lunch

Half moon chicken pasties

~ Kate ~ 1 Comment

pastie

A bit more sun-like when they’re coated in egg wash, in fact.

There’s something very satisfying about this; using up leftovers and doing the sort of cooking that you watched your mum do when you were little – rolling out pastry, sealing pies, brushing on egg wash.

This is one of those dishes that is far greater than the sum of its parts.

Makes 16 bite sized pasties

1 sheet puff pastry

Leftover chicken stew

1 egg, beaten

Flour for rolling

Roll the puff pastry out thinly and cut into small circles – I used a tea cup. Place on a lined baking sheet, floury side up (otherwise when you egg wash you get into a claggy mess of flour and egg), and put around a teaspoon of stew into the middle of each. You need to be relatively stingy with the stew to keep them neat. Brush egg in a circle round the outside rim and seal them into half moon shaped pasties. Brush the top with egg wash and pop them in a hot oven (200 degrees) for 15 minutes, till puffed up and golden.

I had mine with a leafy green salad. I showed Bert what a salad leaf looked like for future reference.

Cheddar and sweetcorn fritters

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cheeseandsweetcorn

A cheese and sweetcorn version of the pea and parmesan pancakes.

Serves 2.5 (Daddy’s home!)

100g self raising flour

150 ml whole milk

1 egg

A couple of handfuls of grated strong cheddar

1 small tin sweetcorn, most of the liquid drained out

Strangely, this makes a lot more than the eight that the pea and parmesan mixture makes – I think the extra liquid from the sweetcorn and extra cheese explains it.

Combine all the ingredients and pop dessert spoons of the mixture in a hot pan that’s been greased with a smigeon of butter. They need a couple of minutes on each side till they’re golden and feel firm under a spatula – you don’t want uncooked batter in the middle, so wait till they feel a little springy under pressure.

Also lovely with a thinly sliced leek that’s been sauted in butter in place of the sweetcorn.

Root veg cakes and sausages

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rootvegcakes

…and a poached egg for me.

I suppose this is a bit brunchy for dinner, but in a world where we sleep in a pair of woolly tights, on all fours, with our bum in the air and reject milk but eat dried dog food, anything goes.

Serves 1.5 very generously (2 if you count the dog as a second half person)

A selection of root veg – we used a small carrot, 4 small potatoes and a quarter of a small celeriac

A dessert spoon of flour

1 egg

A grating of black pepper and nutmeg, a sprinkle of dried or well chopped fresh sage

A large dessert spoon of butter

Sausages

An egg

Peel and chop the veg into pieces – about the size you’d do for roasting – and parboil them for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, put the sausages in the oven or under the grill. Grate the veg (using a food processor means you can do it hot) and combine with the flour, herbs and egg. Get the butter frothy in a hot pan and put small spoonfuls of the veg mixture in – if they’re small it makes them a bit more manageable and less fragile. Push them down a bit with the spatula till they sizzle. Fry till golden on both sides, then poach or fry an egg for yourself to go on top. No reason why a baby can’t eat an egg, but self feeding and runny yolks are an extravagant combination, wet wipes wise.

Finger arancini

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arancini

Finger arancini, because they can be gripped between a tiny, pincer-like finger and thumb.

This made 14 but it depends how much leftover risotto you have, really.

Leftover risotto – we had about 1/3 of last night’s tomato risotto

One egg, beaten

Breadcrumbs – I blitzed a thick slice of stale bread. Or just keep a packet in the freezer and grab handfuls when you need it

Mozzarella, diced. I used about a third of a ball

Form a production line of ingredients while your baby plays a tambourine at your feet like a tiny minstrel. First the bowl of leftover risotto. Then the cubed mozzarella. Beaten egg into one bowl, breadcrumbs in the next. Form small balls with the risotto, a bit smaller than a walnut. Push your finger in to make a hole, pop in a bit of mozarella, then close the hole up. Dip in egg, dip in breadcrumbs and place on a baking sheet. (A Tom Kerridge tip – have a dry hand and a wet hand, so dip in the egg with your left hand, breadcrumbs with your right.)

You could do a few for your baby then season the risotto mixture and breadcrumb dip before doing your own, but I didn’t really notice the lack of salt. Bake at 180 degrees or in the middle of an Aga roasting oven for about 12 minutes. They’ll be golden brown and pleasingly professional looking.

You can also fill these with leftover bolognaise, though who has leftover bolognaise and leftover risotto knocking about at the same time?

Serve with a green salad for adults.

If you have any left, they’re good for taking out and about with a hungry baby.

Tomato risotto

~ Kate ~ 2 Comments

risotto

This is a pretty basic risotto, far less rich than I’d normally eat myself, but Bert loves it and I’ll eat it too if it’s just the two of us rather than cook twice. The main point of including it here is that it makes a great basis for Finger Arancini, which I’m planning to make tomorrow.

Serves 1.5 with leftovers for Arancini

Glug olive oil and small knob butter

1 small onion, chopped

Large clove garlic, crushed

About 200g risotto rice (a bit over a third of one of those little bags)

1/2 tin tomatoes

1 teaspoon dried oregano or finely chopped fresh oregano

About 500ml water from a hot kettle – measure the tomatoes into a jug and make it up to 750ml

Low salt stock cube

2 handfuls grated parmesan or pecorino (my mum recently made this with pecorino, and larger handfuls than I’d probably have put in – I’m now realising that a handful is a rather vague term – and it had lovely pockets of mild, soft cheese in it. I’d always do it that way now.)

A little pepper

Fry the onion and garlic in the olive oil and butter then stir the rice through to coat it. Add the herbs then the liquid (with the crumbled stock cube stirred in), bit by bit till it’s absorbed. This takes a while – you may have to hold your baby while you do it – but Bert seems to enjoy watching me cook and it’s easy enough to stir with one hand and hold a baby in the other arm. He also loves running his fingers through the raw rice. I’m hoping he’ll have lovely memories of cooking with me, but who knows, he might just have the level of awareness of a high functioning ape at the moment. Anyway, when the liquid’s all absorbed and the rice is soft, season and stir through the cheese. It may take more or less liquid so you’ll need to keep tasting it. I did feel like I needed to add a bit of salt for myself with this one.

Pea and parmesan pancakes

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peapancake

A new category in honour of Anna and her daughter, Fearne of the evil cackle – portable finger food. This is a little nursery-food-like as it comes, though I eat it like that with Bert, but you can add crispy bacon and a poached egg and call it brunch.

Makes 8

100g self raising flour

150 ml whole milk

1 egg

Good handful grated parmesan – about 30 or 40g

Handful or two of frozen peas – a small hand may help you carry one extra pea from the freezer to the work surface

Small knob of butter

Freshly chopped mint. I’m a new convert to dried herbs, but this needs fresh

Mix all the ingredients except the butter together with a whisk or fork. The flour needs to be incorporated but it doesn’t matter if it’s lumpy. Get a pan hot and melt the butter – brush it over the whole pan surface with a piece of kitchen roll. The pan needs to be barely greasy and very hot. Put in dessert spoons of the batter and spread into small circles. They need a couple of minutes on each side – once they start to firm up you can turn them over – they should be evenly golden on each side. You could cook half and then season the other half of the batter for you, but I think my palate’s adjusted to the salt thing and I don’t bother.

I ate 3.5, Bert ate 2.5 and there are two in the fridge for when we’re out and about tomorrow.

This is one finger food that you don’t need your baby in full Breaking Bad protective overalls for.

Home made baked beans on toast

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baked beans

The whole reason I started trying to find recipes that suited Bert’s palate and were home cooked was his addiction to baked beans, so I’m revisiting an old enemy here. But these were bloody lovely. We had them with grated cheese on top.

Serves 2.5 or would have done if I hadn’t had a large second helping

Small onion, chopped

Large clove garlic, crushed

1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika

1 or 2 carrots, grated

1 or 2 sticks of celery, grated if you have them to hand

Glug olive oil

250ml passata

A splash of water – about 30 ml

1 can cannellini beans, drained

Good dash Worcester Sauce – about a dessert spoon

Fry the veg and paprika in the olive oil till the onions are soft. Add the passata, water and Worcester Sauce, and simmer for about five minutes. Take off the heat and roughly blend till they’re a smooth Heinz orange, but thicker than tinned beans sauce. Return to the heat and add the beans, heating through. Serve on hot buttered toast or with toast fingers.

Bramley cheese fingers

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cheeseontoast

I got the idea for this in Costa Coffee, proof that even in the darkest place a little light may fall.

They had roast tomatoes beneath the cheese, though.

Serves 1.5

1 eating apple, cored and thinly sliced

A scant dessert spoon of butter

2 thick slices of bread

Strong cheddar – enough to tessalate on the bread

Saute the apple in the butter for about five minutes – as long as it takes to wrestle a maniacally laughing baby out of one nappy and into another. Toast one side of the bread. Press the soft, browned apple into the butter in the pan with the back of a wooden spoon to form a rough mush. Spread the mush on the untoasted side of the bread while a baby clings to your knee and howls like a wolf. Cover with cheese and toast under a hot grill till bubbling. Serve the baby’s portion cut into thick fingers.