Frittata - easy weeknight dinner

Egg frittatas have quickly became my favorite dinner or breakfast item. Sounds fancy, right? It's also perfect for the days when I suffer from "I don't know what to eat but we have eggs at home" syndrome. It's a versatile dish, and great as a weeknight meal.

It's forgiving in terms of what vegetables you add to it, as long you have half dozen of eggs at home and some sort of vegetables, frozen vegetables, or canned vegetables - it's a go! It takes about half an hour to 45 min from prep to mouth (yes literally) and that includes half the time you are inactive just watching Netflex waiting for it to bake. Not bad, eh?

Tonight I made spinach and leek frittata. Spinach came in a frozen block and the leek was a bunch of 3 but I used half in another recipe so just 1 stalk and half left. See? Easy ingredients.

Leeks have a strong flavor and needs to be cleaned properly and cooked down. I used the half of my grocery purchase (3 leak stalks) as a leek soup but the other half I didn't know what to do with it. This ingredient does give off a onion-y scent and when you cook it down it is a bit sweet. It needs to be pre-cooked, and not just thrown into the baking pan. So what I did was to chop it into kind of triangles and stir fried the leeks with some butter with medium heat. You should keep stirring it so it gets translucent and a wilted in the pan. I added some garlic and onion slices in the stir fry process to give it some more flavor. Cook it, remove from stove, let it cool in the pan.

In the mean time I went to thaw my spinach. You can use fresh ones and cook it down but I prefer to use fresh spinach for salads and if I need to cook it the frozen version is just fine. Spinach is one of those vegetables you'd buy a truck load (because it's so fluffy and voluminous, I wish my hair can be a bit more voluminous like raw spinach haha). But when you add heat it cooks down to a little ball. So frozen is perfectly fine - and don't they say fast freeze vegetables pretty much preserves the nutrients so no worries here.  As the package states: a pack of frozen spinach, in a bowl, microwave x 4-5 min. Done.

Recipes will tell you to use 6 eggs, I have done that in the past. Today I used 5 eggs and a half cup of water (or you can use milk) and stir-mixed it well together. I think for a backing ware like what I have (6x6 inches), anywhere from 4-7 eggs is fine, you just get a bit more eggs, a bit more leftover if you want. I wouldn't go below 4-5 eggs because it'll be a bit too thin.

So here we go, pour the cooked and cooled leek mixture in the dish. The reason you wanted it cool is you don't want the eggs to cook right away around the leek, it'll be uneven and solidifies in some spots. I squeezed the liquid out of the microwaved spinach block, just so it's not soggy, and broke the spinach into smaller chunks to throw in the bake ware. I also had some feta and shredded cheddar which are also perfect additions. Layer these babies on, add some salt and pepper, pour the egg/milk mixture in and mix everything a bit - Voila you are good to go.

Now you want to throw that in a preheated oven (350-375F) is good, for about 20min. If you feel like broiling the top to make it golden, do that for the last 2 min. During this time, pour yourself a glass of wine, Cuz we worked hard just now. There you have it - Leek, spinach frittata for dinner.

I used these below recipes for inspirations: But the point is, you can tweak it however you want using whatever you have in the pantry you like. Mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers, you name it.
https://www.ricardocuisine.com/en/recipes/5849-mushroom-and-spinach-frittata
https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/spinach_frittata/

Hope you have fun making your own frittata.