Actual cooking by real children

We're supposed to interest our children in food by allowing them to get involved with the selection and preparation of food and I'm all for it. Perhaps today after the children have cheerfully completed all their homework we'll slip into our matching Cath Kidston aprons, and work together carefully and co-operatively (perhaps while doing some close-harmony singing) to produce a healthy, satisfying meal that we will all enthusiastically yet tidily consume, while conversing politely about the day's events. After we've shared in the washing and cleaning up perhaps we'll probably retreat, laughing, to the sofa where we'll enjoy some improving literature before bed. Yes, yes I'm sure that's how it will go.

Fish pie

I didn’t much like fish pie when I was a child, I seem to remember. Possibly it was the colourlessness of it – white fish, in a white sauce, topped with white mashed potatoes. Maybe I thought it was a tad bland, taste-wise, too. Or maybe it was just because it was my brother’s favourite.

Now I love it. There’s just something so natural about the combination of fish and potatoes (like in those fishcakes). It’s a comforting, comfortable, rainy-day kind of food.

The tyranny of chicken

Everybody loves chicken, right? Because it's mild-tasting? Can be subjected to myriad different treatments and cooking methods? Takes on the flavour of the ingredients it's paired with really well?

Whatever the reason, it has become one of the things my children will generally eat fairly reliably (oh, I wish I hadn't just written that...) so we eat it at least once a week and I'm always keen to try something new to do with it. This idea came from the marvellous Epicurious, which I've been a huge fan of for years (I have printouts in my moth-eaten, sticky, mouldering ideas folders that date back to 2001! That's like the Jurassic!) and I'm sharing it with you because a) everybody loved it and b) it's the kind of amazingly quick, easy recipe that can be whipped up in about 15 minutes, the time it takes to set the table and steam some cous cous. And re-heat some roast potatoes for the cous cous-hater.

A nugget of the purest green

We didn’t eat many meals together as a family when our children were just learning to eat solid foods. This was because DH was working long hours and was rarely home to see – let alone eat with – the children and because I’d convinced myself that I couldn’t make food that satisfied their needs and tastes as well as my own (now is not the time or the place to have the conversation about how dieting WRECKS LIVES, though).

I wish I’d had Nikki Duffy’s book back then. Nikki (who happens to be a former colleague) has written a fantastic book (under the aegis of River Cottage) all about feeding babies and toddlers and it’s crammed with useful, reassuring, practical and pragmatic advice, as well as some really, really terrific recipes. I plan to write in more detail about the book in a future post BUT suffice it to say that the most iron-clad advice that she gives and that anybody could give anybody about feeding young children is MAKE THEM EAT WHAT YOU EAT FROM AN EARLY AGE.

So I – clearly – feel like I’ve already failed in this regard, even if the two of us dining together regularly (telly off, candle on table, good bottle of wine) has felt like a sanity-saver on occasion. But I think what I mean to say here is that if I was eating regularly with a young child, this – as well as the amazing recipes in Nikki’s book - is what I would be making.

Roast chicken with leek

Oh, man. Is there anything (anything?) finer in this world than a chicken, roasted to crisp, golden, salty perfection? Amazingly enough, even the children seem to agree, so I’m taking it to the next level by introducing an accompaniment that makes the most of the marriage made in heaven that is chicken + leek + pasta. Wait a minute, that’s bigamy. Ha ha.

For this dish, a plump, farm-fresh, free-range chicken is roasted atop a mound of snowy white, aromatic leeks. When it’s done the bird is removed to reveal the cooked leeks (some tantalizingly crisp, some melting and soft) resting in a pool of intensely flavoured chicken juices. A heap of cooked wide papardelle pasta – I’m afraid I’m talking non-PC, refined white pasta that will absorb all those lovely juices – is mixed in. The ribbons of leek get lost and melt into the pasta, making the kind of slippery, flavourful mouthful that will have you picking at the dish until lo-o-o-ng after you’re full.

That’s the theory, anyway. But will the kids go for it? Here’s the recipe.

Quickie post: Awesome feta, pea and mint cous cous salad

It takes longer to say ‘feta, pea and mint cous cous salad’ than it takes to assemble it. Almost. This is more a serving suggestion than a recipe, so I’m not going to give exact quantities. It’s well worth making for one, but, equally, is easy to scale up to feed a crowd. It tastes brilliant with lamb – chops, kebabs, leftover roast, you name it.