lunch

Carrot, ginger and red lentil soup

~ Kate ~ Leave a comment

Bert is regularly in character (and full fancy dress) as a fireman, astronaut or builder. He’s been known to be a cowboy, a dinosaur, a policeman and a pirate. Peepo, despite popping to Sainsbury’s and then driving back to his own house, occasionally visits, and we have a number of invisible lions and dinosaurs that live with us, as well as Peepo’s creepy mate, the flying monkey.

Next to Bert I feel positively unimaginative, but one thing I am good at inventing is soup.

This is normally another us-not-Bert one, though Bert will have a go at almost any soup if it’s topped with croutons (toss cubes of bread – the staler the better – in olive oil, sea salt and dry rosemary, bake at 200/ gas mark 6 for about 10 minutes, till golden).

Serves 2-3

25g butter

1 small onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, peeled and whole

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1/4 teaspoon chili flakes

2cm fresh ginger, grated (I portion it up and freeze it, grating it frozen)

3-4 carrots, peeled and chopped

Large handful red lentils

1 chicken stock cube

Boiling water

Dollop creme fraiche to serve

Melt the butter in a saucepan and sauté the onion, garlic and spices. When the onion’s transparent, tip in the carrots, sweating gently for a couple of minutes, then add the ginger, seasoning, lentils, stock and enough boiling water to entirely cover the veg. Bring to a rapid boil then turn down to a simmer and cook for 30-40 minutes. Puree and check seasoning then serve with a dollop of creme fraiche on top.

 

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.

Not Heinz tomato soup

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And yet, strangely, very much like Heinz tomato soup.

Serves 2

1 tin of cherry tomatoes or plum tomatoes (cherry are a bit sweeter, but plum are fine)

1/2 a slice of white bread

1 teaspoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon red wine vinegar

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Salt

Water from the kettle

Bring the tinned tomatoes and their juice to a boil in a saucepan and add the torn up bread, sugar, vinegar and cayenne. Turn the heat off, leave for 5-10 minutes for the bread to absorb the liquid, and then puree, thinning to the right consistency with hot water from the kettle if you need to. (We have it a bit thicker than Heinz, but – importantly – thin enough to drink through a bowl with a built in straw.)

Season and liquidise. You can also add any leftover roast red onion, pepper or carrot (anything red-hued), if you’ve got it, before you puree.  Reheat gently, checking the seasoning, and serve with bread and butter.

 

Doughballs

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I met Bert’s stepbrother, Ben, nine years ago when he was seven. I’ve cooked him birthday cakes, created special, birthday evening versions of his favourite dinner (sausage and mash), come up with our regular Christmas Eve tradition of baked ham and Dauphinois potatoes followed by sticky toffee pudding, handed him warm pancakes while he was playing FIFA or killing zombies, made pizza, self-saucing pudding and roast pork with crackling… I’ve been cooking for Bert since he was born, if you count producing breastmilk as cooking, coming up with all kinds of combinations of pureed veg, introducing him to curry, showing him how to make biscuits, threading meat onto tiny skewers, cooking veg perfectly and also hiding it in sauces to hit it from both angles. I’ve made him warm banana pancakes, fruit bread and peach and honey cake.

They’ve refused things politely (‘Too nice’ – Bert, ‘No thank you, thank you’ – Ben), eaten them happily, offered them to Ray and thrown them across the room (Bert, at least). But they’ve largely just accepted warm, home made food as something that happens. (I wouldn’t really want it any other way.)

But I hand them both a plate of doughballs (zero imagination, 5 mins active prep, 10 mins cooking time) and they practically stand up in unison and start singing Hallelujah while saluting me.

There’s a lesson in here somewhere, I just don’t know what it is.

Makes about 25

150ml warm water

7g dried yeast

225g strong bread flour

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp olive oil

Mix everything together and kneed for about eight minutes. I do the lot in a mixer. Cover and leave to rise for an hour. Then form the dough into small balls, about 2cm diameter, place on a baking tray, cover with a tea towel and leave to rise for about another hour. Your hands need to be dry and not sticky when you roll them, so it’s worth keeping a bowl of water and a tea towel next to you.

Meanwhile preheat the oven to 180/ gas mark 4 (gas mark 5 in our oven, which is a bit cool). Cook for 8-10 minutes, till just starting to turn pale golden brown. Accept that praise isn’t always proportionate to effort. Serve with little pots of garlic butter or plain butter to dip into.

Bert ate maybe eight or nine. Then a bowl of pasta bake. Then a chocolate and secret-beetroot brownie.

10 minute toddler pizza

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10-minute, toddler pizza to be grammatically correct.

I always imagined myself cooking with my child and finally Bert has been kind enough to indulge me – we cooked a whole pizza together from scratch.

The recipe is based on the average toddler’s attention span when Peppa Pig’s not in the room. Instructions for toddler cooks follow.

Serves 2

150g strong, white flour

1 teaspoon instant yeast

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1 dessert spoon olive oil

100ml hand hot water

Dessert spoon of tomato puree, the posher the better (we had Italian sun-dried tomato paste – Bert’s middle-class creds are firmly in place)

Grated mozzerella cheese (we used about half a bag)

Cherry tomatoes

More olive oil to drizzle in a small jug

Get someone else to preheat the oven to as hot as it will get. (We’ve moved house so no more Aga instructions – gas mark ones. We’ll get to the twenty-first century eventually.) Gas mark 9! That’s about 240 degrees celsius.

Standing on a little stool, measure the flour into the bowl, looking very serious. (Someone else better check the numbers.) Add the salt, yeast and olive oil. Tip the water in wildly and cackle manically. Mix together with chubby hands. Get someone else to knead until springy. Put the bowl next to the oven while you prepare your toppings.

Using a round-ended, serrated knife, cut cherry tomatoes in half with great concentration and an air of vast authority.

Flour the surface with a wild flourish and roll out the dough to approximately an inch thick, suggesting ‘Mummy try’ to roll it to a thin circle. Help transfer it to a thin baking sheet (we have round ones with holes in the base). Squeeze tomato puree into one corner and suggest ‘Mummy try’ to spread it evenly. Sprinkle chunky handfuls of mozzerella all over then put all the cherry tomatoes in one corner. Drizzle the olive oil over one small corner and allow your mother to drizzle a little over the rest.

Into the oven for about 7 minutes – enough time for one and a half Peppa Pigs.

 

Buttery tomato pasta sauce

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I didn’t make this, Bert’s dad did. Me and Bert created masterpieces from dinosaur stickers while alarming and intriguing phases like ‘it’s taken a whole pat of butter!!’ floated through from the kitchen. I imagine he’s setting up a rival blog as we speak.

It’s a much softer, mellower tomato sauce than the usual. It was delicious.

Enough sauce to serve 6-8 people

2 tins of plum tomatoes and their juice

5 TABLESPOONS OF BUTTER!!!

1 onion, peeled and halved

Pinch of salt

A few torn basil leaves and grated Parmesan to serve

The tomatoes, butter and onion go in a saucepan with a little salt. Bring to a simmer and stir now and then to break up the tomatoes. Cook gently for 45 minutes – the sauce should be reduced and the tomatoes a thick pulp. Remove the onion.

Stir enough through cooked pasta to coat it thickly but not drown it. Top with a few torn basil leaves and a sprinkling of Parmesan.

Bert took a mouthful then stared dreamily into space. I asked him what he was thinking about – green, roaring dinosaurs of course!

 

Chicken herb salad

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chick ray

So there’s not a toddler alive who doesn’t treat green leaves and herbs with the gravest suspicion, but I think of it as aversion therapy – if we put it on the table and treat it as normal, one day he might not see it as poison. Bert had the chicken plus some cucumber sticks. We all had bread and butter.

This is Bert tucking Ray up with a blanket, knitted monkey and dummy. So thoughtful!

Serves 2.5

2 chicken breasts

Drizzle of olive oil

Juice of half an orange

2 tablespoons of honey

2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar

Pinch of saffron

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

Bag of rocket

Small bunch of coriander, chopped

Small bunch of basil, leaves chopped

Small bunch of mint, leaves chopped

Brown the chicken in a very hot, oiled pan for 2 minutes on each side then put the (oven proof) pan in the oven for 10-15 minutes at 180 (grid rack on the bottom of the Aga roasting oven). It takes 10 minutes in our Aga but it’s always hotter than it should be.

Meanwhile, put the orange juice, honey, vinegar and saffron in a small pan and simmer until it gets syrupy – about 5-10 minutes. You can see it start to bubble fiercely like toffee, rather than gently like liquid. Take it off the heat and drop in the crushed garlic. When the chicken’s done, cut it into bite sized pieces and tip it into the pan, coating it in the syrupy sauce. At this point I took a few pieces out for Bert.

Then tip all the rest of the chicken onto a bed of rocket and chopped herbs, and toss.

We finished with chocolate buttons, the After Eights of the toddler world.

 

 

Fish cakes

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fishcakes

Highlight of the day: Bert got into bed with me in the middle of the night because he woke up too hot, wrapped a chubby, little arm around my neck and pressed a damp face against me to sleep, even though it must have made him even hotter.

Lowlight of the day: at toddler music group, he grabbed my index finger, used it as a tool to pick his nose, and then licked the bogie off it.

We had fish cakes for dinner.

Makes 8 – we ate 5 between 3 of us and froze 3

1 packet of fish pie mix or about 450g of fish – or any combination of salmon, white fish and smoked fish, in bite sized pieces

Milk, to cover fish

About 350g potatoes, steamed or boiled till tender then mashed

1 egg

1 spring onion, chopped

1 teaspoon French mustard

75g Cheddar cheese, grated

Salt and pepper

To coat:

1 egg, beaten

Flour for dusting

4 tablespoons breadcrumbs

Cover the fish with milk and cook for about 8 – 10 minutes on a medium hob till cooked through. Combine gently with the other ingredients, being careful not to break the fish up too much.

When cool, make handfuls of the mixture into patties and chill for an hour before coating.

Coat each patty with flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs, fry on each side in a little olive oil for 2-3 minutes (till golden), then transfer to an oven and cook at 180 degrees (or near the bottom of the Aga roasting oven) for 10 minutes, till warmed through. If you chill them before coating and don’t move them about while they’re frying, letting them form a firm crust, they hold together well.

 

 

 

Honey and soy salmon stir fry

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salmon stirfry

About two months ago I made Bert a story book from scratch. I did all the illustrations, including pictures of his favourite things, like his blue car and some flowers he’d picked for his dad. I wrote the story based on one of the ones I tell him every night at bed time after lights out – all adventures with Bert as the hero and all to do with our every day life. I rewrote and rewrote it till it rhymed and scanned. I redrew some of the illustrations till I was happy with them. I got it self-published as a hard back book with a slip cover – on the front was a picture of Bert and his blue car. In the inside cover it read, ‘for Bert’.

Whenever I get it out he says ‘no Bert book’.

This week I made this totally toddler-friendly meal from scratch. Bert ate all the plain noodles, carefully separated from the veg and salmon to avoid cross contamination, and, when I suggested he try some honey marinated salmon, he cried.

You win some…

Serves 3

3 salmon fillets

1 inch of fresh ginger, grated

2 garlic cloves, crushed

2 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons soy sauce

Splash of sunflower or veg oil

3 carrots, peeled and cut into batons

1 courgette, cut into batons

1 red onion, sliced

3 nests dried egg noodles

1 tablespoon sesame oil

To serve:

1 table spoon soy sauce

1 dessert spoon sesame seeds, toasted in a dry pan first if you can be bothered

Combine the soy, honey, garlic and ginger in a shallow bowl and add the whole salmon fillets to the mixture, turning so both sides are covered in the marinade. Cover and chill in the fridge for about an hour.

Take the salmon fillets out of their marinade, put on a baking sheet and cook at 220 degrees for about 12-15 minutes. (That’s two rungs up in the roasting oven for our Aga – in our oven they’re done after 12 minutes.)

Cook the noodles in boiling water according to packet instructions. Heat the oil in a wok till very hot, add the onion and cook for a minute, add the carrot and cook for two minutes, add the courgette and cook for another minute. The veg should be cooked through but still firm. Add the marinade from the salmon and heat through. Then add the cooked noodles and sesame oil, and combine the lot, stirring through the extra soy and sprinkling on the sesame seeds. (I separated Bert’s noodles and veg first due to the toddler cross-contamination terror.) Serve with the whole pieces of cooked salmon on the side.

 

 

 

Thai veg soup

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thai veg soup

Perfect, post-sickness bug food. (Thanks, Bert.)

Serves 2

Dash of sunflower or veg oil

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1/2 teaspoon chili flakes

1 teaspoon turmeric

1 small bunch coriander, chopped

100g spring greens, chopped

1 tin coconut milk

Salt to taste

3 white mushrooms, roughly chopped

Bert gets a sickness bug, is sick twice (and does about 20 jigsaws in between), has an afternoon nap and is then completely recovered. He passes it on to us and we’re floored for days.

God, we feel old.

To make the soup, saute the onion, garlic, spices and chopped coriander stalks till the onion’s translucent. Add the spring greens and coconut milk, season and simmer until tender before pureeing. Then add the mushrooms and return to the heat for another 5 minutes to cook the mushrooms through. Sprinkle on the chopped coriander leaves to serve.

Bert has tried this, and would probably eat it with a bit less chili, though the thought of his wild spooning plus the turmeric is a bit unnerving, immovable stains-wise.