{Recipe} Mini Frittatas with Spinach and Tomatoes

Today's cooking assignment: Eggs.

Eggs are hit or miss in our family. The kids will sometimes eat them scrambled with lots of cheese and ketchup. They'll run out of the kitchen if I try to serve it to them hard boiled, poached or fried. They'll gladly eat custard of course. I would love for them to enjoy the incredible, edible egg. It's cheap, nutritious and easy to prepare.

So I decided to give Matthew Amster-Burton's recipe for Mini Frittatas from Hungy Monkey: A Food-Loving Father's Quest to Raise an Adventitious Eater a try. I love this book about a food critic's culinary capers with his daughter. I can relate when he writes, "What's better than breakfast for dinner? (Answer: pizza for breakfast.)" I adapted his recipe to include veggies I thought my kids would eat. I asked my son to choose two vegetables to include in this dish and he picked spinach. He admitted he didn't really like veggies and asked me to pick the second. One out of two ain't bad!


Adapted from Hungry Monkey
Makes 12 mini-frittatas, serves four

INGREDIENTS:
5 oz baby spinach
6 large eggs
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup cream
1 oz (1/3 cup) grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
1/4 tsp salt
pepper
1 tbs butter
8-10 grape tomatoes, quartered
1/4 cup diced shallots

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Whisk together the eggs, milk, cream, Parmigiano-Reggiano, salt, and pepper to taste in a Pyrex measuring cup.

2. Melt the butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the shallots until fragrant and translucent. Add spinach and saute on medium high heat until spinach is heated through (about 5 minutes).


3. Spray a 12-cup nonstick muffin pan with cooking spray. Spoon a generous tablespoon of the spinach and tomato into each cup and top with 2-3 tablespoons of the egg mixture. Each cup will be about 2/3 full. Bake 20-30 minutes. Using a spoon, turn the frittatas out of the pan and serve immediately with toast (and bacon, fruit, etc.)

The Good: Easy to make, great for "little fingers" (I had my son help mix the egg mixture and fill the muffin pan). Great as leftovers and umdaddy loved it. The mini frittatas baked in a muffin tin are a perfect size for kids.

The Bad: My kids did not really like it. The youngest touched it with his tongue and cried whenever a morsel came close to his lips. The five year old eventually ate it, but only after an hour of eating, washing down every bite with some milk.

Grade: B-. I will definitely try making this again, but with different veggies with some fresh herbs and some more seasoning.