Is there anything more soul-satisfying than making a meal out of repurposed leftovers?

Don’t remind me how behind I am on getting posts written and uploaded. Every time I look up, I’m expecting to see a Sword of Damocles with a fraying rope hanging there.

Fortunately, it’s not that serious…yet. However, how am I supposed to let my accountability partners know that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing without frequent updates?

(FYI, this post is in regards to a meal cooked the evening of 1/4/24.)

Thursday’s cookapalooza left me with lots of leftovers…which was kinda the point, if I’m being perfectly honest. I had plenty of slow cooker mojo pork that I had not broiled (I pulled it out of the slow cooker and put it in a zip-top bag immediately to use the next day). I made too much rice. I cooked way too many black beans.

The traditional fix for leftover rice? Fried rice.
A traditional use for leftover miscellaneous ingredients? A frittata.

What if you combined them?

I found a post about a crispy rice frittata using leftover rice on the Bon Appétit website. I saved a bookmark to it, then when I went back to view the bookmark, I was unceremoniously informed that I had exceeded my views for the month without buying a subscription. To quote noted philosopher Stephanie Tanner¹: “How rude!”

I went in search for other ideas regarding the crispy rice frittata. I really didn’t find them…save for a Yahoo! article² that is nothing but a straight copy of the Bon Appétit story I originally found³.

The linked article is more about a process more than a recipe, but I still needed flavor ideas. Searching for ideas involving asparagus and goat cheese, I found inspiration in a recipe post by Food52 contributor Micki Barzilay for paella⁴(?!).

Print Recipe

Crispy rice frittata

Author: John R Cooking Method: Baking, Sauteeing Cuisine: Italian Courses: Main Course Recipe Keys: E eggs L leftovers R rice

Difficulty: Beginner Cook Time 45 mins

Dietary:

G gluten-friendly

Ingredients

Scale

1/2x 1x 2x 3x

• 5 tbsp olive oil
• ³⁄₄ lb leftover cooked meat (I used leftover pork from the slow cooker mojo pork that was not broiled)
• 4-6 oz fresh asparagus (8-10 stalks, chopped into 1-inch segments)
• 8 oz jarred roasted red peppers (chopped roughly)
• 2 shallots (sliced thinly)
• 2-3 cup leftover cooked rice
• 8 oz jarred marinated artichoke hearts (chopped roughly)
• 9 eggs, extra-large
• 4 oz crumbled goat cheese
• 1 handful grated Chihuahua cheese

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
   
   Put an oven-safe cast-iron skillet onto the stove and turn the burner to medium-high heat. Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil and heat until shimmering. Add leftover meat and sauté until most is well-caramelized, about 5 minutes. Place on a plate with several paper towel sheets to drain.

2. Add another tablespoon of the olive oil. Add the asparagus and cook until softened and edges are slightly browned, 3-5 minutes. Remove the asparagus to another portion of the plate where the meat is draining.

3. Add another tablespoon of the olive oil. Add the chopped red peppers and cook until they have taken on a little color and are fragrant, 2-3 minutes. Remove the peppers to the paper towel-covered plate.

4. Add the last tablespoon of the olive oil. Add the shallots and cook until very dark, 3-4 minutes. Add the leftover rice and stir together thoroughly, then pat the mixture down and leave to cook for 10 minutes, or until the bottom layer of rice is crispy. Turn the burner off and remove from heat.

5. Crack the eggs into a large bowl. Whisk the eggs together until well-beaten, then add salt and pepper to taste. Add the crumbled goat cheese and whisk with the egg mixture until well-combined.

6. Assemble the frittata in the skillet:
   
   Sprinkle the handful of Chihuahua cheese over the rice. Make sure the caramelized leftover meat is well-drained, then add atop the cheese layer. Add the asparagus and red peppers next, scattering all across the top of the frittata. Add the marinated artichoke hearts, making sure to scatter well. Pour the egg and goat cheese mixture all over the skillet, making sure all of the ingredients are pushed down as much as possible to submerge them.

7. Take the assembled skillet and transfer it to the oven. Let the frittata cook for 20-30 minutes, until the liquid has evaporated. Remove the skillet from the oven and let rest for 5-10 minutes. Use a spatula to run around the edges of the skillet, pulling the frittata away, then turn the frittata out onto a serving vessel. Cut into wedges and serve. 

Keywords: leftovers, rice, eggs

Rate this recipe:

(No, I was not at all confident flipping that out like that was going to work. I had a fallback picture just in case.)

Thoughts:

1) I didn’t know my brain was capable of putting together the phrase “too much goat cheese”. There were definitely certain bites in which the goat cheese overwhelmed, well, everything else.

2) I definitely should have drained the pork I used a LOT better than I did. The dish was pretty greasy and ran all over the cutting board after I flipped it out.

3) One of the jury of my peers was not aware that this was an egg dish. After eating it, I can’t blame them. This was definitely the least egg-forward frittata I’ve ever eaten.

Verdict:

Taste: 7.5/10. I’ll definitely be using this technique again with different flavors in different proportions. There was just too much stuff and not enough egg.
Availability: 9.5/10. Assuming leftover rice, the most demanding thing this recipe requires is a large quantity of eggs. Everything else can be some combination of pantry staples and leftovers.
Story: 8.5/10. I had to fix a little bit of the top of the frittata when I flipped it out, but I’m pretty damned impressed by how it looked out of the skillet. There’s also the fact that I made a frittata where the egg was an afterthought, which is darkly humorous.

Administrivia:

I’m leaving this tonight while still being one post and recipe behind. I’m working on catching up, but…

Figuring out how to create recipes wasn’t nearly as bad as I had imagined it would be with the YouTube videos. I’m still annoyed by a few things with the plugin (or, more likely, the interaction between theme and plugin), but support has been very responsive thus far.

I had planned for weeks to be Monday-Sunday, but with an upcoming out-of-town trip in which we’re doing belated holidays due to my eye issues in late December, I may have to count the meal I cooked Sunday as one of the three for this week.

I’m also in the process of indexing a cookbook for the Eat Your Books site. I was not familiar with the site until recently, but it’s a very cool way to organize which cookbooks you own and, as they are indexed, be able to search the included recipes by ingredient. You can also index recipe sites and, as those sites are updated, the recipes automagically upload to be available.

(Originally I was hoping to be able to create my own recipes via the site, but all I could do was put ingredients in, not any sort of cooking instructions.)

The first cookbook I was going to index was considered too…overwhelming for someone indexing their first cookbook. It’s still on my list, but in the meantime I’m in the process of indexing a cookbook put out by the Shiner brewery. (You’d be surprised how many Welsh rabbit recipes there are without any of our leporine⁵ friends.)

The bigger point: It’s one thing posting recipes and cooking misadventures for people who know me and who, on the whole, aren’t taking this very seriously. Should I really go through the hoops of indexing all of my recipes for EYB and making them easily accessible for people who would use them as an actual resource⁶?!

1. I’m not going to force references to sitcoms from my teenage years into every single one of my posts, but if there’s an opportunity… ↩︎
2. https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/crispy-rice-frittata-where-leftover-100000764.html ↩︎
3. I am nothing if not incredibly petty regarding paywalls like this. Don’t throw up arbitrary blocks to information; give me a reason to want to pay for content. I subscribe to enough newspapers and magazines that it’s a viable business model in my case. ↩︎
4. https://food52.com/recipes/7184-paella-verdura ↩︎
5. Yes, I did have to look that one up. ↩︎
6. If I understand correctly, it would be easier to do this now as opposed to building up more of a backlog of recipes to add/index. I’m not going to do this until I get the site to where I want it to be aesthetically…which at this rate may take months. ↩︎