Recipe alert: Leek and spinach frittata

I've missed blogging away for you over the past 2 weeks. Between beautiful, sunny days, a month of free Netflix, shopping for (pretty) curtains, proofing a friend's job application and serving as a main course for a swarm of woman-eating black flies whose bites I mistook for the work of bed bugs, life has been on the full side. Thank God for good friends, kind parents, a nice boss, and yoga!

You'll be glad to hear that I haven't neglected cooking, though, and that I've invented two splendid, simple recipes for you to try: a leek and spinach frittata garnished with slices of Campari tomatoes, and a side dish of roasted veggies using the leftover leeks and Camparis, plus a Japanese eggplant.

Tonight, I have just enough time to divulge the secret of the toothsome...

Leek and Spinach Frittata

Ingredients:

• ghee or butter and coconut oil
• 2 c baby spinach leaves, washed and chopped
• 1 leek, chopped in 1/4" rounds (use the deep-green leaves, too, but cut away any that are tough or dry)
• 15 egg whites (or 1 x 500g container of egg whites or 7.5 eggs)
• 1/4 c Parmesan cheese
• 1 tsp thyme
• pinch of nutmeg
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 2-3 Campari tomatoes, sliced in rounds

Yellow tulips sunnified my late-April weekend

Preparation:

1. Rinse the leeks and spinach separately. Get rid of as much sand or dirt as you can.
2. Chop the leeks and spinach.
3. Preheat oven to 400F. Make sure one of the racks is in the middle.
4. Put a 9.5" oven-friendly frying pan on medium.
5. Once it heats up -- not before -- add enough ghee to cover the bottom of the pan. (Ghee gives the frittata a deeper flavour and a nice density.)
6. Pour in the chopped leeks. Saute them until they get soft, but not flaccid.
7. Add the spinach. Saute it until it wilts and the leek rounds are quite soft and almost falling apart.
8. Scrape the leek and spinach mixture out of the frying pan into a separate container.
9. Wash frying pan and grease inside with coconut oil.
10. Pour egg whites into a bowl. Whisk them a little: you don't need to do much.
11. Add Parmesan cheese, herbes de Provence, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.
12. Add leek and spinach mixture.
13. Quickly stir everything together.
14. Pour mixture into greased frying pan.
15. Decorate with rounds of Campari tomatoes. If you feel so moved, mill some pepper over the top.
16. Set frying pan on middle rack in preheated oven.
17. Set timer for ca. 25 minutes. It make take longer for your frittata to cook. You'll know it's ready when the edges are golden and your egg pie swells up in the centre.
18. Let it cool, then cut it in wedges.
19. Pair with a side of roasted leeks, tomates and eggplant, and congratulate yourself on a job well done.

Next up: simple and succulent roasted veggies... Stay tuned!