mamacook: 'Quiche' frittata for babies

I don't feed my son many eggs eu naturelle and I worry he's getting enough protein some days as he suddenly decides he doesn't like something he's had before (beef stew has been receiving less than glowing reviews of late).

The joys of your baby approaching toddler-hood eh? Still, perhaps it's no longer the weather for heavy stews and I have found that he's really interested any time I make him something new so it's worth keeping up changing things and trying new things.

Now this recipe does contain some salt in the cheese and the ham but I think you can be reassured that the quantities will be small (when you look at the measurements) and by excluding the pastry shell, we miss out on more salt and saturated fats. Definitely serve this with lots of vegetables or salad.

I've recommended extra mature or mature cheddar for this and likewise I think you should use a flavourful ham. This is because the more flavour it has, the less you need and so the less salt is added to the dish (mild cheddar has the same salt content as mature or extra mature so what's the point?) Talking of flavourful hams, I often used to buy black forest ham from Aldi which they have recently started to restock. I used to buy this type of cured ham from a local deli at at least 3 times the price but this stuff from Aldi is fantastic! (I'm not being paid for this endorsement either!) 89p for a pack and as you can see, I've only recommended 5g in the dish for my son but the flavour still came through. I wouldn't give it to babies uncooked though as it is cured and air dried (not cooked; ie parma ham style) but the rest of the pack would easily do two more adult sized sandwiches or used where you would use parma ham in cooking (albeit with a smokier flavour.)

Quiche / Frittata (1 serving for a 1 year old, possibly 2 servings for smaller babies on finger foods.)

Ingredients

1 egg
Approx 10g grated extra mature or mature cheddar
Approx 5g ham chopped into small pieces (miss out if you want to make it vegetarian)
Splash of full fat milk
Spray oil or a little unsalted butter, melted.

Method

Grease a ramekin; you can use spray oil for this or some melted butter. Break and mix the egg in a bowl mixing in the other ingredients. Pour the mixture into the greased ramekin.

Bake for approx 20 minutes at 200 degrees C. It took 22 minutes in my oven but I would think it would depend on the size of your ramekin (as if it's of a narrower diameter, the mix will be deeper and take longer to cook.)

The mix souffles up as it cooks then sinks back a little as it cools. Ideally put this in when you're using the oven for something else but it would taste fine cold so with a bit of forward planning, you could probably make lunch and tea at the same time. I'd also be tempted to make a spare one for my work lunchbox sometime.

Addition: I was thinking last night about how some people reading the above recipe might think "I'm not giving my baby that much egg, it's bad for them! I thought it's worth having a think about eggs and their bad press in recent years. Lion eggs are vaccinated against Salmonella and properly cooked eggs will kill any Salmonella anyway. What really did it for eggs though was advice which was given a few years back to eat a maximum of three eggs a week due to their high cholesterol content. Of course what no-one had checked was whether high cholesterol from eggs in your diet contributed to high blood cholesterol and, certainly in the case of eggs, it doesn't.

That all said, just like other foods which have received bad press from time to time, there is a lingering feeling that it's still 'not right', but eggs are a fantastically dense source of nutrients. They're a great source of protein and fat. We forget in all these messages about 'healthy eating' that small kids do need fat to grow. Natural, non processed foods which have a higher fat content like eggs are also often full of fat soluble vitamins. They contain vitamin D (one of the few foods which do and many women and children are deficient in this vitamin).