Vegetable Frittata Surprise

We invented a vegetable frittata last night, and the surprise was that it worked.


We'd seen Alex's mom prepare one before, and we consulted the Gourmet cookbook for approximate cooking times, but everything else was Alex's pure creative brainspawn. The only problem was that we didn't know it would rise, so we accidentally made scrambled eggs on the bottom of my oven as well, thanks to some minor overflow. Still, it looked so layered and pretty, and was filling enough to be a complete dinner. Excellent for summer nights and lazy brunches.

Ingredients:
4 whole eggs
4 egg whites
1 potato
1 pepper
1 onion
2 cups packed spinach
1/2 cup grated parmesean cheese
salt
peppper
oregano
olive oil

Instructions:
Peel the potato, and slice it into very thin strips, along with the pepper and the onion. Cook the onion and the potato in about 1 tbsp olive oil and a little bit of salt and pepper for about 10 minutes. Add the red pepper, and continue to cook it for another five. Steam the spinach separately. In a bowl, wisk the eggs and the egg whites together with about 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp pepper, and 1 tbsp oregano. If you don't have wisk, you can just beat it with a fork until it is frothy, probably about 3-4 minutes. In a baking dish (ours was like 8-inches in diameter), put down a layer of spinach, then add a layer of the pepper/onion/potato mixture, and sprinkle a layer of cheese. Add about half of the egg. Put down another layer of vegetables and cheese, and pour the rest of the egg on top. We added a final layer of spinach and cheese, because we had some left over. Bake it in the oven for about 15 minutes.

7/31
UPDATE! The frittata tasted even better the next day as a midnight snack. After it had some time to cool in the fridge, it held together much better and the flavors became much richer.