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Stuffed pasta frittata was probably my very first ‘repertoire’ dish – that is, the first dish  that I mastered enough to make frequently, with invented variations, and without consulting the recipe. I learned it originally from the first cookbook I bought for myself, the Better Homes and Gardens Italian Cookbook. (I bought it, as I recall, home from college one summer and wanting to cook dinner to impress a date).

This cookbook, now apparently out of print, is just about the only source I can find for this recipe. None of my more authoritative Italian cookbooks has any version of it. (Bastianich, though, does have an interesting-looking recipe for ‘Artichoke and Bread Frittata’ that I’ll have to try some time). A Google search will turn up a few recipes for ‘pasta frittata,’ but searching for a stuffed version turns up only this recipe on a pasta company’s website. So I have no idea if this dish has any actual Italian provenance or was made up entirely by the Better Homes and Gardens authors.

But regardless if it boasts an authentic heritage in some Umbrian osteria or was dreamed up in a New Jersey test kitchen, it’s a delicious dish. It’s easy to make, allows wide variations, and is crowd-pleasingly unusual. It’s good for brunch or paired with a salad for a light supper, and is a great make-ahead dish for brown bag office lunches. It’s also a good way to use up leftover pasta.

The basics of the dish are: beat three eggs with salt & pepper and allow them to come to room temperature (to bring them to room temperature quickly, beat them in a bowl that’s partially submerged in warm water); cook 8 ounces of pasta – a long pasta like fettuccine or spaghetti works best – toss it with a little olive oil and allow it to cool, then mix the eggs and pasta together. Spread half of this mixture in a heated skillet, top with some kind of filling, and spread the remaining egg & pasta mixture on top. Cook until the bottom is set, then cook the top by running it under the broiler or by inverting it onto a plate & carefully sliding it back into the skillet. Remove to a board or plate, cut into wedges and serve.

The filling can be sauce and cheese; sausage and cheese; spinach, pepperoni, mushrooms, artichokes and garlic; whatever your imagination dreams up or your tastebuds call for. The frittata I made recently was filled with broccoli rabe that had been braised with mushrooms and Italian sausage, then dressed with a parmesan sauce mornay (that is, a white cheese sauce). For the pasta I used home-made whole-wheat fettuccine noodles – noodles made, in fact, from dough left over from the celery root ravioli I featured in a recent blog post. The whole-grain noodles gave the frittata a fuller, nutty flavor and satisfyingly filling heft. And they gave me a serving of whole grains  without the feeling that I was eating some debased ‘whole grain’ version of some better dish.

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