Jo’s chilli frittata with rocket pesto and spring garnish

A quick, fresh, protein-packed dish, enlivened by a flavourful garnish made from a variety of raw ingredients from your spring garden. As Jo says, you can reduce your need for condiments by utilising the flavours of the different leaves you have growing: peppery rocket, spicy mustard leaves and sweet edible nasturtium flowers all add to make this a winning (and beautiful) spring dish.

Ingredients:

• 3 spring or salad onions: just the sweet, white, outer part of the lower stalk
• 6 eggs, beaten
• Tablespoon of chilli oil (see note)
• Freshly picked raw ingredients for the garnish, from the garden (see note)
• Salt and pepper for seasoning

Method

Heat oven-proof pan in the oven or on a stove at 170 degrees Celsius.

Remove the pan from the oven and add a tablespoon of your chilli oil.

Add eggs.

Season with salt and pepper.

Place your pan in the pre-heated oven and cook until set, approximately 12 minutes.

While the frittata is cooking, make your rocket pesto (see recipe, below).

Spoon your rocket pesto over the top of your frittata.

Decorate with your raw ingredients (see note).

Notes

• Jo makes her own chilli oil in big batches. You can purchase it instead, but if you’d like to make it, you just need to place all your ingredients except the oil in a heatproof bowl (like a mortar), heat your oil, then pour the heated oil over your ingredients. You’ll need:
  • Chopped chilli, keep the seeds
  • Oil
  • Fried garlic
  • Fried shallots
  • Any aromatics: you can choose what you prefer, but you can use any mix of peppercorns, cinnamon, star anise, bay leaves, Sichuan peppercorns, ginger or cloves.
• You can use whatever greens you like for the top, but as Jo says: you eat with your eyes first, which starts you salivating and helps digestion – so you want it to be vibrant and pretty! Jo picked some fresh rocket, coriander, mustard leaves, nasturtium leaves and flowers, coriander flowers, pea flowers and she used the outer white, sweeter part of salad onions
• If you don’t have salad onions, you can reduce the acidity of your spring onions or other eating onions by putting them in an ice-water bath with salt, then drain or spin in a salad-spinner to dry.

Rocket pesto

Use some for the top of this frittata, then store the rest in a jar in the fridge for future meals: on top of salads, as a pasta sauce, in sandwiches or just on crackers or raw veggies.

Ingredients

• A good handful of rocket
• 1 clove of garlic
• A handful of macadamia nut
• Lemon juice
• Oil
• Salt

Method

Crush garlic in a mortar and pestle with a pinch of salt.

Add the macadamia nuts and crush them with the garlic.

Add your chopped rocket, and smash that in mortar and pestle, along with a squeeze of lemon juice and a drizzle of oil, until you get a good pesto-consistency.