Cooking with what you have

Sometimes (okay, pretty often) I forget to go to the grocery store.  Sometimes I don't get around to restocking my fridge and cabinet and I'm left with a sad assortment of odds and ends that don't necessarily go together when you look at them all together.

However, there's always something to be made.  

The other night I got home late from work around 9pm and suddenly realized that I had nothing in the fridge. I had completely forgotten my kilo of fresh spinach at school and there were limited options in my fridge.  I threw away the sauce I had made the week before. 

All I had at home were 2 slices of ham, 2 small tomatoes, pasta, onion, this creamy cheese meant to be put on crackers, garlic, whole dried red peppers and an egg borrowed from my roommate. Looking at my options I was pretty despairing. What do you make with such a random assortment?

Honestly, I almost went and got a cheap pizza from the place next door.  The dough is amazing and it's only €4... I almost did that and then decided I should just use what I had.  

Simple and Quick Pasta that you can make with the bare essentials

I started boiling some water for pasta figuring at the very least I would have pasta aglio olio (pasta with oil, red pepper flakes, cheese and garlic).  It's quick and easy and doesn't really require any effort.  Boil the water, cook your pasta. Then in a saucepan, lightly saute some diced garlic and red pepper (to taste) in a little olive oil. Toss your pasta in the heated oil and serve with parmesan cheese.  

However, I wanted to use the ham. I didn't want to let it go to waste since another day or so in the refrigerator would make it inedible, so I decided to crisp it up in a frying pan. I didn't really have a plan of action at that

point.  I had thought about adding the ham to my pasta, which could have been a nice addition. In retrospect I could have used the ham, tomatoes and onion to make a sort of faux carbonara sauce. At the time, it just didn't occur to me. 

Instead I decided to use it in a mini frittata (a fancy word for omelette) with the tomatoes, onion and an egg (quickly and stealthily borrowed from my roommates side of the fridge). I chopped my tomatoes roughly and finely diced about a quarter of an onion and added them to my sizzling ham.  

While everything was sizzling, I beat my egg with a little salt, pepper and basil and decided to add in a small wedge of my creamy cheese.  Cream cheese would work equally well.  It adds a lot of moisture

before flipping my frittata/omelette

without sticking to the pan. 

As soon as the onions were tender, I poured my egg batter over the mixture.  I let it cook for a few minutes with the lid on and when the egg was set a little, I tried to flip my frittata.  

Make sure the pan you are using is really non stick because the pan I chose was not!  I wound up making a bit of a mess because everything wound up sticking, which made it quite challenging to flip my frittata.  It sort of flipped, but some of the center decided to stick to the pan.  

I eventually got it back in the pan to cook the other side through.  

It stuck a little in the pan and didn't stay as together as I would have liked but I probably needed to borrow another egg from my roommate. Next time, I'll either use less ham or add another egg and maybe some more creamy cheese to the mix. 

As it stands the frittata didn't photograph well, but it was utterly delicious and went really well with the pasta since the pasta didn't utilize any overly strong flavors.  I didn't have high hopes and it was amazing which just goes to show you can take a few basic ingredients and make a feast.  If you do it carefully, you can even make a beautiful feast (unlike me... I did not think through anything I was doing since I was so tired and just wanted some food in my belly).  

my messy yet delicious frittata...