Recipe of the Month: Roasted Veggie Frittata

December tends to be a busy time for us, as I guess it is for most people. Between rushing around in the evenings and making holiday treats, I'm not sure how much time we'll have for trying new recipes, so I'm getting my Recipe of the Month in early. It's a roasted veggie frittata that Brian put together last night, more or less off the cuff. He based it loosely on the "Fast Frittata" recipe from our well-worn copy of The Clueless Vegetarian, but added a few extra fillips of his own that were reasonably successful.

He started with the remnants of a bag of Brussels sprouts we bought at the Amish market last weekend to make our favorite Roasted Brussels Sprouts. We had about 8 or 10 left over, not enough to do another batch, so he quartered them and put them in a cast-iron skillet with a chopped onion and a couple of diced potatoes. He tossed the contents with a quarter-cup of olive oil and a little salt, and cooked it over a high flame for about 5 minutes. Then he moved the whole pan to the oven, where he roasted the veggies for about half an hour at 400 degrees F, shaking the pan every 5 minutes or so to keep the veggies awake.

Once the veggies looked nice and tender, he beat 4 jumbo eggs in bowl with 3 tablespoons of Parmesan, plus a bit of salt and pepper. He stirred the roasted veggies into this egg mixture, then dumped it all back into the skillet and cooked it on medium. Once it started to set, he flipped the whole thing using his signature pan-to-plate method: flip the frittata out of the pan onto a big dinner plate, then slide it off the plate back into the pan and cook until it's firm. Unfortunately, this maneuver didn't go quite as well as usual. First, he got the timing a little off, so the frittata was slightly scorched on the bottom, and second, a piece of it broke off in the transfer, so it looks a bit ragged in the picture.

Despite this setback, the finished frittata was tasty. The earthiness of the roasted veggies made a nice counterpart to the lighter egg batter, and we finished off the meal with some whole-wheat toast. However, adding that half-hour of roasting time to the process meant that this frittata was no longer "fast," so it's probably not something we'd want to whip up on a busy night. Also, while the Brussels sprouts were good this way, they weren't oh-my-God-so-good like they are when roasted. So while this is a pretty good way to use up the leftover sprouts from a bunch, I don't think it's going to become our primary way of cooking them. It may not be a blue-ribbon recipe, but it's a reasonably easy, satisfying winter meal.