dinner

Lasagne

~ Kate ~ 1 Comment


Finally a lasagne recipe that Bert likes (the squash and beef lasagne was a dark day). Here he is eating it in our new camper van – in the drive, where else?

At bedtime, with great excitement, he counted on his fingers all the things he’d done in it – climb ladder, play [with] Dad, eat sweet, have wee. Why bother leaving the drive? All of life is here.

Serves 4-6 (half for the freezer)

For the meat sauce:
1 small onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

Dessert spoon butter

Splash olive oil

1 large or 2 small carrots, grated

2 sticks of celery, finely chopped

500g minced beef

500g minced pork

1 x 400g can chopped tomatoes, then half the can of water

350g passata

1 beef stock cube

1/2 teaspoon mixed spice

Salt and pepper to taste

For the cheese sauce:

1 smallish leek, finely sliced

2 dessert spoons butter

2 dessert spoons flour

500ml whole milk

Salt and pepper to taste

180g strong cheddar, grated

For the lasagne:

About 9 sheets dried lasagne

Fry the onion and garlic gently in the butter and oil, adding the grated carrot and chopped celery and cooking slowly till soft – 10-15 minutes. Add the meat and cook till it’s browned, then stir through the tomatoes, water, stock cube, spice and seasoning. Bring to a rapid simmer, turn down and cook gently for 2 hours.

Meanwhile, melt the butter for the cheese sauce and fry the leek on a low heat till very soft and silky – about 15-20 minutes. Then blend with a stick blender. (If you don’t have a toddler you could leave it as it is, but there’s nothing that invokes Bert’s deep suspicion more than a strand of unexpected green.) Add the flour and cook gently for a couple of minutes, then gradually add the milk, stiring well, till you have a thickened sauce. Stir in half the cheese till it’s melted. Taste and season. The addition of leeks is a Jamie Oliver thing and it does give the sauce a bit of extra sweetness, as well as giving you an extra veg in there. 

To construct the lasagne, start with a quarter of the meat sauce, then a quarter of the cheese sauce, then three of the lasagne sheets (depending on the size and shape of your dish). Repeat two more times and make sure, at each stage, that the pasta’s completely covered with sauce. Finish with meat sauce then cheese sauce then top with the rest of the grated cheese. Cook at gas mark 5/ 190 degrees for 45 minutes, cooling for about 10 minutes out of the oven before serving. Add salad or veg sticks and you’re at 6 or 7 of your 10 a day!

 

 

Fish fingers

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Bert fell asleep in his pram while I was walking Ray today. (Yes, looking like a sixty-year-old man in an armchair.) After an hour we were back at the car and I attempted to lift Bert in – the way I did when he was a baby – but he’s huge and woke up as I tried to haul him in. He cried loudly and angrily as I wrestled him into the seat, and I drove off with him screaming.

After a couple of minutes he stopped crying and was perfectly cheerful. ‘Do you feel better?’ I said. ‘Yes,’ he said conversationally, ‘I was just a bit shocked.’

Serves 2-3

2 skinless hake fillets (like cod but tastier and more sustainable)

2 tablespoons cornflour

100ml milk (enough to dip the fish)

2-3 tablespoons breadcrumbs (if using home made, toast them on a baking sheet in a low oven for an hour first – they keep like this for a few weeks)

Zest of one lemon, finely grated into the breadcrumbs 

2 tablespoons sunflower oil

Slice the fish into strips, around a centimetre thick. Dust in flour, dip in milk then coat in lemony crumbs. Get the oil hot in a large frying pan then turn the heat down to medium and fry the fish fingers till they’re golden and crisp on all sides.

The trick is toasting the crumbs first, adding the zest and frying instead of baking. 

Auntie Tab’s chicken korma

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That’s a pirate waist coat – I don’t dress him in gold epaulettes, much as it’s the closest sartorial match for his personality that there is.

I wrote the recipe down on here a couple of days ago when we ate it and Bert did demolish it – I realise that this blog implies that Bert eats a rainbow of veg every day, but in the interests of honesty I’ll admit that for dinner tonight he had a hot cross bun, a peanut cookie and a Kinder Surprise.

Serves 3

1 small onion

1/2 red pepper, puréed with the onion in a blender

1 1/2 dessert spoons korma paste

Dessert spoon butter

Splash vegetable oil

3 chicken breasts, diced

1/2 tin chopped tomatoes

1/2 sweet potato peeled (or half a large carrot) and chopped and puréed with the tomatoes

1 dessert spoon tomato purée

Teaspoon sea salt

2 tablespoons plain yoghurt

1 dessert spoon mango chutney

Melt the butter and oil in a saucepan, and add the onion and pepper purée and the tikka paste. Cook gently for fifteen minutes then add the chicken, tomato purée and tinned tomato/ sweet potato purée. Season, cover and cook for 15 minutes till the chicken’s tender. Then stir through the yogurt and mango chutney and serve.

(Auntie Tab chops the onion and pepper, frying the onions on their own with the salt, adding the pepper and then proceeding the same way. But pirates can object to pieces of sauce-soaked, soft, cooked veg so I puréed mine. I’ve also – since I first blogged the recipe – tweaked it again to add the sweet potatoes for a thicker sauce, extra sweetness and another veg towards our ten a day.)

Crispy baked chicken

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So we have a new house guest. His name’s Peepo and no one but Bert can see him. He’s small and he wears green.

Yes, that’s right, he’s called Peepo.

Not scary enough for you? Peepo has a pet flying monkey who also lives with us.

I thought it was one of those weird things that comes and goes in a day and Bert didn’t mention him at all yesterday so I breathed a sigh of relief that Peepo had left the building. But today I reminded Bert that it’s his birthday party tomorrow. ‘Is Peepo coming?’ he replied. Warily I said, ‘when did you last see Peepo?’ Bert found that hilarious; ‘he’s here – here in your house!’

Peepo’s normally next to Bert and the flying monkey on the sofa. He has appalling taste in TV and Bert won’t tell me what they talk about.

I deleted all my photos to try to make my phone shut up about storage so here’s Bert pre (as far as we know) Peepo.

Serves 4-5 (I froze some uncooked – maybe Peepo will have them tomorrow)

2 dessert spoons plain yoghurt

50ml whole milk

3 chicken breasts, cut into bite sized pieces

50g panko breadcrumbs (or any fine breadcrumbs)

2 table spoons self raising flour

1 teaspoon paprika

1/2 teaspoon mustard powder

1 teaspoon dried oregano

2 teaspoons sea salt

Mix together the milk and yoghurt and marinate the chicken in it for at least two hours. Meanwhile combine the flour and breadcrumbs, heat a dry frying pan and dry-fry till golden. Combine with the rest of the dry ingredients.

Preheat the oven to gas mark 8 / 230 degrees. When you’re ready to cook, coat the chicken in the crumbs, and put the crumbed nuggets in the oven on a lined baking tray for 20 minutes, turning over half way through.

Many veg cottage pie

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As a blog I follow said the other day, it’s my job to put vegetables in front of my child, but it’s not my job to force him to eat them. My job’s somewhere in between giving up and feeding him chicken nuggets and chips every night, and bribing or threatening him until he eats courgettes.

So today Bert cried inconsolably at nursery drop off again. I thought we’d got past this, but it’s obviously all about his dad working away a lot and him feeling sadder and less anchored as a result. In the car on the way home I thought about my brief success with the ‘taking a dinosaur to school’ strategy and wracked my brain for how I could make the drop off okay again.

But I can’t. If he’s sad about his dad, he’s sad. I can’t take that away, much as I’d like to, just like I can’t force him to eat vegetables. I can offer them to him in loads of different forms, and I can be in the same room with him every day whether he’s sad or happy. But that’s it.

Dinner tonight is many veg cottage pie, with honey and butter popcorn* for pudding. Because food can nourish us and it can comfort us. And some days we really are just a bit sadder than others.

*2 tablespoons each of butter, brown sugar and honey melted together then poured over warm popcorn

Serves 4 (2 in the freezer for next week for us – I freeze it when it’s constructed but before it goes into the oven)

400g minced beef (5% fat if you’re 5:2ing)

Olive oil to fry (1 teaspoon if you’re 5:2ing)

1 onion, diced

2 carrots, finely diced

4 sticks celery, finely diced

2 cans chopped tomatoes

1/2 a can of tap water

2 tablespoons Worcester sauce

4 tablespoons tomato puree

2 bay leaves

Salt and pepper

For the topping:

1kg root veg, peeled and chopped – we had 2/3 sweet potato, 1/3 parsnips

200g creme fraiche (half fat if you’re 5:2ing)

(Obviously I’m not suggesting you put a child on a 5:2 diet, but with no portion restrictions and three good meals a day, this is just a hearty meal with tons of veg in. If you follow the 5:2 instructions, a quarter of this – a huge portion, even by my standards – is about 300 calories.)

Brown the meat in a large frying pan until it’s starting to brown and caramelise. Add the chopped onions, carrots and celery and cook for 10 minutes, until softened. Stir through the chopped tomatoes, tomato puree, Worcester sauce, seasoning and bay leaves. Bring to a rapid simmer, then turn down and cook gently for at least half an hour. (Because I’m working at home I turn it down really low and cook for an hour to an hour and a half.)

Boil the root veg till tender then mash with the creme fraiche and season. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees/ gas mark six and construct the pie in an oven proof dish, topping the meat sauce (with the bay leaves fished out) with the mash. It’s easier to put together if filling and topping are cold, but obviously this is only possible if you’re hanging around at home all day procrasinating working. Put in a hot oven for 20-30 minutes, till bubbling and golden.

Serve with peas, or a green salad if you’re willing to watch your toddler mime vomiting as you eat it.

 

Chickpea and tomato macaroni

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Bert breakfasted as a fireman, shopped as an astronaut and dined as a builder.

If I’d ever wondered what it was like to be famous, walking down a shopping street with a tiny astronaut would have given me a clue. Nearly everyone stared, smiled or stopped to talk. Bert was muttering to himself under his helmet ‘look me! I spaceman!’ 

Not every man can carry off a silver jump suit.

Serves 2-3

1 small onion, chopped

A little olive oil

3 cloves garlic, peeled but left whole

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

2 sticks celery, chopped

400ml passata

1 x 380g can chickpeas

Salt and pepper

2 tablespoons single cream

Macaroni to appetite

This is based on a Nigel Slater recipe but I rarely make a tomato sauce without adding extra veg. I had mine with green salad (Bert mimed being sick) and we both had grated cheese on top.

Gently sauté the onion in a little olive oil. Add the garlic, carrots and celery and cook till the onion’s transparent, then tip in the passata (or tinned tomatoes, if you prefer). Bring to a fast simmer then turn right down and cook on a gentle heat for an hour to an hour and a half.

At the end of the cooking time put the pasta on to boil. Puree the sauce and add the drained chickpeas and cream, seasoning to your taste. Heat through for five minutes then stir through the drained pasta.

If you don’t have a blender, you could finely chop the onion, crush the garlic and grate the veg.

Serve with grated cheese and green leaves (bleurgh).

  

 

Tandoori chicken

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Every day I’ve dropped Bert at nursery since a week or so before Christmas, he’s clung to me sobbing. Nursery’s solution: peel him off me, weeping, and ask him what he wants for breakfast. My solution: wait outside till I hear him stop crying then go home and worry. 

This morning he said he didn’t want to go to ‘school’ and started to sink miserably into the sofa and hide his face. We talked about why and found out it was saying goodbye he hated (don’t we all), so we came up with the solution of taking a different dinousaur in to show his mates every day. He skipped, smiling, into nursery with his robot dinosaur and didn’t look back.

What’s a blog for, if not to share the rare moments of smug parenting?

But now he’s eating this with his hands in front of the TV. Bert: do dinosaurs eat rice? Me: yes. Bert: do dinosaurs eat chicken? Me: yes, they do.

Serves 2-3

4 skinless chicken thigh fillets

150ml plain yoghurt (with low-fat yoghurt, this works for 5:2ers – 2 thighs and a small portion of rice is about 350 cals)

1 teaspoon each of: smoked paprika, cayenne, ground cumin, ground coriander, turmeric, ground ginger (or a tablespoon of tandoori spice mix) – this has a kick but isn’t hot; adjust the paprika and cayenne for less heat

Juice of half a lemon

Salt and pepper

Mix the marinade ingredients together, slash the chicken thighs, cover with marinade and leave to marinate for at least an hour, ideally overnight. Then preheat the oven to 200 or gas mark six and bake for around twenty minutes.

We had ours with brown rice and peas, and crunchy carrot and cucumber salad. If I’d been cooking for adults with less veg-suspicion, I’d have probably gone for sag aloo, coconut naan and cucumber raita.

Five-veg bolognaise

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Today after nursery me and Bert made elaborate train tracks, played ‘Mum is going to sleep’, a game of Bert’s devising where I was tucked up with a blanket, had a story read to me (‘oh! Poor fox. Lost socks. Found hat!’) and was left to read to myself with the light off. (Oh, if I must!) We then snuggled up to watch Tom Hardy cuddle his dog and read the CBeebies bedtime story.

There is such a thing as a perfect day.

He filled his new Fireman Sam boots with wee though.

Serves 4-6

400g minced beef

200g chestnut mushrooms, finely diced to match the size of the mince

1 onion

1 red pepper

1 courgette 

1 stick celery

1 tin tomatoes 

2 dessert spoons tomato paste

1 teaspoon marmite

1 beef stock cube

1 teaspoon chopped rosemary 

Salt

Pepper

Pinch cinnamon 

Good grating nutmeg

This is 5:2 diet recipe, but it’s got loads of veg in, and with Peppa Pig pasta shapes (the creators of Peppa Pig must be richer than J.K. Rowling) and grated cheese it’s ideal for small firemen who’ve lived off chocolate coins and sausages for the last month.

The original recipe (in Mimi Spencer’s book) dices the veg, but I couldn’t face Bert querying each individual piece and asking ‘what’s that mum?’ a hundred times, so I puréed it and the whole thing just looked like a regular Bol. On a non-fasting day you could fry the meat in a knob of butter or add crisply fried chunks of pancetta. Minus the meat it’d make a good veggie bolognaise for veg-averse toddlers too.

Fry the meat and mushrooms in a spray of oil (or knob of butter) till the meat’s well-browned and starting to crisp and caramelise in places. Meanwhile, blitz the veg in a blender (or finely dice them). Add to the browned meat with the tinned tomatoes, tomato purée, marmite, stock cube, seasoning and herbs and spices. Bring to a good boil, turn down to a simmer and cook for at least half an hour, ideally an hour and a half. 

Serve with pasta and cheese, or, if you’re 5:2ing, a small portion of pasta and some corgetti. If you are a fellow 5:2-er, a quarter of this, 50g (uncooked weight) brown pasta and half a bag of courgetti is about 350 cals.

Tomato, ricotta and green veg pasta

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Table manners are coming along nicely.

Serves 2

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons ricotta

200ml passata

1 head broccoli, florets separated, stem peeled and sliced

2 tablespoons frozen peas

Grated zest of half a lemon

1 tablespoon pine nuts

Wholewheat pasta to appetite

Grated cheese to serve (we had Cheddar)

Gently fry the ricotta in the olive oil for a couple of minutes. Add the passata, lemon and pine nuts. Simmer.

Meanwhile put the pasta on to boil, adding the broccoli for the last five minutes and the peas for the last two. Drain, stir the sauce through, season and sprinkle with grated cheese.

Shove fistfuls into your mouth.

Easy and cheap leftover lamb and lentil ragu

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Today Bert had a play and a picnic lunch with Fearne, one of his nursery gang and his general partner in crime/ muse. When she picked up a green frisbee that he wanted to wear like a hat he threw a wooden toy at her head. He sobbed, refusing to say sorry, even though she was kissing his hand and offering him the frisbee back. Half an hour later he was wrestling her to the floor and trying to opportunistically convert the situation into a kiss.

In the car he cheerfully claimed that it was ‘nice seeing Fearne.’

That’s the hidden dynamic of most romantic relationships for you, right there.

Serves 4-6 generously

200g leftover roast lamb

75g dried red lentils

200g roast veg – either frozen and ready to cook, or leftover

1 can of tomatoes

1/2 can of water

Salt and pepper to taste

Finely grated zest of half a small lemon (so a G&T later!)

A spring of rosemary, leaves removed and finely chopped (for me this is a balance between how small I can be arsed to chop it and the knowledge that if it’s visible, the whole meal will be rejected).

Chop the lamb fairly small and add it to a casserole dish with the lentils, roast veg, tomatoes and water. Don’t season it yet. Bring it to a boil then put the dish in a slow oven (gas mark 1-2) for around four hours.

When you’re nearly ready to serve it, bring it to the hob while you cook some pasta, mushing the veg into the sauce, adding the lemon zest and rosemary and checking the seasoning and liquid. (It may not need any salt if the lamb and veg were already seasoned, it may need a little more water or to reduce further.)  I did it with the grated zest of a whole lemon and it was too citrussy, so I’d not go too large on the zest.

Serve with pasta and grated parmesan cheese.