coarse.’ Does sea salt taste different from regular table salt? I don’t really know. Should I buy sea salt and just see what happens? I don’t know---google, wanna help me out? Oh, thank you for your insight interweb—I had no idea coarse salt was ‘coarsely ground salt’. Please god, let the labels of the salt products clearly state ‘coarse salt’ vs ‘sea salt’ or whatever else kind of salt there is. Alas, they did, proving that I didn’t really need to google this one---and probably shouldn’t have because I learned absolutely nothing. But I do have a giant container of ‘coarse salt’ at home I will surely never use up. Thanks Whole Foods, for providing any size option besides GINORMOUS when it comes to coarse salt selections.

And finally: 2 small onions (about 1 pound), thinly sliced

Dear recipe writers everywhere (including you, Martha), can you please always specify the TYPE of item? 2 small onions, what the heck? Like the great potato debacle there were also multiple species of onions in varying sizes. And again, I thought the whole poundage thing would help but for some reason this was even less helpful than in the potato situation. My instinct with onions is to just go with regular yellow onions if nothing else is specified. This would seem a safe, correct choice, except all the yellow onions were HUGE. So, what do I do? 2 of any of them weighed way more than a pound and 1 of them was never close enough to a pound (and I have to just assume that when they say pound they mean before slicing—I mean come on, I can’t even go there…they must mean that, right?). So, I decided to get 2 of the smaller of the large onions and figured I’d use one and a half of them.

At this point, I should have realized that I now had large quantitiy and volume issues with my 2 main ingredients and just cut my losses and moved on to something easier. But no, I fell under the delusional fantasy world that said, gee, since you used the scale in the produce section for the first time, you must be doing something professionally and correctly---this will all work out ok!

Now, let’s get to what in hindsight I think ended up being the true death of my frittata: my knife skills—or should I say my lack of knife skills. I’d like to preface by saying that prior to this day, I had never peeled a potato in my life (yes, I had to buy a potato peeler for this recipe and yes, I was pleasantly surprised to find out it can also be used to peel carrots and other skinned items), yet alone sliced one into thin, ¼ inch slices. While visions of thinly sliced potatoes like the ones I know to be in dishes like ‘potatoes au gratin’ danced in my head, my cutting board was a battlefield littered with the rogue remains of 5 new-ish potatoes hacked beyond recognition. Some slices were thin and looked good (I’d say maybe 3% of them), some were sliced fat and some were just chopped into shapeless, certainly, slice-less, pieces. I knew this would be a problem, but I’d come this far, so I had to move on.

The onion cutting---better than the potatoes, but by no means ‘good.’ Let’s just say, with the onions it was more of a volume issue. How much of my 2 sort of mediumish, mostly largish onions that weighed definitely more than a pound should I cut up? I just guessed.

Now that I had my cut ingrediants in front of me, I faced an even more daunting challenge---fitting them all in the pan. It was clear, that they weren’t all going to fit comfortably in there and be able cook to a ‘golden brown’…especially with the edition of 10 eggs. Which by the way---10 eggs? Really? Really Martha, 10 eggs? That seems like a lot.

Now, back to the pan issue. I knew my pan was the right size because I actually went out and bought a 10 inch pan (part of my new cooking ambitions---buying the basics) which only confirmed my earlier suspicioins: I f’d up the quantities and sizes of my onions and potatos. Oh well, let’s keep going! I’m sure it’ll turn out fine.

Ok, pan. Here’s another problem: I don’t think you are non-stick. I mean I got the really good All-Clad one specifically so it could go in the oven (my other ones definitely weren’t oven safe---two words that had never before crossed my mind). You are an excellent pan, but somehow, I don’t think the inside of you is ‘non-stick’. And while I’ll never really know for sure, what I do know is that as I continued on with the recipe my potatoes and onions did not turn golden brown and did stick messily to the bottom of the pan.

So, let’s just cut to the chase since clearly the magnitude of this frittata fail is more than apparent by now. After sloppily breaking and whisking 10 eggs (something I did not time out correctly and which involved a mini salmonella panic attack as I placed my new pepper grinder in egg goo I didn’t notice on the counter) I dumped them into the pan where I had been cooking the potatoes and onions for close to 20 minutes. Yeah, another indication I had royally f’d up being that mine not only didn’t brown, but didn’t come close to browning after I cooked them 4x as long as the recipe told me to.

Anyway, in go the eggs---this does not look pretty but I have a tiny bit of hope when they seem to actually set a little within the 2 minute time set forth in the recipe. So, I stick that puppy in the oven and hope for the best.

If the best was a sticky goopy, mess of cooked eggs and uncooked potatoes, I’d be in luck. But since its not, I settled for force feeding myself what I then decided to call a ‘potato-onion scramble.’

Oh, and thanks coarse salt...in my quest to compensate for what I think is my natural inclination to under season I completely over seasoned. So not only was I eating scrambled eggs with half cooked potatoes----it was really, really salty.

But in the spirit of hope and positivity, I have left you not with a photo of what my disaster looked like, but with the appetizing image of what Martha's looks like.

Maybe next time frittata, maybe next time.

Frittata: 1

This Cook: 0