Category Archives: food and cooking

Frittatas

food and cooking

The frittata is the easy way to make an omelette. I can’t remember the first recipe I ever saw for this dish, but I doubt it was authentically Italian, as the name might imply.

Over the years, in any case, I’ve evolved my own basic recipe, which is to fall back on if I go too long between frittatas and can’t remember the proportions.

Today is Cinco de Mayo, so even though I’ve already published two posts today, I’ll try to get this one out there and be timely for once. I forgot about the holiday for most of the day; our family hasn’t usually celebrated it though the festivities are all around us here in California. It was pure happenstance that I decided that the frittata I was planning for dinner would be made with Tex-Mex flavors. Then after it was in the oven someone mentioned the holiday, and I was very pleased with my unconscious “choice.” When I saw how lovely the pie looked, I whipped out my placemats that might actually look more South American than Mexican…but in any case, they looked more fitting than the everyday ones.


But back to Italy, where they have this tradition of combining eggs with vegetables and cheese in an oven-baked pancake. If you use a cast-iron skillet the result is rustically beautiful, so I always like to put it on the table for everyone to see, and cut it into wedges there.

Eggs are so nutritious and inexpensive, I like to make an egg dish for dinner once every week or two at least. Most people who eat at our house these days don’t have eggs for breakfast very often, so it’s not redundant to eat them in the evening.

This recipe can easily be stretched for more people, or adapted to what you have and like, by adding more eggs or vegetables, cheese, cooked potato, herbs & spices, etc. It is hard to ruin it and I rarely measure out the ingredients, except for salt, which I keep consistent at 1/8 teaspoon for every 3 eggs. This example has an Italian flavor, but you could make it Mexican, Chinese, or Middle-Eastern with a few changes.

Spinach Frittata

1 10-oz. package frozen chopped spinach, thawed & drained
12-13 eggs, beaten
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon oregano
black pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 10-12” cast-iron skillet (or other pan of your choosing) with butter or olive oil and let it get hot in the oven, if you like, while you prepare the batter. Beat all ingredients together and pour into the pan. Bake until eggs are set and top is golden brown, 15-30 minutes depending on your pan, etc. Cut into wedges or squares to serve.

Obviously this makes enough for a big family. I usually incorporate 1-2 eggs per person, depending on their size or appetite, and sometimes add an extra one or two “for the pot,” because if there are leftovers I’m happy to eat a slice for breakfast. The amount of spinach is plenty for the quantity of egg, but sometimes I use just as much spinach with only eight eggs. As I said, it’s hard to ruin it. I’ve made versions with added ricotta cheese, crumbled bacon, and leftover greens that had been cooked with onion and garlic. And I served one at a tea party once so that we wouldn’t overdose on sugary stuff.

Tonight, for my Tex-Mex Frittata ( I think the Hispanics have something that uses similar ingredients but not baked in this form, so I don’t want to use their term) I used:

  • seven eggs
  • about a cup of shredded cheese, mixed jack and cheddar
  • about 2 oz. of canned diced green chiles
  • some vegetables I’d sautéed–sweet red pepper, garlic, scallions, cilantro
  • salt, chili powder and cumin to taste

After I’d heated some olive oil in an 8″ cast-iron skillet, I poured in the egg mixture and put it in the oven at 450° this time, because that’s the temperature that was dictated by the recipe I was trying out, Crash Hot Potatoes, thanks to Pioneer Woman at http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/ . The guys really liked these potatoes, which you can see in the photo above.

If, in addition to your veggie-laden egg pancake, you serve a steamed vegetable on the side and a tossed green salad, you might almost make up for the rest of the day when we tend to have so few vegetables. And as my husband is always reminding me: Though “experts” may debate about what is the healthiest diet, high-carb, low-carb, low-fat, low-sugar, etc., everyone but everyone agrees that we should all eat our vegetables.

Beloved Jars

food and cooking,

Let’s see if I can write a blog post that is actually about something that happened today…a cold and rainy day on which we got a fire going. In April! Yes, those are Christmas lights in the picture. Until Spring has settled in more securely I will continue to enjoy them shining against the dark and dressing up my bare window.

The most satisfying part of the day was cleaning out the container cupboard. You’d think I grew up in the Depression, the way I save every jar and yogurt container until they are overflowing their space. No, it’s really because in the first decades of married life, I was always cooking army-sized quantities of soup or rice or whatever, and at times I actually used up most of those receptacles to squirrel away batches of Comfort Soup or pasta sauce against the days when we were too busy to cook.

During that period we also ate a lot of peanut butter, which resulted in me collecting these most practical glass jars, now true Collectors’ Items, I’m sure, because in this size, most food items these days are sold in plastic. Adams Peanut Butter was sold in approximately 2-quart jars that are more slender, and therefore fit better in the refrigerator, than what I have been able to buy as dedicated food storage containers. They were perfect, in the Old Days, for storing in the fridge enough soup for a large family. Or for cooling the stock before taking off the fat.

I’ve had them well over 20 years, and the lids aren’t even rusty. As you can see, I have begun using them to store dry foodstuffs. My kitchen is always evolving. But now, if these break or get lost, the younger generation can look here for a memory jog.

Sweet Potato Pie

food and cooking, pie,

The following all took place in January, but until now I had nowhere to tell about it:

Leftover Thanksgiving yams were waiting in the freezer. They had been cooked with orange juice, butter, and a little brown sugar, and were carrying a label: “sweet potato pie?” At the time I squirreled them away I had the thought to layer them with black beans somehow in a savory pie. Today there was some creative energy to apply to the seed of an idea. I made a pat-in crust using spelt and barley flours and some dried mashed black beans (a kind that is designed to make instant black beans when you pour boiling water over them), and added some black pepper to the crust mix along with olive oil and half-and-half.

To the yams I added eggs and cream, and beat them up not too smoothly. Put the filling into the patted-in crust, and baked it at 400° for about 35 minutes, until it puffed up. Had it barely warm for dinner and I liked it a lot. The crust was more crunchy than flaky, and it was savory–the black bean mix must have had salt in it– and the filling had a nice texture and wasn’t too sweet to serve as a side dish. It was smooth and creamy and a pleasant contrast to the crust.

By the way, that pat-in crust, originally from the Amish, I have made in several variations and it is always good. I have made it a Lenten pie by using almond milk and walnut oil. I didn’t measure any of the filling ingredients this time, but I can give you the basic crust recipe here:

Pat-in-Pan Pie Crust
Single-crust 8-9” pie
Quick, crisp, but tender
(can’t be rolled)

1 ½ cups plus 3 tablespoons flour
1 ½ teaspoons sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup vegetable oil
3 tablespoons cold milk

Place the flour, sugar, and salt in a pie pan and mix with your fingers until blended. In a measuring cup beat the oil and milk with a fork until creamy. Pour liquid all at once over the flour mixture. Mix with the fork until completely moistened. Pat the dough with your fingers, first up the sides of the plate, then across the bottom. Flute the edges.

Shell is now ready to be filled. If you are preparing a shell to fill later, or your recipe requires a pre-baked crust, preheat oven to 425°. Prick the surface of the pastry with a fork and bake 15 minutes, checking often, and pricking more if needed.

For a 10” shell I used:
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup oil
3 tablespoons milk (dairy or plant-based)

There you’ve got a wholesome-looking bunch of colors on one plate.