Zucchini Frittata

My sister Christine and I were talking on the phone about our zucchini woes today, and she turned me onto the idea of ways to use a lot of zucchini at once. She had made zucchini bread the other day, and had a lot of left over grated zucchini so she sauteed it and used it in spaghetti sauce, and also suggested making a frittata since I already made a pasta sauce with zucchini last week. The grated zucchini's volume reduced tremendously when sauteed. Since I had great ingredients for it on hand, I decided to make a frittata for dinner tonight.

I used:

1 medium green zucchini grated

1 medium yellow squash grated

(combined total of 2 1/2 cups of grated stuff)

2 shallots (use half an onion if you don't have shallots)

5 sun-gold tomatoes (that is all I had ripe on my vine)

2 tablespoons fresh basil chopped

1 tablespoon fresh parsley chopped

3 slices of bacon

1 handful of cubed fresh mozzarella

black pepper to taste

parmesan cheese to top the frittata

4 farm fresh eggs

(makes enough for 8 good size slices.... serve with a yummy crusty bread and a tart-zingy salad which compliments nicely the natural sweetness of the zucchini, tomato, and basil. don't forget your glass of pinot grigio too..)

Start by cooking up your bacon until crispy and set aside.

Dice or thinly slice up your shallots and sauté them in a bit of olive oil. When translucent crank up the heat to high and add the grated zucchini.

Keep an eye on the zucchini, stirring it a lot to make sure it isn't burning on the bottom, and cook until it is reduced to about 1/3 of the volume and there is no liquid visible in the bottom of the pan... Zucchini is mostly water so it will shrink down a lot (yesssss!). Reduce the heat to medium high and add the tomatoes, some fresh black pepper, the basil and parsley. Stir that around until the tomatoes start to break down then put the mixture into a mixing bowl to cool off.

Once the zucchini mixture is cooled... add the chopped bacon, chopped mozzarella, and eggs. I also put a dusting of cayenne pepper but it didn't seem to do much, so I ended up eating mine with some green hot sauce. Yum. Stir it up until everything is combined and the eggs are mixed in well.

Turn on the broiler.

Heat up a 12 inch skillet that has been sprayed with some cooking spray on a medium heat. Pour the egg-zucchini mixture into the skillet and let it cook w/o stirring or scrambling for about 7-8 minutes, or until the eggs are cooked half way through. Grate some fresh parmesan cheese over the entire surface of the frittata, then put the entire skillet into the oven. Make sure your skillet can go in the oven! I put my broiler on high, and the skillet on the 3rd rack from the top for about 5-7 minutes until the eggs were cooked, and the cheese turned brown. viola!

Let the frittata rest for a minute or two before slicing and serving!

happy cooking,

xoxo, char