How do you like your eggs?

What do you have when you combine eggs with bits of meat, cheese, and vegetables?  Omelet? Quiche?  Frittata? Fancy scrambled eggs? All of these answers could be correct, but the methods of preparation makes the differences.
Omelets are popular and are made by cooking eggs in a shallow pan and folding the extra ingredients into the almost done egg mixture. Quiche is an egg custard with extra ingredients added, usually in a pie crust. It is baked in the oven. Frittatas are a creamy egg custard with the eggs mixed with cream and vegetables, meat and cheese added. It is made in a heavy skillet that cooks both on the stove top and in the oven.
Frittata is a popular egg preparation now and one that friends and I recently enjoyed when quilt-tripping to visit a friend in Denver. Our friend and her neighbor not only entertained us with a beautiful Sunday morning recital of classical duets played on a baby grand piano,  they also prepared a delicious brunch for us featuring a frittata.

Doesn't this look like a delicious brunch? It was! 

You can go shopping for special fresh ingredients of bell peppers, mushrooms, asparagus, tomatoes, and spinach for your frittata or you can look in the refrigerator and see what you have that needs to be used. Throw in a few chopped vegetables, and brown some meat and a frittata can be on the table in 20 minutes. The recipe I use is a ratio using whatever ingredients you have. For every six eggs, use 1/4 cup heavy cream, 1 cup cheese, and 2 cups total vegetables and meat. You'll need a heavy skillet such as a cast iron skillet or an oven-safe non-stick skillet. If your skillet isn't non-stick, be sure to use extra oil so the eggs don't stick to the pan.

The steps are simple:
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees with a rack set in the center of the oven.
2. Mix the eggs and cream with 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper and 1 teaspoon kosher salt.
3. Cook and drain the meat (bacon or sausage) leaving some fat in the skillet.
4. Saute the onions, green peppers, and other vegetables, starting with those that take the longest time to soften.
5. Wilt the spinach and add any fresh herbs you want to use. Cook and stir these for 30 seconds to 1 minute or until spinach wilts. Add the meat back in the pan and stir to distribute.
6. Add cheese and let it just start to melt.
7. Pour the egg mixture over the vegetables and meat and cook for a minute or two until the edges of the egg start to set.

My frittata at home in a cast iron skillet. 

8. Bake the frittata in the oven until the eggs are set 8 - 10 minutes (or longer for a big pan of frittata). If you'd like to brown and crisp the top, set the frittata under the broiler for a minute or two at the end of the cooking time.
Let set in the pan 5 minutes before slicing into wedges to serve.