The frittata was improvised. I had a good supply of fresh eggs, more than enough garlic scapes, lots of tomatoes, but the trigger was a sighting of fresh blossoming chervil in one of the stalls in the Union Square Greenmarket that day. I’m always on the lookout for something new, and while this particular very ancient herb was known to me, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in a market, and I know I haven’t used it in the kitchen.

 

I was sure it would be a good companion for the mix in this frittata, and I used it in both the egg mixture and as a dusting on top of it after it left the broiler.

The other ingredients were few: about 6 or 8 ounces of garlic scapes (no other garlic form was used); 2 kinds of tomatoes, ‘The Best Tomatoes’ from Stokes Farm, within the egg mix itself, and half a dozen Backyard Farms Maine ‘cocktail tomatoes’ from Whole Foods, sliced and placed on the top after the egg had partially cooked; there was also sea salt and freshly-ground Tellicherry pepper, and a couple tablespoons of milk.

 

 

• a few ounces of garlic scapes from from Willow Wisp Farm, cut into 1 or 2-inch sections, sautéed in olive oil in a 10″ cast iron pot until softened, removed, allowed to cool, then added to a bowl in which 8 eggs from Millport Dairy had been whipped before half a pound or so of small halved cherry tomatoes from Stokes Farm were added, the mix seasoned with salt and pepper and the scapes introduced along with a generous amount o stemmed and chopped flowering chervil from Willow Wisp Farm, the egg mixture poured into the pan in which the scapes had been prepared, then cooked slowly over a low-to-moderate flame until the eggs were almost done, Maine cherry ‘cocktail’ tomatoes from Whole Foods, each sliced into four disks, arranged on the top of the mixture, which was placed in a pre-heated broiler and finished with more of the chervil, served on a edge of several leaves of radicchio from from Hawthorne Valley Farm, dressed with a good Campania olive oil, salt, pepper, and a mixture of chopped lovage from Keith’s Farm and parsley from Stokes Farm
• the wine was a French (Burgundy) sparkling, JCB by Jean-Charles Boisset Brut N° 21 Crémant de Bourgogne NV
• the music was Rameau’s Zaïs, with Christophe Rousset’s Les Talens Lyriques