Lovely dish of potato frittatine
Originally uploaded by Manne.
Having vacation with all the time in the world to think about the coming night's dinner and walking around buying great stuff to use is excellent. Last night I made potato frittatine with fresh horse radish, accompanied by bacon, asparagus and a sweet tomato sauce.
There is a food blog called Lucullian Delights where once every so often a great recipe is posted. This particular recipe, " FRITTATINE CON RAFANO E PATATE or FRITTATINE WITH HORSE RADISH AND POTATOES", was posted about two weeks ago and the interesting use of fresh horse radish really intrigued me. So I had to try.
Took me a while think something up to serve with it. I wanted something sort of light yet rich with flavors since I expected the potato frittatine to be rather heavy and rich. After looking high and low I for some reason started thinking of Adrian's fav breakfast which includes fresh asparagus and bacon. But then I needed a sauce. Since the origin of the whole thing was Italy I searched for sauces to go with omelettes and found this simple tomato sauce that I felt would match the other components.
Indeed it did. Just look at Eric's face as he tasted the frittatine with some of the sauce:
Pleasure, little treasure...
Originally uploaded by Manne.
Does that look good or what? Right. Recipe time.
Start with making the frittatine. I have taken the liberty to rewrite the recipe here and weave it together with the rest of the stuff, since with proper timing you will have the tomato sauce, bacon and asparagus all done by the time the frittatine comes out of the oven. If not, it is no big deal since they can stay in the after heat in the oven until you are ready to serve. As you start preparing the frittatine, put water to boil in a big pot for the asparagus, so you don't have to wait for the water to start boiling after you put the frittatine to bake in the oven.
Frittatine with potato and horse radish
6 pieces
4 eggs
4 tblsp freshly grated parmesan
2-3 medium sized coarsely grated potatoes
3-4 tsp freshly grated horse radish
Salt for seasoning
Olive oil for frying
Grate the parmesan finely, and the potatoes and horse radish coarsely. I used the biggest holes on the grater for the horse radish and the potatoes, thinking that it would probably be a good thing if the horse radish was a bit "chunky", making you really feel the taste when you bite it. I liked it this way.
Crack the eggs in a largish bowl (potatoes also go in here later) and add the parmesan, whisk the eggs and parmesan together.
Saute the potatoes lightly in some olive oil until soft. Season with salt (I used about a tsp) and stir all the time so that you don't end up with rösti. Let it cool down a bit then mix it with the eggs.
Grease 6 cupcake forms with the oil that's left in the pan. Even if you have a teflon coated pan I think this is a good idea. I did, and the frittatine came loose effortlessly after baking.
Add the horse radish, mix it quickly with the batter and distribute it into the forms. I left about 5 mm to the rim of each cup, to allow the "egg muffin" to swell up a bit.
Bake in 225° C / 435-440° F for 8-10 minutes. As you put the frittatine in the oven, immediately start frying the bacon, boiling the asparagus and making the tomato sauce.
Keep the frittatine warm until the other components are done, sprinkle some freshly grated horse radish over them as you serve.
Tomato sauce frittata
Serves 3-4
Olive oil for sauteing
1-2 medium onion, finely chopped
2-3 dl fresh tomatoes, diced
5-7 fresh mint leaves
Salt and pepper for seasoning
Heat the olive oil in a frying pan to medium heat and saute the onion until translucent. Add the tomato, mint leaves, salt and pepper to taste and stir to combine. Let simmer for 10-15 minutes.
While the tomato sauce simmers, fry the bacon (there is no need for salt or pepper here...) and boil the asparagus. For the asparagus I simply boiled them in salt water for just under 10 minutes which was perfect.
Here is a tip about asparagus that Eric taught me though: instead of just cutting off the lower part of the stem with a knife, take each stem and hold it at the ends and break it. As it snaps you will have one perfect piece of soft asparagus and one dull piece of too hard stem since it will break at the point where the asparagus softens up and gets really tasty. Sure, a bit wasteful, but it makes sure that you only serve the good and tasty part of the asparagus. ;)
As all the components come together, on each plate put two frittatines (use a fork t gently loosen the sides from the cup cake form, then scoop the "bun" out) with grated horse radish on top, some bacon with parsley on it for decoration, some asparagus and a dollop of the tomato sauce.
Serve with a good, light wine (we drank an excellent bottle of Domaine du Pré Baron Sauvignon Blanc) and make your guests look this happy:
Happy campers, again...
Originally uploaded by Manne.
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