Challenge Meal #10 is an ode to the versatile Frittata.

Frittata is Italian for omelet. (I found it on Google Translate, so it must be true.) Frittatas are often advertized as a leftover dish, providing a medium for the disparate, small quantities of items in your refrigerator you can’t bring yourself to throw out. The joy of frittatas is that they provide an opportunity to play with your creativity, combining ingredients you wouldn’t normally imagine sharing a plate.

There are several methods for making frittatas. Some recommend cooking entirely on the stove top, others entirely in the oven, and yet others call for beginning on the stove and finishing in the oven. There are also several different ideas about the order in which the ingredients should come together. Whatever your method, the joy in the frittata is that you can make them every single day and not have the same meal twice!

I used the start-on-the-stove-and-transfer-to-the-oven method. I have an adorable 8-inch cast-iron skillet that’s perfect for making frittatas for two. I sautéed all of the ingredients in the order of the slowest cooking to the fastest, adding them to the pan as I went along. When the last ingredient was done, I spread everything as evenly as possible over the bottom of the pan and added the egg mixture. When the sides were fairly well set (tested with a spatula), I sprinkled the shredded cheese over the top and moved the pan to a 400°F oven for about 7 minutes.

Food sources:

• Eggs (4 large—extremely large) from Daffodil Hill Growers
• Raw milk from Stone Wall Dairy Farm
• Butter from Ronnybrook
• Potatoes, also from Daffodil Hill Growers
• Leeks, frozen raw from Sport Hill Farm
• Cayenne peppers, frozen raw from Cherry Grove Farm, Newtown, CT
• Some of a kale dish with pancetta and shallots from the freezer (kale from Maple Bank Farm, pancetta from Butcher’s Best, shallots from Don Taylor Farms, Danbury, CT)
• Cheese – Vivace Bambino from Cato Corner Farm

What I would do differently next time:

• More cheese; lots more cheese. I only used an ounce and I think two or three would have been much better.
• Fewer slices of cayenne peppers. I think that with these being a frozen block, I didn’t realize just how many went into the pan.