Proportions: A Lesson Learned from a Burned Frittata

March 5, 2009

The good news is that I’ve become more comfortable modifying recipes to my liking.  The bad news is that I haven’t figured out how to do it correctly.

I got off from work early two nights ago and decided to spend my extra time cooking.  A frittata sounded pretty easy, and I needed to use a up a few eggs.  My frittata recipe comes from Pam Anderson’s How to Cook without a Book, which makes it incredibly easy to follow a base recipe and alter it to your liking with different filling ingredients.  I chose onions, peppers, and potato.

What Happened

For the number of eggs I was using, the recipe recommends two filling ingredients.  Not only did I add a third (the potato), but I picked the biggest one I had – and this thing was massive.

I first noticed trouble when I began steaming the chopped potatoes in the skillet and they took up the whole pan.  When I added the onions and peppers, there was no room for them to sauté.  I ended up cooking this mixture for a long time in order to get the peppers and onions cooked at all.  I should have used a separate pan.

While I waited for the onions and peppers to cook, the potatoes turned to mush and began burning to the bottom of the pan.  Interestingly, this added a strong smoky (though not good smoky) flavor to the whole frittata.  When I finally poured the eggs over top, there was no room left.  The eggs sat right on top of the potato, onion, and pepper mush.  My frittata turned into a smoky potato casserole with a few eggs.

What I Learned

My thought process began with me liking potatoes, and followed that if a little potato was good, more was probably better.  I was wrong.  I didn’t think that the best frittata had to be made with the right proportions.  Extra potato not only made a frittata with more potato, but caused the whole thing to burn and prevented the vegetables from cooking properly.

This same thing happened with my gazpacho.  The recipe called for a cup of red onions, but I said to myself: I like onions, a little more can’t hurt.  I tossed in maybe an extra 1/4 to 1/2 cup.  Consequently, the soup was overpowered by the onion flavor.

Sometimes, of course, you can adjust to your liking – if you like things spicier, adding more cayenne generally won’t hurt anything.  I’ve figured out, however, that more of a good thing isn’t always better, and I need to pay more attention to the correct proportions to make better food.

Posted in Failures |