I’m excited to show you this morel mushroom frittata I made yesterday. Or whatever day it was. AllTheDaysAreTheSame when you are trying to stay home. (Today is technically #StayHomeDay10 for me.)
Morel Season!
Like I said in my most recent Sunday Letter, it’s morel mushroom season in Northwest Arkansas. Since I foraged a bowlful, I wanted to make something special with them using what was on hand. Last year when I found morels, I added them to fettuccine. This year, I came up with a morel mushroom frittata inspired by a recipe from Farmer’s Almanac. I divided the filling between two small, individual ramekins, the perfect serving size for our breakfast.
I even tried my hand at baking a design on top. (More on this below.)
Ingredients
- 1 cup morel mushrooms, cleaned, finely sliced or chopped
- 1 1/2 T butter
- 4 eggs
- 1/2 cup grated parmesan
- 1 T chopped green onion, whites and greens
- 1/4 t dried French tarragon
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
- Sauté mushrooms and onions in melted butter for about five minutes. Add tarragon and remove from heat.
- In separate bowl, beat eggs to make them fluffy. Add parmesan, salt, and pepper. Stir.
- Lightly grease ramekins with seasoned/melted butter from the skillet you used to cook mushrooms.
- Spoon mushrooms into bottom of ramekins. Pour in eggs.
- Bake approximately 20 minutes. (If you want to create a design on top from onion, mushrooms, carrots, or other veggies, do that about 10 minutes into baking time.)
- After the 20 minute baking time, cook an additional 5 minutes on broil. Keep an eye on it as oven times vary!
These morels have such a rich, earthy flavor, especially after they’ve been sautéed in butter.
Here they are hot from the oven, the cheese and butter bubbling around the edges. Of course at this point, another sprinkle of parmesan only makes things better.
Baking Art?
Have you noticed the trend of baking art into bread? (Like baking bread isn’t artsy enough?) But really, there are some incredibly gorgeous and detailed designs being shared on Facebook and Instagram. Check out @vineyardbaker to see what I mean.
I decided to try the same concept with my morel mushroom frittata. For a flower design (okay, you have to turn your imagination to high), I used a thin slice of green onion for the stem, a mushroom for the center (morels are hollow inside so the circle design comes naturally when sliced), and slivers of carrot for the petals. The petals scattered a bit during baking it seems. I swear I arranged them more evenly.
Cute I think!
Delish for sure.
This would be a great brunch dish or perfect any time you want to eat low carb and high protein. If you don’t have morel mushrooms, substitute a more readily available mushroom.
Now that you are spending more time at home, have you found ways to be more creative with meals or activities or anything?
We have to do whatever we can to entertain ourselves during this time of hunkering down.
Onward to #StayHomeDay11…
Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life.
I’m wondering if morel mushrooms grow in N Central Arkansas? Probably, but I would not hunt and gather unless I had an experienced teacher of mushrooms with me! I have indulged in some creative pursuits of late. Right before the stay home recommendations I took a watercolor class. Then when I had to run to a bigger town w an unemployment office (fallout from schools shutting down and new life experience: applying for unemployment after 40 years of paying in) I tore through hobby lobby and got supplies for creating at home. You tube tutorials helped there! And my 7 year old niece and I are trading photos of projects we made from an art class for kids being offered by the Kennedy center. I may do a few Zoom sessions w my adult sons living out west for dinner or board game night! So, I am actually quite content and comfortable and calm and creative right now. (4 C’s!) Stay well all, look for the growth opportunities this situation may give us.
Staying at home isn’t a big deal to us since we are homebodies for the most part. I made a quick grocery run eight days ago and picked up the mail at the post office. I imagine our post office box is getting full but it will be mostly junk mail. Thank goodness I received Gene, Everywhere before social distancing. I’m coming right along with that beautiful memoir at about half way through. We seldom eat out so cooking and baking at home is the norm for me. Have a good day 11 and stay healthy.
PS. Your creation looks delicious but I hate mushrooms! 😂
This looks so good. I’ve only found one morel so far. Last year I found more every day but so far there just have been many on my property. I hope with warmer weather this week they’ll begin to pop up.
Looks delicious!! Reading…we moved furniture around 😊 cleaning few closets out..cooking & bit of baking too!!