tomatoes

Fishfingers and ketchup

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fishfinger

Serves 1.5

For the fish:

1 large piece of skinless and boneless cod (it was about 280g)

1 slice of bread, blitzed into breadcrumbs

2 good pinches of cayenne pepper

Glug olive oil

Flour for dusting – cornflour works well

Milk

For the chips:

2-3 medium sized potatoes

Sunflower oil

For the ketchup:

1 tomato, diced

200ml passata

1 small clove garlic, crushed

Glug olive oil

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

Black pepper

To make the ketchup, fry the garlic briefly in olive oil, then add the tomatoes, passata, herbs and seasoning. Cook for around 10 minutes, mashing the diced tomatoes into the sauce as you go. This makes enough to use on one day as a simple tomato pasta sauce, with leftovers for ketchup (or a dipping sauce for fish cakes or sweetcorn pancakes). It would keep in the fridge for around 3 days, I’d say.

Cut the potatoes into chunky chips (about 1.5 cm square at the end), put in a pan of cold water, bring to the boil and parboil for 5 minutes. Drain, give them a couple of minutes to dry off and coat them in sunflower oil, cooking on a lined baking sheet in a hot oven (220 degrees) for about 25-30 minutes. Turn them over half way through.

Combine the breadcrumbs with the cayenne pepper, get a glug of olive oil hot in a pan, and brown them till they’re crispy. The cayenne gives a bit of a kick and a touch of that Captain Birdseye orange hue. Cut the fish into thick fingers and dip in flour, then milk and then in the crumbs. They join the chips in the oven for the last 15 minutes.

Eastern spiced chicken stew and dumplings

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chicken stew

Serves 2.5 or 1.5 with leftovers

For the stew:

400g diced chicken thigh

Flour for browning the chicken – probably about 30g

1 teaspoon zaatar

1/2 teaspoon sumac (if you haven’t had an Yotam Ottolenghi phase you can substitute lemon zest for the sumac and a combination of dried oregano, cumin and marjoram for the zaatar)

A little olive oil

1 onion, thickly sliced

2 cloves garlic, crushed

4 small carrots, cut into batons

Handful of greens, finely chopped

2 tomatoes, diced

A low salt stock cube

200 ml water

For the dumplings:

50g self raising flour

50g breadcrumbs (looking to start my own breadcrumbs business soon)

50g suet

A good pinch of zaatar or other herbs

1 egg

Dust the chicken in the flour and herbs then brown in the olive oil in a hot pan. Transfer to a casserole dish and fry the onions and garlic in a little more oil, adding the carrot when they’re nearly cooked. Cook them in a fairly hot pan so the onions get a little charred. Add to the meat along with the rest of the veg (greens as small as you can get ’em – we mean to deceive here), the stock cube, any remaining flour and 200ml of water. That’s not much water, but thin gravy and babies are a wildly chaotic combination. Bring to the boil, put the lid on and cook in a low oven (140-160 degrees), or the Aga simmering oven, for around 2-3 hours.

The Aga’s actually good at this, since nothing ever dries out in the simmering oven. In a standard oven you may need to keep checking that it hasn’t dried out and adding a little water if so. On the other hand, you have the advantage of being able to cook chips, cook more than once in a 24 hour period, have crisp skin on your chicken…

For the dumplings, combine the dry ingredients then add most of the beaten egg. Hold a little back as you may not need it all. Gather into a dough, adding a bit more egg if you need it. Form into around 10 baby dumplings (about walnut sized) and keep in the fridge till you need them. Pop them in the casserole and put the lid back on when there’s about 15 – 20 minutes cooking time to go and they’ll steam in the heat. The dumplings are a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe and I’ve never felt the need to look elsewhere.

Dumplings aren’t that much more trouble than mash once you’ve taken into account the peeling and the mashing, but this would be nice with mash too (if equally inauthentic).

Lamb korma and coconut rice

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korma

I thought this was a bit of a risk, but Bert loved it. And so did I. I imagine that, other than the inevitable ‘thumb’ of ginger, this is totally inauthentic.

Serves 2.5

3 or 4 lamb steaks (or any lamb cut that needs quick and hot rather than long and slow cooking)

3 tomatoes, cubed

3 tablespoons ground almonds

3 tablespoons plain yoghurt

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 heaped teaspoon garam masala

Fresh ginger, peeled – about 3 centimetres. Okay, a thumb sized piece.

2 cloves of garlic

1 small onion

1 or 2 tablespoons vegetable or sunflower oil

1/3 mug coconut milk

1 mug basmati rice

Measure the coconut milk into a mug, fill up with cold water till you have a mug full of liquid and add to the rice in a pan. Bring to a boil then simmer on a very, very low heat with the lid on for 25 minutes till the liquid’s absorbed. For once, the Aga actually excels here – pop in the simmering oven for 25 minutes once it’s boiling.

Blitz the onion, garlic and ginger to a pulp in a food processor. Hold your baby with one arm while he plays the spoons one centimetre away from your face, and fry the onion mixture in a couple of tablespoons of oil with the spices. When the spices smell warm and fragrant and the onion’s translucent, add the lamb, cut into bite sized pieces, and brown. After about five minutes, add the tomatoes, almonds and yoghurt. Cook for around another 10-15 minutes on a medium heat, till the lamb’s cooked through. Salt yours on the plate – I thought it needed it.

Bert even managed to gum his way through quite a lot of the meat here, but the dog did end the meal covered in coconut rice confetti.

Tomato risotto

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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.

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.

Golden pesto

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goldenpesto

If you’ve got leftover sauce from the sausage and pasta dish, you can use it to make this, just adding the parsley, pine nuts, cheese and extra olive oil and blending. If not, here’s the full recipe. It’s creamier and less strong tasting than off the shelf basil pesto.

We have a very embittered cocker spaniel whose few moments of joy derive from sitting directly below Bert’s high chair with an open mouth. He got no gifts today.

Serves 1.5 with leftovers

glug olive oil

1/2 carrot, grated

1/2 stick celery, grated

small clove garlic, crushed

1/2 can tomatoes

large handful parsley

1/2 small bag pine nuts

handful grated pecorino

another good slug of olive oil

Fry the garlic and veg briefly in a glug of olive oil, then add the tomatoes and cook for around 20 minutes, adding a bit of water from the kettle if it’s drying out. Meanwhile, toast the pine nuts till golden. Put it all in a blender (or a Nutribullet – we got one for Christmas) with another glug of olive oil and the cheese and parsley and blend till smooth.

If you’re using leftover sauce it’s even quicker. Babies have a limited amount of patience for your activities if they don’t involve you clapping them or carrying them.

Stir about 2 dessert spoons into overcooked (for your baby) pasta. Grab your pasta a couple of minutes earlier if you care for a more al dente experience. Add salt and pepper to yours after stiring into the pasta.

Leftovers will keep in the fridge for about a week. We plan to make a pasta salad with ours for a beach picnic tomorrow.