Frittata di salsiccia, patate e funghi (Sausage, Potato and Mushroom Frittata)

Frank28 November 2020secondi piatti35 Comments

The Italian flat omelette known as the frittata, like pasta, is endlessly adaptable. The eggs provide a vehicle for just about any combination of meat, fish or vegetable your heart desires. So once you master the basic technique, a whole world of culinary possibilities opens up for you.

One of my favorite frittatas, one that I remember from childhood, is the classic combination of sausage, peppers and potatoes. Now that we are into the colder weather and peppers—a summer vegetable—are out of season here in the Northern Hemisphere, I like to replace the peppers with a seasonal vegetable such as mushrooms.

Of course, you won’t necessarily notice the passing of the seasons in your local supermarket these days. If peppers are out of season, they can be raised in a hothouse or shipped in from faraway places. Ditto for asparagus and peas, which used to be harbingers of spring but now appear year round. And so on.

But even though you can buy out of season produce if you like, there are still reasons to “eat the seasons“. Out of season produce will usually be more expensive, for one. And for another, it won’t taste nearly as good. And for me personally, there is something appealing about changing what I eat as the seasons change. Just as I enjoy the change of weather, a change of diet makes life just that little bit more interesting and—dare I say it?—more meaningful, more in tune with the world around us.

In any event, whether or not you choose to eat seasonably, I’m sure you’ll enjoy this frittata. Sausage and mushrooms marry perfectly and the potatoes provide substance. And it’s a dish that equally delicious warm or at room temperature.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

6 eggs
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 large Italian sausage, about 150g/5 oz, crumbled
1 medium-sized yellow fleshed potato, about 150g, cubed or sliced
150 g (5 oz) mushrooms, cut into bite sized pieces or sliced
25 g (1 oz) freshly grated Parmesan cheese, or more to taste
Salt and pepper
Olive oil or lard

Directions

In a medium sized skillet, sauté the onion gently in the oil or lard until soft and translucent.

Add the crumbled sausage meat and sauté it, too, until it has lost any trace of pink and is just beginning to brown around the edges, breaking it up further as it cooks.

Add the mushrooms to the skillet, along with a bit more oil or lard if needed. Raise a flame a bit and sauté the mushrooms until they have reduced in volume and just begun to brown around the edges. Now add the potatoes and toss them with the other ingredients, seasoning generously with salt and pepper.

After a couple of minutes, lower the heat and cover the skillet. Let everything simmer gently until the potatoes are tender, uncovering the skillet and stirring its contents every once in a while. Taste and adjust for seasoning before turning into a mixing bowl and let cool.

In another mixing bowl, beat the eggs together with the grated cheese and a pinch of salt and pepper. When the sausage, potatoes and mushrooms have cooled, add them to the bowl and fold them into the beaten eggs.

Now proceed to cook the egg mixture into a frittata, following the instructions you’ll find in our post on How to Make a Frittata.

Let your frittata cool off at least a bit before tucking in. It is also perfectly delicious at room temperature.

Notes

As mentioned, our post on How to Make a Frittata will give you all the tips you need for making this quintessentially Italian flat omelette. But to recap, you’ll have three different way to proceed:

The traditional fry method, where you fry both sides in a skillet, flipping the eggs once the bottom is fully cooked.
The easy fry-broil method, where you fry the bottom then finish the other side under the broiler, without flipping.
The even easier oven method, where you pour the egg mixture into a baking dish and baking it until done in the oven.

The second fry-broil method is my current go to. It mimics the results of a traditional frittata quite well without the bother of flipping it over. You just need to be a bit careful not to place the frittata too close the broiler or it may cook on top before the middle is done. Unlike, say, a French omelette, a frittata should always be fully cooked through. Be careful not to overcook it, though, or the eggs will turn rubbery.

Just about any sausage will work fine with this recipe, although the classic choice would be a mild, Italian sausage. The potatoes should be of the yellow-fleshed, “waxy” variety, the kind you’d use for potato salad. They have more flavor and stay together as they cook. And as for the mushrooms, again, you can use whatever kind you like and your pocketbook can handle, from regular button mushrooms to fancy wild ones. This time I used “baby bellas” cut into quarters.

Variations

When making a frittata, measurements don’t matter all that much. The egg to filling ratio given here produces a nicely balanced frittata, in my opinion. But you can certainly stretch the recipe by adding more eggs. Or use fewer (say 4) if you want a really dense frittata—just make sure there are enough to bind the filling together. You can play with the amounts of sausage, mushroom and potato as well.

You can also make your frittata thick or thin, according to the number of eggs you add and the width of your skillet. (If you make your frittata thick, you’ll need to cook it on rather lower heat so it has time to cook inside.) Angelina made her frittatas quite thick, and for a long time I thought they were all made that way. But then, many years ago, I ordered an onion frittata in a trattoria in Florence. It came out almost pancake thin and gloriously crispy on both sides. I’ve never looked back since and mostly make my frittatas on the thin side, as pictured here.

While olive oil would be the typical cooking medium for most frittatas, this particular frittata lends itself to the porky flavor of lard, which also browns the eggs especially nicely.

This is already a pretty hefty dish, but if you want to gild the lily, you can add include a meltable cheese such as fontina or scamorza, to the egg mixture for your frittata. On the other hand, a bit of milk would lighten your frittata, in terms of texture if not calories. And a handful of minced herbs or parsley would add a nice bit of color and spritely flavor.

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