Leek, Potato & Gruyère Frittata

Leek, Potato & Gruyère Frittata

I caught this recipe in a Williams-Sonoma catalog, included as a sidebar to sell their special frittata pans. I'm not universally opposed to dish-specific cookware -- I do have a waffle iron -- but $135 and a lot of storage I don't have, for a dish I've made with plain old regular general-purpose pans, seemed excessive. Not to mention that I need to scale the frittatas based on my audience -- sometimes a 10" pan isn't enough. Besides, I like the exercise of hauling my 500-lb 12" Le Creuset pan off a shelf.

The day I saw this recipe, I happened to hear a quiz on the radio, asking about a town in Switzerland that is the origin of a cheese that had won some world award. The answer was Gruyere. So I had Gruyere on the mind, and that was enough to cut out the recipe and put the ingredients on my grocery list.

But what the heck is Gruyere cheese?

Thankfully, there is a huge cheese counter at Whole Foods, with very patient cheese connoisseurs (what is the word for that?). The other ingredients were readily available there too -- this is a Whole Foods sort of recipe. TJ's doesn't carry leeks.

I've made this twice now, once faithful to the original recipe, and once with sliced zucchini instead of red potato. I'm no fan of morning potatoes, but I'll be darned if I didn't prefer the red-potato version. My husband, who likes potatoes for breakfast, didn't like the red potato version. Sigh.

It cooked just fine using my Joy of Cooking frittata "technique," if you can call it that, by setting the bottom on the stovetop, and finishing the top in the broiler.

This is a fabulous frittata recipe, and easily adaptable. My husband didn't like it as much as my original Zucchini frittata, but that was because of the absence of pancetta and basil, easily fixable. This base recipe makes for a frittata that holds together better, is more substantial and cooks more evenly -- perhaps from the heavy cream. Or the Gruyere cheese.

I'm still a sunny-side-up sorta gal, but this is a nice variation on scrambled eggs that I like and that everyone else in my family will eat too. It's-a-latta-frittata!