cheese

Pork, apple and Cheddar burgers

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This dinosaur’s a better veg eater than Bert is at the moment.

I’ve tried faking a meat bolognaise with finely-chopped aubergine and brown lentils (I’ll be eating that for lunch for three days then), puréeing veg into macaroni cheese and offering multiple veg with any meal. Nope. He’s ‘just not that into it,’ he politely points out. I toyed with the idea of grating a mushroom today then slapped myself firmly on the cheek.

Ultimately I want food to be a pleasure for him not a chore, so still-frozen peas and cucumber it is, for now. This burger has grated apple and cheese in, both of which he’d probably eat anyway, but it tastes nicer that way.

It’s enough for four burgers.  I made two and saved the rest for meatballs in four-veg sauce. Mwah-ha-ha-hah.

Makes 4

500g pork mince

1 apple, peeled and grated

50g Cheddar cheese, grated

1 teaspoon dried thyme

Mix together and shape into patties. Burgers shrink so always make them a little bigger than the bun. I make Bert’s Bert-size then trim the bun to fit.

Fry in a little olive oil on a medium heat for about 15 minutes. Check it’s done – no one likes rare pork mince. And tuck in – welcome to the Chinese year of the pig! I’m a pig (literally, Chinese year-wise, and figuratively) so I’m expecting great things.

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Red pepper, roast tomato and pancetta pasta bake

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All Bert wanted from the Christmas holiday was to have a day when he didn’t get out of his pyjamas. All he wanted from Christmas itself was a one-metre high Paw Patrol look-out tower, some green pyjamas … and soft toys in the shape of groundhogs, aardvarks, otters and tree frogs.

A week on, the aardvark, otter and groundhog are tucked up next to a sleepy boy in new green pyjamas that are saggy in the knee from playing Paw Patrol. And a frog soft toy is bumped to his birthday list.

He’s at the point where he’s not prepared to eat any more ham or turkey and I’m not yet at the point where I’m prepared to go to a shop. So this is what we ate tonight.

The veg are puréed because he’s four and so vegetables must be raw and look like cucumber or cooked and seem like ketchup. The random cheese mixture is because Christmas.

Serves 3

1/2 bag pasta

1 punnet cherry tomatoes

Slug of olive oil

1 red pepper

1 of those little packets of pancetta or some diced bacon

Sprig of thyme

Grated hard cheese, about 200g (we had pecorino, Cheddar and Gouda)

About a handful of breadcrumbs

Heat the oven to 180. Put the tomatoes, whole, into a medium sized baking tin (say 20 x 30cm), drizzle with olive oil and roast for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile purée the pepper. Fry the pancetta till it’s starting to crisp. Cook the pasta for a couple of minutes short of its cooking time.

Add the roast tomatoes (and any liquid from the tin) to the blender and purée with the pepper. Add the thyme leaves to the bacon pan and fry for another minute or two.

Stir the puréed veg into the pasta, add the bacon and half the cheese and tip back into the (unwashed) tin you roasted the tomatoes in. Sprinkle over the rest of the cheese and the breadcrumbs and bake for about 25 minutes.

Manchego and rosemary scones

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Wednesday’s are still scone day!

Bert’s done nearly two full weeks at school and it’s been a roller-coaster. He loves it, he’s exhausted, he’s been told off for trying to scale a fence (either to escape or to impress a girl, it’s not clear), neither Mrs Green nor Mr Green are, infuriatingly, green, he’s cried just out of sight of the school gates, he’s rejected my idea of me kissing a stone for him to keep in his pocket (‘erm, it’s just a stone!’) but asks for a kiss on each cheek to keep all day when I drop him off.

This morning he complained he was ‘so tired’; not because of school, but because he gets up in the night to play.

There’s really only one answer to that, as the doctor says to the patient who complains his arm hurts when he lifts it.

Makes around 10 small scones

225g self-raising flour

55g cold butter

45g finely grated Manchego (Cheddar would obviously work just as well)

1 teaspoon dried rosemary

Pinch of salt

150ml pouring yoghurt (or half and half milk/ plain yoghurt)

Flour for dusting

Beaten egg or milk to glaze

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Crumb the butter and flour, between finger and thumb or in a mixer. Add the cheese, rosemary and salt, and stir to distribute evenly. Pour in the yoghurt and quickly bring together into a wet dough with a knife. Tip onto a floured surface as soon as it’s together and press down gently, to about 3-4cm deep. (The less you touch scone mixture, the better.) Cut out rounds and place on a floured baking tray. Brush the top with egg or milk and into the oven for around 15 minutes, till golden brown. Serve warm, buttered.

Easy peasy macaroni cheesey

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… pleasey.

This is Nigella’s easy macaroni cheese recipe (I say ‘mac ‘n’ cheese’ for no one), pimped up with peas and mint.

Serves 4

250ml evaporated milk (not condensed!)

125g red Leicester cheese, grated

125g Cheshire cheese, grated

2 eggs, beaten (so you don’t get little clots of scrambled egg in there)

2 handfuls fresh peas

1 small spring of mint, leaves roughly chopped (flavour plus leaves – a massive risk when cooking for eagle-eyed small children, but worth it)

Salt and pepper

Half a bag of macaroni

Cook the pasta in boiling water till 1-2 minutes away from done. Put the oven on to 200 fan/ 220.

Combine the egg, cheese, evaporated milk, peas and mint with a little salt and pepper. Mix into the cooked pasta, tip into an ovenproof dish and cook in the oven for 15-20 minutes, till golden brown with little bits of crunch on top.

If you prepare it earlier and put it in the oven cold, give it 25 – 30 minutes.

Cheddar and parsnip bread

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‘You’re too gorgeous,’ I said to Bert, grabbing him for a cuddle as this was cooking for our lunch.

‘I not too gorgeous,’ he said strictly. ‘I right amount gorgeous.’

Too true.

Makes 2 small loaves

175g self raising flour

50g grated strong Cheddar

175g grated parsnip (about 3 parsnips)

1 lightly beaten egg

4-5 tablespoons whole milk

Salt

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/ 180. Combine all the ingredients gently until they’re just formed into a dough, then split into 2 rough, round loafs. Bake on a lined baking sheet for abou 35-40 minutes, until they’re golden and hollow-sounding when the bottom’s tapped.

Halloween pasta

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The night before last I woke up in the middle of the night to hear Bert calling for me. I went into his room and he pointed sadly at some sick on his bed and said, ‘poor old Bert.’ As I gathered up his bedding, blanket, Rex the dinosaur and John the rabbit to be washed he shouted, ‘no, not John! Not the dryer for John!’ It was like Sophie’s Choice on a tiny scale.

(Spoiler: John was fine.)

There are good parenting days. And there are days when I’m constantly infuriated at dinosaurs being smashed onto tables, wee accidents less than a minute after he’s refused to try for a wee, denials of the need to nap and sulks at the end of Dinosaur Train – alongside teetering washing baskets, sinks and dishwashers both full of washing up and clients that promise work then disappear. And then I see a serious little face with round cheeks and I apologise, again, for being grumpy.

Today I mostly feel like this picture. Poor old Bert.

Serves 2-3

200g pureed pumpkin (the scrapings from our T-Rex pumpkin – what, you can’t see it? – blitzed in the blender till smooth)

4 rashers streaky bacon, chopped

2 garlic cloves, crushed

2 teaspoons chopped or dried rosemary

1/2 bag of spiral pasta

50g grated mozzerella

100g mixed grated Cheddar and Parmesan

Fry the bacon with the garlic and rosemary till it’s starting to crisp. At the same time, boil the pasta till it’s just done. Drain the pasta, put it back in the pan and combine it with the bacon mix and pumpkin, stirring till the pasta’s well coated with pumpkin and the bacon’s evenly distributed. Stir the mozzeralla through more roughly so there are pockets of it melting into the pasta and tip the lot into an overproof dish. Top with the Cheddar and Parmesan and cook at gas mark 4/ 180 for half an hour, till the top’s golden and bubbling.

The other 364 days of the year you could subsitute any other squash for the pumpkin.

We’re having ours with broccoli.

 

Marmite and pancetta pasta

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How can something so wrong feel so right?

Serves 2

200 diced pancetta

Splash of oil for frying

Pasta

Knob of butter

50g grated cheddar cheese

2 teaspoons marmite

Grated parmesan

Me and Bert have just got back from a lovely couple of days in Brighton. All very relaxing except driving on a busy M25 with a back seat passenger shouting ‘CRASH!!!!’ at random intervals.

I think this is a BBC Good Food recipe. If you use the quick cook pasta, the whole thing takes five minutes. Ideal for after a 3 hour drive that’s commentated on as if it’s a Lego Juniors iPad game.

Cook the pasta, scooping out about half a cup of the cooking water towards the end of the cooking time.

Meanwhile fry the pancetta in oil till it’s starting to crisp.

Return the cooked, drained pasta to the pan and quickly add the cheese, butter and marmite, stirring through till melted, and a splash or two of the pasta water – enough to make a silky sauce to coat the pasta. Add the pancetta and serve with grated parmesan.

Cheesey cornbread and guacamole

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cornbread

Basically, chili con carne sides.

Bert has chickenpox. We’re on day two of being confined inside with a very spotty toddler who feels perfectly well and has his normal levels of lunacy energy.

I’m spending £20 a day on Amazon Prime dinosaur jigsaws.

For the bread:

300g polenta

2 teaspoons of baking powder

1 teaspoon sea salt

200g cheddar, grated

150ml plain yoghurt

8 tablespoons warm water

For the guacamole:

1 ripe avocado, peeled and stoned, roughly chopped and crushed with the back of a fork

Juice of half a lime

1 medium sized tomato, roughly chopped

1 spring onion, roughly chopped

Salt to taste

Drizzle of olive oil

For the bread: combine the polenta, salt, baking powder and grated cheese in a bowl, then stir through the yoghurt and water to make a dough. Press into a baking tray to about 2-3 cm deep and bake at 180 (bottom rungs of the Aga roasting oven) for 20 to 25 minutes or till golden brown.

Combine all the guacomole ingredients. Do not expect your toddler to respond with anything but ‘bleurgh’.

Arlo the Good Dinosaur ate quite a lot, but Bert just ate rice and cheese.

Penne Giardiniera

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This is a Carluccio’s recipe, and I wouldn’t neccessarily have thought of trying it on Bert, but we had lunch there a few months ago and he nicked most of mine so…

It’s also fairly faff-y, particularly the spinach balls, but I’m out of work at the moment and while Bert was at nursery yesterday I spent most of my time colouring in, so let’s just say that time isn’t my most pressing concern currently. But you could always do just the courgette bit, which is really quick. The spinach balls would make a good vege meatball if you served them in tomato sauce, too.

Serves 3

For the spinach balls:

100g spinach, cooked in water for just a couple of minutes, then drained

1/2 a clove of garlic, crushed

1/2 a beaten egg

35g fresh breadcrumbs

Grating of fresh nutmeg, salt and pepper

20-25g grated parmesan

For the pasta:

1 courgette, grated

40g (yes!) of butter

1 and a half garlic cloves, crushed

1/4 teaspoon chili flakes

120g (yes!) grated parmesan

Cooked pasta to your appetite

Squeeze as much water as you can out of the cooked spinach, then keep squeezing till no more comes out. (Weirdly satisfying.) Chop it fairly finely and add it to the other ingredients, then form into walnut-sized balls. I put them in the fridge at this point to firm up. When you’re nearly ready to eat, shallow fry in plenty of olive oil till golden brown – about 5-10 minutes. The more water you’ve squeezed out of your balls – don’t – the firmer and less prone to falling apart they’ll be.

While your pasta is simmering, gently cook the courgette, chili, butter and garlic in a frying pan till the courgette is soft. That takes about 10 minutes, so the amount of time you’re cooking your pasta, more or less. Add to the cooked pasta with most of the cheese (leaving some for the table). The chili really doesn’t make it at all hot – it’s more a flavouring.

Despite the appalled look on his face in the picture, Bert demolished this. I felt briefly filled with a warm glow of smugness. Then I remembered that his dinner on Friday night was a bowl of Rice Krispies and a bag of chocolate buttons.

But I do believe that if you present small children with tasty, nutritious, ‘adult’ food in a no-pressure way (we never insist he tries or finishes anything) and present it all as equally attractive (he doesn’t have to eat veg, and puddings aren’t a treat or a reward, they’re just what comes after dinner if I can be arsed I’ve made one), then they’ll generally eat about 70% of it enthusiastically and ignore the other 30% randomly. If one day they just eat a huge pile of mashed potatoes, who cares?

 

Sunny pasta

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Roast yellow veg carbonara. Blurred but cute picture.

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Served 2.5 (me and Bert and leftovers for my lunch tomorrow)

Half a butternut squash, deseeded, sliced into slim discs

Yellow pepper, deseeded, sliced into discs

Splash of olive oil or rapeseed oil

One clove of garlic, crushed

1 egg and 1 egg yolk

60ml double cream

Pecorino cheese, grated – about half a cup – around 60g or so – and a little more to serve

Pasta

Half a ladle full of saved pasta water

Drizzle the veg with oil and roast for about half an hour in a hot oven – 220 or so. (I did it on the bottom of the Aga roasting oven.)

At this point in the proceedings I watched two Peppa Pigs with Bert on my knee, surrepticiously sniffing his hair.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta, keeping about half a ladle of the cooking water to one side. Mix together the cream, egg and cheese and season with salt and pepper. In a large pan, fry the garlic briefly in a little oil, stir in the veg then take the pan off the heat and stir through the pasta the second it’s drained, followed by the cream mixture and a little bit of the pasta cooking water. Coat the pasta with the sauce and serve with a bit more grated cheese.

Bert hasn’t eaten for over 24 hours because of a virus (Ray’s done well out of it), but he ate this.