Slow-Cooker Frittata Provencal

January 2022. Sarah's Table launches. Not with a ribbon cutting. Not with a press release. With a Sunday. One Sunday. The first Sunday in the Madison commercial kitchen. January 2nd, 2022. I drove to Madison at 6 AM with my car loaded: Earline's cast iron skillet, three sheet pans, my knives, my cutting boards, twelve pounds of chicken, and the cornbread ingredients that have been the foundation of everything I've ever built. I pulled into the parking lot of the Madison community center kitchen and I sat in the Altima (still dented, five years and counting) and I looked at the building and I said: "This is it. This is the table."

The kitchen was bigger than mine — obviously, it's commercial, it's designed for volume — but the FEELING was the same. Stove. Counter. Oven. The same vocabulary, just louder. The same language, just bigger. I stood at the commercial stove and I turned on the burner and the flame was bigger than my home burner and I thought: okay. Same fire. Just more of it. Same food. Just more of it. Same Sarah. Just more of me.

First cook: Earline's cornbread (of course — the first food of Sarah's Table is the first food of everything), pulled pork (slow cooker started at home at midnight, transported in a cooler), coleslaw, and baked beans. The first menu. The comfort food menu. The food that closes people's eyes. I photographed everything (Chloe coached me by phone: "Side lighting, Mama! NOT FROM ABOVE!"). I posted to Instagram. I DM'd the person who asked "do you deliver?" back in November. I said: "Ready when you are."

They ordered. The November DM person ordered. A catering order for an office lunch — twelve people, $15 per person, $180 total. My first sale. My first SALE. One hundred and eighty dollars for food I made in a kitchen I rented for $200. The math doesn't work yet. The math will work. The math is not the point right now. The point is: someone paid me for my food. Someone looked at my cornbread on a screen and said: I want that on my table. And I'm going to put it there. Sarah's Table: open for business.

I came home at 3 PM. Exhausted. Flour in my hair (genetically transmitted to Chloe, now confirmed as hereditary). My hands smelled like garlic and smoke and the particular scent of a commercial kitchen, which is different from a home kitchen the way a concert is different from humming — same music, different volume. Chloe met me at the door: "How was it?" I said: "I sold food." She said: "I know. I saw the Instagram." She saw the Instagram. She's been monitoring the account all day. The Chief Photo Officer is on duty. The company has two employees and one of them is nine.

That first Sarah’s Table menu was built on the slow cooker — the pulled pork started at midnight, doing its quiet work while I slept, so that by the time I pulled into that Madison parking lot at 6 AM, part of the meal was already done. That’s the philosophy I keep coming back to: start it low, start it slow, let the heat do what heat does. This Slow-Cooker Frittata Provencal lives in that same place — you build it, you walk away, and it becomes something that closes people’s eyes. It’s the kind of recipe that belongs on any table, but especially this one.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 2 hours 30 minutes | Total Time: 2 hours 45 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium zucchini, diced
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried herbes de Provence
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
8 large eggs
1/4 cup whole milk
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Nonstick cooking spray

Instructions

Sauté the vegetables. Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and bell pepper and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and zucchini and cook 2 minutes more. Remove from heat and stir in the cherry tomatoes, thyme, herbes de Provence, salt, and pepper.
Prepare the slow cooker. Spray the insert of a 6-quart slow cooker generously with nonstick cooking spray. Spread the sautéed vegetable mixture evenly across the bottom.
Mix the eggs. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk until fully combined. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Pour the egg mixture evenly over the vegetables in the slow cooker.
Add the cheese. Scatter the crumbled feta evenly over the top of the egg mixture. Do not stir.
Cook low and slow. Place the lid on the slow cooker and cook on LOW for 2 hours to 2 hours 30 minutes, until the eggs are fully set in the center and the edges are just pulling away from the sides. Do not lift the lid during the first 2 hours.
Rest and serve. Turn off the slow cooker and let the frittata rest with the lid ajar for 10 minutes. Scatter fresh parsley over the top. Slice into wedges and serve directly from the insert, or carefully lift out with a wide spatula onto a cutting board.

Nutrition (per serving)

Slow-Cooker Frittata Provencal — The First Fire That Started Everything